How do YOU pronounce Aviom?

Disclaimer: I’m not REALLY making an issue of some pretty insignificant things - I just want tyo tell you about a podcast.

I’ve heard it with a “short a” as well as a “long a”. I just heard a podcast with an Aviom employee Loren Molinare, and among other things, he set’s the record straight that it doeasn’t really matter how you pronounce it. He also explains what “Aviom” means. He gives a little history on Aviom, explains some applications for their digital snake products, etc. Check out the Podcast here.

Pro-Tools and Alesis Tweaks and Fixes

Lately I have been bumming about a couple of apps that aren’t Leopard compatible. I upgraded without really checking, so I know it’s my own fault.
1. Pro Tools LE. Although Digidesign says that it won’t run (and mine did NOT run) under Leopard, someone recently told me that the only hang-up is using the Core Audio drivers. So I ditched those and now have Pro-Tools back on my laptop.

2.  Alesis Fireport.  I called because the FSTConnect software (for firewire audio file transfers from the HD24) stopped working with OS 10.4.9.  I assumed that the problem was OS 10.4.9 AND LATER, but that was not the case.  The problem was that I wasn’t using the most current version of FSTConnect.  One call to tech support and they confirmed that the latest version is fully Leopard compatible, and they are mailing me a new installer for the latest version.

What a relief.  these have been bugging for for a couple of months now and My patience has been wearing thin.

Texas Large Church Forum

Today and Tomorrow I will be attending the Texas Large Church Forum to meet with several other tech directors of, well, large churches. I look forward to downloading with several of the guys who I already know, and also meeting some new friends. The two day conference is at Watermark Church. Here’s what we’re going to be talking about:

- Hiring technical staff: Where do you start? What do you look for? How do you identify candidates?
- Multi-site churches: Finding the right venues.
- Training teams: Successful models or methods.
- Campus Integration: Should Tech Ministry be all inclusive (one stop shop) for full-campus support, or should each ministry raise up their own teams for technical support?
- Staff structure: How many people are in your area? Who reports to who? How does your system work well? What are your system’s shortcomings?
- What does your production staff look like? Paid vs. volunteer? For volunteers, how do you protect against burn-out? For rotating volunteer positions, how do you promote consistency?
- Do you have rehearsals? If so, who is involved in a rehearsal? When do you rehearse?

I share this list of topics with you so you can call the church across town, buy their tech director lunch, and talk about these same things. This goes back to the relationship building we all seem to blog about.

A Changed Life

Yesterday we played a testimony of one of the members of our body. I didn’t have anything to do with the shooting / interviewing / editing process. After the service I asked permission to share his story on this website. I was very touched by John’s story and want to share it with you. The voice and music tracks are panned hard left and right because that’s how we play back in the worship service. We do that so we have mix control between the two channels at FOH. I just haven’t taken the time to re-export a mixed version.

Note:
We used to always show testimonies on video. We don’t always do that now. We try to evaluate what format will best facilitate the telling of a story. Sometimes our pastor will interview someone live on stage. Personally, I am a fan of videotaping testimonies because what you get is “The Best Of” of a person’s story.

New Audio Encoding Software

A while back I wrote about my favorite video encoding application called VisualHub, by Techspansion. Today I downloaded and purchased AudialHub. This a very simple to use batch audio processor. A couple of the features worth mentioning are the ability to normalize files while converting, and the ability to drop a video file into the list and extract the audio tracks. You can also burn audio and mp3 cd’s directly from the AudialHub interface.

The price for this application is $18.81, but if you already have VisualHub the price drops to $14.41.

A Personal Appeal for Prayer

Yesterday, within a span of 30 minutes I learned that an aunt on my mother’s side passed away and also that my wife’s mother has been diagnosed with brain tumors. Our family has been going through a lot recently (3 teenagers in the house), and this is just more on top of what we’ve already been dealing with. So please pray for my family. My wife and I are really feeling overwhelmed. My mother-in-law’s name is Beth Ford. My wife’s name is Julie.

Thank you,

Brian

M7CL Up Close

Today I went to WaterMark Church, where Ryan Howell is the tech director. He showed me around the Yamaha M7CL, and answered some questions for me. Also, It was good to just hang with him for a few hours and get the Tour of his new worship center.

Please, please, please, if you work as a church tech director or are otherwise in tech ministry, be sure to get to know the guys around you. I promise, there are other people in your city who have the same challenges and struggles as you do (and who also want to celebrate what’s going well for you).

