Closing the doors . . .

Dear readers,

For a couple of years, I have enjoyed writing this blog.  At first, I posted frequently and often found inspiration for what I was writing about.  But for some time, it has become more of a chore, and it hasn’t come as naturally.  After much consideration, I have decided to stop updating this site. One thing that has helped me make this decision is the abundance of really good church tech blogs out there. I’d like to refer you to one of them in particular: ChurchTechArts.  Mike Sessler is a talented technical director in southern California, and a great writer as well.  He keeps his blog updated, has interesting and helpful articles, and I can’t think of another tech blog I would rather read. I’ll leave this blog here, on the chance that a post could still be helpful to someone.

For me, I still love what I do.  I am at Highland Park United Methodist Church, heading up all technology.  I also have one child in college, one on the way to college in the fall, and one about to be a junior in high school.  So it’s a matter of focus and priority for me.  I do still blog, but not about worship technology.  I have a fishing blog at fishingjournal.wordpress.com. If you’re a fisherman, then I welcome you to join me over there. I blog there as a way to unwind (I’ve found there’s nothing more low-tech than a light fly rod and a sunny afternoon on a favorite pond).

Finally, thank you for reading.  Thank you for commenting.  And if you’re actively involved in church technology, thank you for your service to the kingdom of God.

Blessings,

Brian

Industry Standards / Organizational Standards

Businessdictioanry.com defines industry standard as “Generally accepted requirements followed by the members of an industry”. I hear a lot of people defend why they do something by citing “It’s the industry standard”.

We follow industry standards, in part, because we’re learning from others who have gone before us, who have learned as we are learning, what works best in most situations.  All in all, Industry standards are a good thing.  Sometimes, though, industry standards can be restricting and limiting.  When should you NOT adhere to an industry standard? – When it doesn’t work for YOU or your organization.

Here are some industry standards that in my opinion are up for grabs . . .

• Wireless mics – let the user power them on or lock power on before hand?  Conventional wisdom says lock it before hand, but how necessary is that, really?  is it worth jacking with the comfort level of the user?
• Rechargeable batteries – the pro audio mantra to this point has been ‘never use them”.  But with advances in rechargeable technology, does that still hold up?
• Over/Under wrap for mic cables –   Uh . . . Let’s keep that one!

The bottom line is – Do what works for YOU.  Do what works for YOUR ORGANIZATION.  Do what makes things easier for your volunteers.  Don’t adopt methods simply because they work for someone else’s organization.  There are too many factors contributing to the success or failure of another organization to clone specific methods.  More importantly, find out what works for YOU, and make that part of your own organizational standards.

Question – What are some industry standards that you have chosen to ignore or have modified to fit your organization?

Rechargeable Battery Update

We have finalized our move to rechargeable batteries at HPUMC (Thanks for all who responded to the poll in my previous post).  Rather than discuss rechargeable pros and cons in this post, I thought I’d include a copy of the email I sent to our staff . . .

Hello Staff,

I want to take minute and update you on how Technical Services is contributing to the greening of our fair church.  We have just completed the transition to rechargeable batteries in all our worship venues.  Each of our venues (Sanctuary, Wesley Hall, Cox Chapel and the Great Hall) have from 4 to 10 wireless mic channels.  All these require batteries on a weekly basis.  This includes production of worship services, weddings, funerals and the other many events produced here at the church. Our transition to rechargeable batteries means that we are contributing to the elimination of approx 70 alkaline batteries in a land fill each week.

For some, this might beg the question:  “Rechargeables have been around for a long time; why just now the switch?”  The answer is that for as long as rechargeables have been around, they have been unpredictable and unreliable in professional wireless microphone systems.  The chance of failure was high, and the risk of disruption of a worship service was not worth the benefits of the rechargeable batteries.  In the past few years there have been significant advances in rechargeable battery technology.  Now, not only are they as good as alkaline batteries, in some ways they are superior.  So, we have made the switch.  The benefits are less pollution and a significant savings in our battery purchases.

