HD video upgrade....

This post has been promised for a while. We almost have the HD upgrade complete. The system is operational and we have been running since Dec 1 but we have a few more things to do in Video Control Room and select our HD recording gear (which is a bit easier now that Toshiba pulled the HD DVD format off the market)

We upgraded our video system for the primary reason of our onsite and multisite initiatives that will help in reaching more people for Christ. Future plans will be for satellite campuses across the Metro area that will broadcast the teaching portion up to the entire service via video. Currently, we are doing some experimenting while accommodating growth on campus by broadcasting video to The Loft. You will learn more about the Loft tech side of things in an upcoming post.

I designed the system and we brought in Roscor Corporation from Chicago to do the engineering, tweaking and install. I had some brief rental experience with them in the past and we brought them to the table to bid on new build project I was involved in back at Wheaton Bible Church. Roscor didn’t get that job but the rep and I stayed in touch and I have been impressed with my dealings with them so invited them to quote this system upgrade. We put them under an almost impossible time deadline but Roscor’s sales, project management, engineering and install crew hit the ball out of the ball park for us.

I inherited a video control room that was a mess. A miss mash of prosumer equipment all nnected by a rat’s nest of cabling. We got in and striped the entire room. It turned out to be a pretty amazing transformation. Some paint, a little reorganization, a tall equipment rack and a custom production desk the control room is a totally different environment. We need to mount the audio monitors and are waiting on dimmable lighting and new chairs and the room is pretty much down.

I chose the GY-HD250U with for the four camera locations within the room. Two locations are equipped with the Vinten Vision 100 tripod with dual sticks, remote hand focus and zoom control for the TH17X5BRM lens and a JVC 7” color monitor. The other two locations are wall mounted with ESI’s DPT 115 remote pan/tilt head and we have the Fujinon TH17X5BMD lens that is remote controlled. We striped the cameras that are mounted down as much as we could for weight and aesthetic purposes. We control the two remote cameras on the pan/tilt with ESI’s System 180.

I am very happy with the images the JVC 250 is giving us. Crisp full resolution high definition with vivid colors that fit within a reasonable price range. We are running 1080i. Our volunteer camera operators are very pleased with the camera as well. They are finding it very easy to operate. Operation is very intuitive and with iris adjustments done from the video control room, our camera operators can concentrate on composing great shots and not the shading issues as they had before.

The Panasonic AVHS300 is our switcher and we are using JVC RM LP 25 as a local remote for controlling the JVC 250’s iris, aperture and color settings. The 50” LG plasma is feed by the Evertz 7767VIP8-HSN multi viewer display. We have up convertors so we can use SD signals in the mix and down convertors so we can feed non-HD environments around campus and record to standard DVD. We have also equipped a Mac G5 to record HD for our Podcast and will be using Blu-Ray DVD recorders to capture the full service to DVD.

As I said before, we are still tweaking and adjusting to the system upgrade. But we are happy with the overall performance of the equipment.