Video

Our video sys­tem at NewSpring Church has grown by leaps and bounds in the past 4 years. Our broad­cast has grown, we’ve added a livestream, and we upgraded to HD in October of 2010. It has been a great tool for enhanc­ing our services.

We do have video sys­tems in our other the­aters (Adventure Avenue, Kidzworld 252, and Youth Building), these sys­tems are very basic setup with a cou­ple Projectors, or TVs, a com­puter for all playback.

In the main audi­to­rium we have a com­plete broad­cast setup with the excep­tion of an audi­tor (for the FCC) since our broad­cast is post pro­duced. We cur­rently have three screens (two 9’x16’ and one 10’x17.5′). With the three screen setup it allows for many pos­si­bil­i­ties as for adding dynam­ics to the ser­vice with use of graph­ics, videos, and live videos.

We had a few options in pro­jec­tors and we decided on Digital Projection with advice from our con­sul­tants and after see­ing them in action we are very pleased with the deci­sion on these pro­jec­tors, very high qual­ity and brightness.

We have five cam­eras, two mobile and three sta­tion­ary. Three sta­tion­ary cam­eras allows for two cen­ter for wide and nar­row shots and one per­spec­tive cam­era dur­ing the ser­mon. The two mobile cam­eras serve as unique shots dur­ing wor­ship, get­ting close ups of the band mem­bers and vocalists.

In the con­trol room there we have a cou­ple LCD screens for mul­ti­dis­play of cam­eras and pro­gram pre­view shots. A pana­sonic switcher, livestreamc omputer, two pro pre­sen­ter macs, a shader rack, and a tall rack to house our CCU’s and our router.

The very sim­ple ver­sion of our setup is…

Camera -> CCU -> Router -> Switcher -> Router -> Projector

Everything gets tied back into the router for dis­tri­b­u­tion to any loca­tion we deter­mine. It’s a really nice router from BlackMagic Design and love the flex­i­bil­ity that it gives us. They have also devel­oped an iPad app to switch items on the router that works really well in an emer­gency, def­i­nitely not some­thing you want to use as your pri­mary switch­ing tool for the sig­nal drops briefly to wher­ever it’s being sent when a switch occurs, caus­ing pro­jec­tors and mon­i­tors to blink for a sec­ond or two.

We are also using a ZeeVee HD mod­u­la­tor to send an HD sig­nal over coax to chan­nel 5.1 to our CCTV setup that was already in place from a past install. This works really well for cry rooms and other loca­tions that might be long dis­tance and you want to send both video and audio over one cable. The only draw back so far has been it has a 350ms latency, so cur­rently we have a ring of TVs right out­side our audi­to­rium that the audio some­times cre­ates a sig­nif­i­cant echo when you have an audi­to­rium door open.

All in all it is a great small HD sys­tem that we have come to love and have just scratched the sur­face of it’s capabilities.

Volunteering for Video

There are many aspects to vol­un­teer­ing for video at NewSpring, here is a list of posi­tions and then I’ll briefly explain each.

Camera Operator
Mobile Operator
Jib Operator
Shader
Switcher
Director
Pro Presenter Alpha
Pro Presenter Beta
Livestream

Camera Operator includes Cameras 1, 2, and some­times 3. These posi­tions are very basic cam­era oper­a­tion and a great start­ing point for begin­ners, just point, aim, focus, and shoot. The cam­eras are sta­tion­ary attached to a pedestal.

Mobile Operator are Cameras 4 and 5. These cam­eras are mobile on the stage, they have the free­dom to get in band mem­bers faces and record them! The only restric­tion they have is to not be a major dis­trac­tion and to not cross the cen­ter aisle. The oper­a­tion of these cam­eras is a lit­tle more com­pli­cated then 1, 2, and 3, since you as the oper­a­tor have to con­trol focus, iris, and also your body in the sense that small move­ments of body get ampli­fied through the cam­era, so if you have a ner­vous shaky hand it will show on these cam­eras. Not many peo­ple want to do these cam­eras but if you are adven­tur­ous and want to be right in the action than this is the place to start!

Jib Operator, this is our newest posi­tion and we have yet to open it up to vol­un­teers but we soon will! The main thing about the jib is being able to maneu­ver a pretty heavy device. Inertia can be deadly in this instance and if you have the upper body strength to han­dle this guy, it can pro­vide some really amaz­ing shots. This is the only posi­tion that will require some type of audition…more will come soon.

Shader, this one is pretty sim­ple but vital. As a shader you con­trol how bright or dim a cam­era is. Training doesn’t take much on this one and once trained it’s real easy to get the hang of it.

Switcher is the per­son lis­ten­ing to the direc­tor call shots and switch­ing which cam­era is live. They are also in charge of switch­ing between live shots and Pro Presenter Beta for the Center screen. The biggest chal­lenge on this posi­tion is being able to lis­ten atten­tively to the direc­tor and also to the Pro Presenter person.

Director, I’m just going to give a brief descrip­tion of this one since this posi­tion is either staff only or audi­tion only. The Director is the per­son in charge of all video ele­ments and is also the one call­ing the cam­era shots dur­ing a service.

Pro Presenter Alpha and Beta are our graphic engines that run the words over live video, scrip­ture, and also trig­ger when videos get played in the ser­vice. This posi­tion is great when you think about the oppor­tu­nity you are giv­ing other peo­ple to wor­ship by pro­vid­ing them with words to sing!

Time require­ments for Volunteering

This is a quick break down of what the time require­ments are for each position.

Camera Operator — 2 Services per week­end
Mobile Operator — 2 Services per week­end
Jib Operator — 2 Services per week­end
Shader — 2 Services per week­end
Switcher — 2 Services per week­end
Director — Weekend prac­tices and 2 Services per week­end
Pro Presenter Alpha — Thursday Night prac­tice, week­end prac­tice, and 2 Services per week­end
Pro Presenter Beta — Thursday Night prac­tice, week­end prac­tice, and 2 Services per week­end
Livestream — 2 ser­vices per weekend

If you are inter­ested in vol­un­teer­ing go to Contact Us.

FAQ

What equip­ment do you use for live production?

Studio Camera: Hitachi Z-HD5000
Studio Camera lens: Fujinon HS18x
Mobile Camera: Panasonic HPX170
Pedestal System: Libec P110S

Video Switcher: Panasonic AV-HS450N
Wall Monitor: Samsung 46″ LCD-LED
Test Scope: Blackmagic Design Ultrascope

Video Router: Blackmagic Design Studio Videohub
CCTV Mod: ZeeVee 250

CG1: Mac Pro w/Pro Presenter Alpha
CG2: iMac w/Pro Presenter