I’ve attached a screenshot from a poll on my blog, asking people if their churches use rechargeable batteries.  The 50 responses are primarily from technical directors of other churches who read my blog.  As you can see, more than half of those who responded do not use rechargeables.  It is an idea that is slowly gaining traction in the professional audio community.

An Argument as Old as Pro Audio

Lessons From The Court

Last week we launched a sermon series called “Lessons from the Court”.  Sermon titles include “Game Plan”, “Drills”, and other sports metaphors.  The centerpiece of the design is a scoreboard, eight by sixteen feet.  Construction was a 2X4 frame, with some 1/8″ material for the face.  Most of the work on this was done by our lighting designer, with some help at the end from the rest of us for completion of the board and hanging.  Lighting for the numbers was accomplished using Christmas lights behind the semi-translucent material.

The Finished Product

Ready to Hang

Doing the Numbers

iKey Audio USB / SD Recorder

Recently a co-worker was searching for an audio recorder to purchase for our new campus.  He came across this, and I am very intrigued.  Here’s a little bit from the iKey Website:

The RM3 has two 1/4” line inputs on the front to record any vocals or electronic instruments, as well as a combo XLR/1/4″ stereo jack and a stereo RCA input on the rear. It has 2 BALANCED XLR OUTPUTS on the rear panel, and a stereo RCA output for pass-through ability. You can also monitor your media thru the 1/4” phono/line output provided on the front of the RM3, with its own dedicated volume adjustment.

The deck will record on a standard SD card (up to 4 GB) or up to 32 GB with an SDHC card.  It will also record on a USB flash drive, which inserts on the front panel next to the SD card.

What gets my attention is this device sells for $199.

Products – iKey Audio.

Let the Bells Ring!

Old Picture Showing The Tower At Munger Place Church

At my church we have a set of 48 bells, called a carillon, that are played manually.  The smallest bell weighs just 26 pounds, and the largest weighs in at just over 5,100 pounds.  So when asked by our worship leader at Munger Place Church if we could have some chimes playing for the neighborhood on Christmas Eve, I knew I wouldn’t be hauling 2 ton bells into our tower.  Instead, we went the modern route, using a Mackie mixer and a JBL Eon.  It was a pretty simple setup using an Ipod, mixer and the powered speaker, so I won’t go into detail here.  It was a project that took less than an hour for me and a co-worker.

The recordings I’m using were purchased from iTunes, and played back from an Ipod.  I can’t believe how good this sounds.  Can’t wait for Christmas Eve when the bells will be ringing in East Dallas once again!

In case you need carillon bells in your non-bell-equipped-tower, here are the links to the recordings I bought.

John Klein

Christmas Bells

Looking Down From About One Third the Way Up The Bell Tower

A Scary Ladder Leading To The Top Of The Bell Tower

JBL EON On The Floor Of The Bell Tower

Iphone And Mixer Feeding The Bell Tower

Merry Christmas

High Quality, Cost Effective Digital Signage

We recently updated our digital signage at HPUMC.   I asked the two team members I work with (Big Props to Dexter and Ryan) who implemented our new solution to walk us through the process.  I’ll include the design process in this post, and link to the back end process.  Check the end of Dexter’s information for the link to Ryan’s explanation of the scripting for xml.

History

• We have been using a proprietary system that included a server housed on-site, and required pretty pricey tech support for design / layout changes.
• Our event scheduling system will output an xml feed, but they changed they way they did that, and it was a very cumbersome process to get an xml file containing our parsed data into our signage.
• We needed an easy to use and inexpensive system to handle our signage needs.

Here’s an explanation of our process from Dexter Evans, our video producer:

Digital Signage for the Masses

THE GOAL
For the past three years we have been using a third party to help provide signage to our distributed televisions in the church. The recurring problem we had with this option was the amount of money being put in for this and level of difficulty to keep it maintained.
So we laid out a goal of finding something that would play our calendaring system (eventu), cheap, easy to maintain, and available for any platform.

THE BEGINNING

About three months ago we stumbled upon Eric Granata and his awesome vision for Digital Signage for cheap. Working in the church world the word cheap strikes the finest of tunes when looking for an option. So with a couple of emails and some phone calls with Eric his knowledge was passed on and I started running.

