Pixel Church

Starter Video Rig

A buddy who recently moved to Fresno contacted me the other day to get a little help putting an IMAG system together for his church.  He’s got a limited budget and a little bit of gear (Some HVX-200’s and a Newtek Tricaster), but he hasn’t been too happy with the results too far.  

I know there are tons of churches out there facing this dilemma of wanting to do something great on not much money and while I’m not a Video Consultant, I do have some ideas that might help.  Here’s what I sent to him:

My first question would be, “What is your budget?” Do you have $1000? $10,000? That one question will determine how to go about everything else. 

After that, I would say that ProPresenter might be a good place to start. You could hook up one of your HVX cameras via firewire and you’ve got instant IMAG with fairly nice results (from what I hear. I haven’t done it myself.) 

You could start there and see what happens. You might also like the Toaster better if you’re only using it to switch and record, not to generate graphics. I haven’t used them, but have heard sort of mixed things about them.

At some point you need a good switcher. You don’t have to go crazy on cost, but you want to get something good or you’ve just wasted whatever amount you’ve spent. I would take a look at this:http://www.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/switchers/indigo/

and some of the stuff Edirol has done:http://www.edirol.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=84&Itemid=421

Contact both companies and get local suppliers where you can go demo the stuff. You could also check with the manufacturers to see if there are other churches in the area that have the equipment so you could take a look at it. Definitely demo the crud out of it and make sure it will work.

If there’s one thing I would do in all of this, it would be to get to a 16x9 aspect ratio as soon as possible. The day is coming quickly when anything 4x3 will look ridiculously out of date, sort of like having a black and white TV in the 70’s - not unheard of, but lame-o.