True Downstream Alpha Keying from ProPresenter

For some time now I have been looking for an affordable solution to keying lower third graphics. We’re tried the luma key on our Ross Synergy 100, but without the drop shadow option on the switcher, it makes drop shadows difficult, or for us, really impossible. We are currently using a chroma key on our sermon support slides, but also have difficulty with nice, clean edges, or the feathered edges we’d like to use.

While at NAB I was talking with Brad Weston, of Renewed Vision, about Propresenter and he told me some very exciting news. A handful of churches are now testing ProPresenter with the Black Magic Video card for achieving true alpha channel keying. Many worship presentation software apps will do alpha keying, but only by running video from a switcher THROUGH their software. My problem with this is that is takes director functions, (or TD functions) out of the hand s of the director and places it into the hands of the graphics operator. By using the black magic card we’ll be able to use ProPresenter as a downstream key source, and have all the beauty that method of keying affords.

What Reniewed Vision has done is to effectively make ProPresenter not just a worship presentation application, but also an easy to use character generator. They’ll be making some tweaks for a couple of months, but expect to see this new feature soon.

I asked Brad and he said they’ll be selling the Black Magic cards, along with the Macintosh computers to support their software.

Monday at NAB

I spent most of the day today with Greg Atkinson and Jonathan Moon, from Bent Tree Bible Fellowship. We got about a half day on the exhibit floor. One thing thing that I really wanted to look at . . .

Yamaha M7CL. We just started another service, and the gain structures for the two services are way different. Gate settings on drums are not translating well, lead vocal mic compressor settings are way different, etc. It’s time for a digital console. The features of the M7CL are very similar to our Allen and Heath ML5000. 48 inputs, 8 VCA’s (DCA’s on the Yamaha) 16 aux busses, etc. So this new console will pretty much be a drop-in. Plus I’ll have the added advantage of dynamics processing on any channel I need it. I’m pretty sold on it. ANYONE USING THIS AND HAVE ANY WORDS OF WISDOM FOR ME??

NAB Tech Director Meet-Up

Here’s some information from Greg Atkinson about our meet-up:

Just got the word. My friend, Kip Kendrick, at Digital Resources has arranged for everyone’s lunch to be covered. Right now he’s planning for around 25 people, but even if it goes up to 150, he can get more sponsors and said not to worry - that it will all be covered. All is asks is that we have people attending the luncheon (at the Hilton, 11:30am on Tuesday) to email him at Kkendrick@digitalresources.com to let him know how many to plan for and if he needs to pull in another sponsor. He’s simply going to respond to them and ask them if they can swing by the sponsor’s (Broadcast Pix) booth for a brief demo of their new switcher.

Basically, let’s all get the word out that we have a tech get-together lunch Tuesday at 11:30am at the Hilton. To help us with a head count and to get their lunch paid for, please email Kip at Kkendrick@digitalresources.com to let him know you’re coming.

Securing Our Video Cameras

A while back I wrote about the theft of one of our video cameras. I thought today I’d show you how we secured our cameras. We are using 3/16″ coated steel cable, run through the legs of the tripod, then through a steel bar on the side of the camera, and finally through an eye-bolt securely mounted into the concrete floor. We secured the cable with a short-shank padlock. I realize this won’t stop a determined thief from making off with a camera, but it will certainly add a lot of time to the process and make things much more difficult. We think this is a reasonable effort.We also covered the cameras. Mostly for dust protection and simply to make the camera less visible. One of our facility maintenance guys knew I was looking for a cover and showed up with just the thing. His solution: Small outboard boat motor covers.

Video Announcement Fun

On September 16, 2007, we started a new congregation at our church. It started out being called “Chapel @11″. It was a video venue with live worship and the sermon on video. In January, we made it a completely different service, with live worship and a teaching pastor. The name of the new service (and new congregation) is “Fellowship Metro”. It’s a great service geared to an even younger crowd than we have in our main services. The worship is currently being led by The Jeff Johnson Band.

From the beginning we have had sound leakage problems from the chapel, which is located next door to our worship center. Our facility used to be a movie theater, so the leakage was primarily the same low end leakage you might experience during a movie. We finally made the decision to move Fellowship Metro to allow more growth. They’ll be in our Worship Center each Sunday evening.

We wanted to acknowledge to our body that we know the sound leakage has been a problem, and we came up with this video announcement to promote the change of time and location. It’s right after the announcement about our Easter services.

Two Great Finds . . .

I remember doing my first sports television broadcast as an A2. The A1 gave me a Sharpie and said “This is your most important tool today”. He was very right. He also handed me a roll of gaff tape and said “No-one except me cares about your audio skills today, but everyone cares about how your announce table looks”.

