I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Mike, and I'm the program director for a church in the Tampa Bay area called Baypointe Church. I've been surfing these forums for a couple months now, and decided that I should go ahead and become a member of your community.

We (at Baypointe) are currently are looking to do some IMag and possibly internet streaming and we are looking to set up a system for as little $$$ as possible. I have some television production experience from high school and years of Computer / technology general experience, so I have a pretty good idea of what I'd need to get us going, but i'm not very familiar the tech specific to video production, specifically from a Ministry stand point.

I have seen that many of you guys have alot of knowledge in this field and I would love to hear your input on putting a system together for a church that would allow us to accomplish our tasks without breaking the bank, yet would allow us the possibility of growth without having to replace everything we've already purchased.

I look Forward to Hearing your responses and getting to know you Guys!

Few more Bits of Info:

- We do not currently have a budget set for this project, we are looking first to see what kind of budget we would need to set to make this happen

- We Currently run Song Show Plus for our power points on 2 Screens. We are looking to add a third screen for I-Mag, and have it set up as a final production screen for later final edit and production for DVD

-We currently have no hardware (Including cameras) for this, it will be a project started completely from scratch

- I'm looking for a wide view of Media production in ministry, so all opinions are encouraged.

Thanks!

These are my thoughts, and they are just thoughts.

IMAG: Not sure how complicated you are wanting to go. It could be just a camera that you could go to for preaching, in which might consider one of those seemless switcher/scalers to go between the camera and the Song Show plus computer when you don't need to show the camera. If you are planning on more than one camera you will have to decide how big a switcher you need, and what you want to plan for in the reasonable future. Don't feel like you need to buy the biggest and best to start. The most important thing to have is a plan. You can use a basic camcorder now for imag, and if you need to step up to a studio config camera later you may be able to use that camcorder for field production on other projects. The great thing is that most equipment can be retasked for things later.

DVD/Streaming: You may choose to start simple and see what options are more popular for your situation. You might not make a live stream available on Sunday morning, but you can take the video you use for a DVD and with a free media encoder make it available for download online. Later, if there appears to be a lot of interest in what is available online you can justify the equipment to make a stream available live, or a streaming server for files so they don't have to download the entire thing first.

If you have any details on what you hope to accomplish, it may help others reply with help. Congratulations on taking what is typically the next step in church media, and I hope that the others here will be an asset as you move forward.

Welcome, Mike!

Thanks For the Welcomes. Truth be told, we don't exactly know what we want to do. What we really want to know is what we CAN do. The single camera with seamless switcher seems like a good start. I assume a seamless switcher does some kind of transition or fade between inputs. We are looking to put together a plan that gets us to where we want to be, but allows us to have the lowers tiers of media in the process and not break the bank. Like maybe a 25,000 dollar budget, but over a 5 year plan.

I look forward to any other input you guys have to offer and I'm glad I found this board.

Actually you need to decide where you want to be and work back from there.
I can't imagine spending less then a few thousand to do basic projection and once you start adding cameras and switchers in, well it goes up fast.

__________________
PM Me for a great deal on Media Shout
www.thechurchonthe.net for stock media
We Recommend PHOTOMAX for on-line photo albums.

Sign Up Now and get 20 Free Prints!

-------------------------------------

From your church's website, it looks like you're meeting at a YMCA -- is it a completely portable setup or are you able to have certain infrastructure in place for all of this?? For streaming, you will need a reliable (preferably very fast) internet connection.

Are you talking about doing IMAG all the time, or for certain events (child dedication, baptism, etc.)? To do it well will require a significant investment not only cameras but tripods, lighting, audio, switcher, cables, monitors, and on and on.

Like Joseph said, start with what you want to see. It'd help for this post if you explain what you have (pics would help, or at least try to give info about the church size, what kind of facilities you have available, etc.

Staffing is another issue to consider -- this stuff takes people! And vision from the leadership is critical also.

Here's what we do. It's nothing really novel, but it works, and I've put it together over only the past year. It began by getting a stupid good deal on a couple of camera chains and then wondering "okay, how do I incorporate these into church?"

Every Sunday I make a DVD of the entire service. Usually these wind up in the archive, but sometimes people will ask for a copy of the service from today or a month ago or sometime in-between. Our associate pastor was out for a month this summer for and following a kidney transplant, so by Sunday evening normally I'd deliver him the morning's video so he could watch it.

We also now put sermon video up on the internet. In fact, right now I'm sitting at the office watching the progress bar complete on that (while my DVD is rendering and burning at the church). That's been up for about a month, and I've put archive going back to late June up there.

I also plan soon to pull a video feed into the nursery and the cryroom (which is the hallway outside the nursery). They've got audio out there already, but video would be much better too.

We don't do IMAG normally (we only seat 300 max, and IMAG for the sake of IMAG isn't our style), but occasionally for a concert or the opening song for our youth on Wednesdays we'll pop it up there.