Let me give you a heads up on my knowledge of flash and digital signage; it doesn’t exist. So when I say I started running I meant to say I was an elephant running through molasses.

THE NEEDS

Here is what we needed for making this Signage a reality:

• Flash Professional (to build and edit the signage)
• Flash Player (a free download from Adobe)
• Arsa’s Flash News Ticker Component ($50.00)
• Slideshow Director ($60.00 and we are letting them host us also ($80.00/yr))
• One computer w/ desired output needed (we are using both a mac mini and a dell hybrid)
• Feedweaver (Free- we used this to display multiple rss feeds, weather, news on the lower feed in flash)
• Scripting for Automation (“Free” (with some help Ryan Overton)

Realistically this can all be achieved for an upfront payment of under $1000 but if you have the computer and flash already it can be done for under $300

THE WORK
After a quick learning curve for flash this was all about selecting and adding the embed coding for the three needed areas.

The original file sent by Eric Granata of what he did at his church for signage

An enlarged view of the top area that when selected in flash points to the XML files.

An enlarged view of the bottom area that when selected in flash points to the XML files.

An enlarged view of the area used for slideshow pro

When embedding slideshow it was as simple as copying and pasting XML link given by slideshow into the XML file path

With all these components in place and working I added the design touch to make it our own.

A finished product keeping with a high contrast colors and a little texture to make it stick out more it is now ready for output and distribution

A snapshot of one of our monitors displaying the finished product

THE CONCLUSION
This is just a snapshot of my side of everything is made to the certain point were I handed it off to Ryan Overton and he made the automation of our calendaring system (eventu) to take a file from the Internet and turn it into a XML file were it works with the finished product (click here to see how he did it).
Eric on the other hand uses google calendar for his event list and it is much simpler than our eventu process (for more information click here).

On a side note all of us our more than willing to help with making your church/non-profit get a solution for digital signage. If you are indeed interested in making this a reality find me on twitter @dexdexterdex …

>Dex

Transitioning to Volunteers

For years, there has been a culture at my church of letting the staff take care of everything, or always hiring jobs out when we need something done.  We are slowly making some headway as we transition to volunteers.  It’s not about free labor (although it is so expensive to have to staff every position) but rather a focus on buy-in to what we’re doing, and what God is doing through us.

Yesterday was another banner day for us at Munger Place Church.  Attendance was pretty low due to the White Rock Marathon, which closed off the neighborhood in every direction around the church.  It was pretty tough going for many people trying to come to church.  What made it a banner day for me was the all volunteer tech crew.  I sat back and observed for most of the morning, while our production manager coached the crew (FOH audio,  ProPresenter, and Lighting) and produced the service.  I even left a little early to head back to our main campus.

We don’t have a  lot of depth to our volunteer crew – and I’m thinking about keeping it on the small side.  I like for crew members to be able to have lots of time on the gear.  It’s the only way I know to build / keep technical chops.

One lesson from Yesterday:  Be flexible. We had to change the service order right before we started because our pastor was having trouble getting through the marathon to the church.

I hope your Sunday was good.

4148 – A Red Letter Weekend

I don’t put a lot of personal stuff on this site, but I have to tell you about last weekend.  To sum it up . . .  PERFECTION!

The weekend started with me going fly fishing at a local pond with my youngest son.  He caught several bluegill, and I caught a Largemouth Bass.  Pretty good for something we decided to do at the last minute, and we only fished for about an hour.

 

Drew fishing in a nice sunset.

Me, with a Largemouth Bass

Early the next morning, I was up and on my way to Denton, Texas, for the 28th annual Turkey Roll.  It’s a bicycle rally with about 1,000 riders.  I’ve been riding a lot lately, and my personal best in one day has been 24.5 miles, which I have done three times.  This ride had course options for 25, 37, 47, and 63 miles.  I chose the 37 mile route and rode it with two friends.  This was the hardest thing I have ever done.  There were some grueling hills, and 20-25 mph headwinds for probably 12 miles of the ride.  There were a few times I wasn’t sure if I could finish.  I did finish, though, and never got off my bike to walk it.  By the way, it took me almost 4 hours to do this.  For those of you who are experienced cyclist, that wouldn’t be anything to brag about.  For me, though, it was all about finishing.