Here are my two great finds:

1. I have a volunteer who has a wholesale pen company, and they are a huge distributer of Sharpies. The ladies at church who order our office supplies kep us well stocked, but every now and then, our volunteer shows up with a handful of sharpies as well.

2. Our church has been developing a relationship with the Art Institute of Dallas. The school is literally just across the street. A few weeks ago my wife and I were over there having lunch, and we checked out their bookstore. I was very surprised to see, among the other school supplies, black gaff tape. Who would have thought I could walk across the street to find that?

Randy Travis in Concert at Fellowship

Today I have been setting up for a Randy Travis concert in our Worship Center.  We had to completely strike our stage, which is a very good thing to do every now and then.  Usually I find lots of cables, Di’s and adapters under drum risers, etc.  Our stage doesn’t change much from week to week.  We really just change the look a little for each new sermon series.  But after several months, things start to get cluttered, and before long we’ll have lots of stuff on the stage we’re not even using.

I’m tired right now (Thursday evening) and I think it will only get worse throughout the weekend.  Lots going on here at the church.

Anatomy of a Video Shoot

We had a quick video shoot yesterday, and I thought I’d post a few thoughts on it, and provide a little behind the scenes perspective on how we do things.

First, I made a quick sketch in Keynote of how I wanted the set arranged and lighted. I gave this to one of our staff for them to rough in the lighting, set up the teleprompter, etc. The next two pictures show how the set looked, then finally, a short video showing the final product.

I forgot to tell our talent what to wear, and a couple of them showed up in white shirts. It wasn’t too bad, though. I did include videos showing a subtle difference in how the background is afected with the different color shirts.

Video for the Navigators

This weekend I am in Wichita Falls, Texas doing a three cam shoot for a Navigators conference.  My brother-in-law manages a Christian camp in North Central Texas called Camp Chaparral, and that’s where the conference is.  Here’s a short equipment list . . .

(1) Canon XL1 camera

(1) Canon XL 2 camera

(1)  Canon GL1 camera

(1)  Panasonic video switcher WJMX20

A couple of consumer DVD recorders

Telex intercom borrowed from a local church

We’re very much doing this on the cheap.  and it’s much harder to do this kind of thing with consumer equipment than it is with pro gear.  For me it’s a little bit of a vacation, and time to spend in the country.  I even found time today to do a little mountain biking and watch a goat being born.

New Video Clip Player

We just purchased and installed a ProVideoPlayer system from Renewed Vision, in Atlanta, GA. We’re using the system in our Kidstuf production, which is heavily reliant on video track playbacks. For years we’ve been playing video right off our Final Cut Pro Timeline, but of course that can be a pretty flaky method, with dropped frames and stuttering/stopping playback right in the middle of a clip. The guys at Clark Promedia have been telling me about Renewed Vision, for quite some time.

Some things I really like about this system:

1. It runs on a Mac.

2. Said Mac can be purchased directly from Renewed Vision.

3. You can create video wall effects on one display.

4. The ability to color correct each clip individually

5. The flexibility of being able to play back any format that is supported by Quicktime.

6. After importing an audio-only clip, the thumbnail automatically displays an audio waveform to indicate an audio file.

7. The price. My system was $2,105 including a brand new Imac.. In contrast, the system I use in our Worship Center was $5,000, and is not nearly as flexible as ProVideoPlayer.

Cowboy Church, Anyone?

Last weekend I had an opportunity to mix sound for a Steve Farrar conference at a friend’s horse Ranch in Royse City, TX. It’s Sabine Creek Ranch, a horse ranch turned into a Christian camp. Every Sunday, a Cowboy Church meets at the ranch. Have you heard of Cowboy Churches? The band was drums, piano, acoustic guitar, steel guitar, bass and a couple of vocals. We did alot of Vintage stuff, including Keith Green’s “My Eyes are Dry”, and several old hymns. It was an easy job and I was able to actually take part in the Men’s conference.

Sarah Groves and Charlie Peacock in Concert

Fellowship Dallas just hosted an acoustic concert in the round with Sarah Groves, Charlie Peacock, Christopher Williams and Patrick Ryan Clark. The concert benefitted The North Texas Division of Young Life, and specifically children with disabilities.

What a great group of artists. Very talented, humble and easy to work with. I haven’t enjoyed mixing this much in quite some time.

Orange Tour, 2008

Our church just hosted a stop for the Orange Tour. What a great group of people! So easy to work with and gracious. The Orange Conference, in just a few months,  should be just outstanding.

Throughout the weekend we were encouraged to be willing to fight for our relationships with our kids (both personally and in the church education/worship setting). Even if you don’t work with kids or students in your church, I highly recommend the Orange Conference (or tour stop).

Way to go ORANGE!