What I've done to make all this happen is using two analog production switchers, one for projection and one for "broadcast", with the broadcast output appearing as an input on the projection switcher. Both switchers share some common inputs like some of the stills and the graffix line and DVD and so on, while the broadcast switcher gets cameras as well, and the projection switcher gets no cameras but all of the stills. I've got a rack of old analog gear that lets all this happen: switcher mainframes, frame syncs, stillstore, computers, NTSC generator, and so on.

I have one computer that only records the video (with audio) that it takes in from a Firewire A/D box. I have a separate computer that records only audio for the website (we've had sermon audio up for several years now); and the two other computers are CG and graffix. I also run an SVHS machine as a backup, but only rarely have I had to go back to the tape, and that's times like when I forgot to push Capture on the computer, or inadvertently pushed Stop, or let it run clean out of disk space, or something of the sort.

In terms of people, it takes a crew of five to run a full service: one audio (FOH and monitors both from FOH), one projectionist and lightboard op (who also runs CG), one TD for broadcast, and two camera ops. In future, we could look at adding a shader if we get real cameras; right now, the TD also pokes around on the CCUs.

Camerawise, we've got two chains of Panasonic F250. They're old but decent, and they're ENG cameras with studio kits rather than camcorders. In our case, one is a long center shot with a 15X lens (I really want a 20X on it) and the other is at the stage-right proscenium with a 12X (which is about right for that distance). These are old lenses, no extender, which is just as well since a 2X extender eats up two f-stops of light, and I run the irises on these pretty much wide-open already.

That's what we've done and kind of how we've done it. All one piece at a time over a year, probably totalling 5K, maybe 7K tops. I'm right now looking at options for better cameras that will take a studio lens so I can get even an tighter zoom, but for now what we have works just fine.

Well, To answer some of your questions, Yes we are a completely portable church, and we have been known to take services to an outside venue on occasion, so I'd love for our camera/Imag setup to be completely portable as well. We seat about 200-250 each Sunday, and the staff of our church is all about vision and excellence in ministry. We base our service on the idea that if we're going to make a media ministry happen, that it should be a well thought out and excellent flowing process that makes a visitor leave feeling like the message was received, not thinking about how the lights were flashing during the video interlude, or there was a 30 second delay between when the lights came up and the band started.

Our end goal would definitely be a full broadcast type recording, with a 3 camera system, streaming live to the internet and recording simultaneously for later DVD production, but we're definitely planning to start small and work our way there. I'm not 100% that Song Show Plus is the software that I want to continue using, but I'm afraid my experience is too limited on Ministry media choices to make an educated decision. I have looked at the Newtek Tricast system, and I think that it seems like an awesome fit for what we need, but I'm thinking we're better just getting the IMAG setup to work with 1 camera to start off. And if a seamless switcher allows us to transition nicely between the lyrics from our praise band to showing live video, it sounds like that would be awesome at least to start out.

Thanks again for all your input, every bit of knowledge is helpful.

-Mike

I suggest you consider deciding your primary track - will it be presentation or production?

The presentation track give the live service priority. The production track gives the DVD's and web priority. If you want both - and want both to look their best - you need a system complex enough to send one signal to the projectors while recording a different signal for distribution. You'll also need to build a team that can pull that off. One production design will not completely fit both media tracks.

Not to worry though, for God equips the called. If He has called you do this, He won't set you up for failure! He may have more steps in between, though, than you might expect.

For IMAG I would suggest single camera coverage for the sermon. You can utilize multiple cams for praise and worship, drama skits, etc.

BUT - you have copyright and clearance issues on those items for the web, etc. So likely you would only be streaming the sermon. So single cam to the projectors. A separate mix of multi-cam to the DVD and web would be good. Wides, mediums and tights to convey visual communication and let viewers into the space.

The question is - do you really need IMAG for 200-250? Most folks would say no - the true need for IMAG hits at about the 700-800 mark - unless your stage area is a LONG way away from the seating.

We are doing 2-screen IMAG currently in an auditorium that will max out at about 1100-1200. We have two cams, but almost never cut between them. Our focus is the live presentation; DVD's and web (coming soon I hope) are secondary.

I would agree with most of the post on here already.

We are a church of 850 people and have really started growing again lately, so HD iMag is in the near future for us. A year ago when we were only 750, it was unnecessary.

For your still relatively small church, a good switcher scaler unit would be a good investment. Whatever you get, make sure it's HD compatible or you will regret it in two years. Yes, a bit more pricey, but it's future proof as well.

As far as DVD sales, do you produce a regular CD-R? We sell about 20 of those each Sunday, and have about 200 weekly downloads on our MP3 site.

Having said all that, I really like the way you are thinking big. It shows me that you are definitely thinking for the future and not putting any limits on what God can do through your church.

So I guess the next question is, what equipment (more specifically) do you recommend for single camera IMAG. We are already inheriting a decent rear projection unit, so the switcher and cameras will be what we're looking for.