For the past few years  at Hope Fellowship, we have been using canned DVD worship videos for our children’s program. A few months ago with the addition of a new worship leader it was decided to have the teachers bring the children in for the first part of the worship time of the service to have a better and more “live” worship time. That has worked well, however it has been getting a bit more distractive with the quick growth of the church. In addition we are really starting to run out of room for our guests and regular attenders in the services which has led me to try to figure out a solution that can help solve both issues for the children’s worship time and also have some added side benefits for others in and outside our church.

Thanks to some great products like BoinxTV, CamTwist, and Ustream, I think I now have a temporary and hopefully after a much better and permanent solution. Using these software packages, a donated video camera, and my macbook pro this weekend we will be streaming the worship part of our service so that the teachers in the back room can play it through the projectors and sound systems in those rooms. We successfully configured and tested things during our Tuesday night rehearsal with sound coming post fader from the board so that the stream would get whatever the house got. Though we may change this in the future. This is a cheap, lower quality solution that should work for the short term. However this is really just a proof of concept to go a step further and really do something that I believe can make a difference even more.

The second phase of this project is to take what is learned from the test phase and impliment it not through ustream directly, but to run dvi to each room in hte church including to the lobby screens and to the nursery so that we can have a higher quality video feed of the entire service. This solves the worship time for the children’s program, allows for the possibility of using a room for overflow if needed in the future, allows the lobby to be used for a “cry room” area, and also let the nursery workers and parents that go back to be with their babies the ability to not miss the service. This will also give us the ability to use the recorded video of the message time on our website so that those wanting to check out our church online can get a real feel for the message time and know what to expect when they come for their first time. In addition there are those that have both moved away, on mission, or unable to attend that can remain apart of our church through the online community.

A big concern I have for the quality of the video produced is the poor lighting we have for the stage. This is something I will be tackling immediately as to be sure we are producing a quality product that helps to be a distraction free experience for the video viewers.

Thanks to the guys that have developed such great products to use, and thanks to my team for all the help and time you guys put in each and every week. Anyone with suggestions for good lighting guides and resources for those of us on an extreamly tight budget would be most helpful and appreciated.

Andy

We had a bust week here at Hope. With the recent start of the new series “Running Free” we had our usual reconfigurations. Stage and background changes, lighting changes, background creation, etc. In addition to that we have been continuing our training on Propresenter 4. We also started updating our studio manager software on a system so that we can remote desktop it from our upcoming ipad to adjust the sound from around the room. The week was rounded off with website updates and podcast editing.

All of these tasks could not have been completed without the grace and skills God has given me, but more importantly the team that he has brought together that continues to go above and beyond in support or the technical arts/ media at Hope. The team continues to strive for excellence and always has a can-do attitude. I would like to recruit a few more to help round out our team and change our rotation a bit.

This week we will be working on our lighting. We have some new cans to install and we are looking forward to what they will add to the service. We also need to finish the configuration updates to the studio manager system.

After a full day of reloading Snow Leopard and Propresenter 4 multiple times I finally have a more stable setup. To get it I had to downgrade to Leopard and perform some hardware resets on my system. I still need to run it through its paces, but so far it does seem more stable. I really like the new features and layout of PP4 and I should have some time soon to write a full review of it. Thanks to all the Renewed Vision guys that helped diagnose and work on the issues I was having. I hope that it will become more stable on Snow Leopard soon, but until I have a firm statement and recommendation from the guys at RV I will stay on Leopard. I would recommend ProPresenter to any and all people looking to display media on their screens in a live production setup like we have at our church. It is a great product, with awesome features and an incredible support staff. I look forward to learning the new features better and working with the support staff on any issue I may come across.

Literally, I just spent the last 3 hours rebuilding our main media imac. Fresh Snow Leopard install, Fresh Propresenter 4 load and now we are worse off than yesterday. Now I can hardly import anything and when I exit and comeback in the videos I imported are gone. Has anyone else seen these issues or am I alone?????????????????

The look and feel of my blog is changing. Why? Well mainly because I like change, also because the main part of my Jeep build is done. I am going to try to start posting information and seeking comments in regards to my other full-time/ volunteer job as the Volunteer “Technical arts/media Director”  at Hope Fellowship where I serve. I have had a hard time finding a place where others like myself that work a full time job to pay the bills and work a full time volunteer job where we are called to serve in a technical ministry hang out and encourage one another. I have found groups that cater to the IT professional and volunteer, and to the fulltime paid staff technical director, but not for the full time volunteer technical director, (That may or may not also do the IT needs in the church). I do not think I am the only one in this situation, so if you stumble across my blog, let me know  and maybe we can find or create a place to call our own.

I don’t know if everyone on the mac in church media is excited as I am about the new features of Propresenter 4, but I am. The guys there are great and really working hard to get the product released. However, we are still experiencing many crashes while importing and editing content on the ‘release candidate” beta. While being beta I do expect some issues, a “release candidate” is supposed to be almost ready. I am sure that these issues will get resolved, and we will continue to submit our reports upon every crash in hopes to help with the solution. Anyone else having these issues or is it just me?

Hello, My name is Andy Girton. I am a follower of Jesus, Husband, Father, Church Technical Director, and computer consultant. I have also been called a Geek a time or too which is most certainly true. I own my own business as a IT Help Desk support person and overall networking and computer consultant. In my free time during the week as well as most evenings and weekends I am doing all the things needed for my “other” job. Running cables, finding backgrounds and videos, stage design, volunteer recruiting and training, running cables, researching mic’s , …. etc, etc, etc. Add in a little webdesign, podcasting, video editing and well, its a lot to juggle. Thank goodness I have a great team that is willing to learn and do the things that need to get done. I hope to get to know others in my same shoes and that we can help each other and support each other along the way.

Well no alignment because I have to replace the ball joints first. Guess what I am doing Saturday?

Dropped off the Jeep to Les Schwab this morning for an alignment. After another day in the shop on Saturday we got the bumper mounted and everything lined up as best we could. I also put on the replacement front grill and headlight trim. It turned out much better than I though it would as we did the install. I still need to do a couple of little things and will need to trim the fenders a bit on the back side but all in all it turned out good. Now I need to focus on the interior.

Got the control arms installed and putting the bull bar on first thing in the morning.