 

My bike and camelback, with my registration number – 4148

Dexter, Donnie and me after the ride.

Icing On The Cake . . .

My oldest son started at Texas A&M this fall, and is a member of the Corps of Cadets.  This program stresses discipline, training, and tradition.  It’s a hard program from the start, but for the last three weeks Zac has been earning his “Corps Brass”.  This is a period of time when everything is harder.  It’s a very intense time of physical training, learning of school traditions (and reciting of “campusologies”).  The freshmen in each unit have to rely on each other make it through the most intense time of their lives.  After completing my ride Saturday morning I got an email from Zac:

Subject:  Corps Brass

Message Body:  Earned it this morning.

The truth is, he’s been earning it all his life.  Everything he has become has had a part in this accomplishment for him.  Way to go, Zac!

 

Zac’s Corps Brass. Hard earned

 

Set Design for “Harvest”

This Sunday we’re revealing a new set design for our Cornerstone series, “Harvest”. We borrowed a couple of projectors (Thank you, Student Ministries for a really great spirit of cooperation and helpfulness) and are embarking on some environmental projection for the first time ever. We’re using ProPresenter with a Triple Head to Go, by Matrox. We’ll be projecting lots of images of fields, farms, skies, etc.

Another visual element is a John Deer tractor we have parked outside the church. If you live in a part of the country where people drive their tractors to church, it may not seem like a big deal. But I can assure you, in Highland Park, Texas, it’s a little more novel of a sight to see a big green and yellow tractor sitting outside the church on the lawn.

I work with some very creative people, from our director of contemporary worship, to our video and lighting staff. Most of what I report on these days is not really my doing, or ideas, but rather what the team has done together. It is a pleasure to share what these very creative and talented people are doing.

How about you? Any creative staging ideas you want to share? Post a comment and leave a link . . .

First Video Venue Experience for Munger Place Church

Four weeks ago we opened Munger Place church (MP).  Munger is a video venue of Highland Park United Methodist Church. It’s a video venue in the sense that we will be delivering a sermon to Munger from our main campus. But In many ways Munger is a unique body of believers doing church their own way. What I mean is , this new campus is not a cookie cutter copy of the main campus. It is very evident that Munger Place has is own culture – a culture very tuned to the neighborhood it is in.

For the first three weeks, Rev. Paul Rasmussen, pastor of Cornerstone (contemporary service of HPUMC), has been preaching live at Cornerstone at 9:30, then going to Munger to preach live at 11:00.   Cornerstone plays the 9:30 sermon for the11:00 their 11:00 service.
The reason Paul is preaching live is to help Munger Place to gain some initial traction. Very soon, MP will be a full fledged video venue, receiving the sermon weekly from Cornerstone.

Today we had the first test of our systems and gear as we played a high def sermon for MP.

The morning started off with me not getting anything from my ProPresenter but a green screen. It ended up being a problem with a scan converter.   We re-seated connections and cycled power on the unit, which fixed the ProPresenter problem (Thanks, Russ).

After rehearsal I drove to the main campus to get the sermon from the 9:30 service. Playback went well. We keyed some lower third scriptures because we have only one screen at MP. I really like doing that anyway – I think it’s a good look. Keying was done on the Ross Crossover switcher using a simple Chroma key.

I did learn a couple of things about ProPresenter today – mainly that when videos are imported they come in as loops. We had a sermon intro and a series teaser that both looped and it was a little sloppy.  It’s on our checklist now to “un-loop” the videos after importing, and to be sure to sound-check videos ALL THE WAY THROUGH. That will reveal if any video playbacks are still set to looping mode.

Technically, the main task of the day was the playback of the sermon and the keying of the scripture support, and all that worked just great.

It was a good day, and I look forward to many more.

Finishing up at Munger Place

So, now that Munger Place has opened I am faced with the tasks of finishing a punch list, and getting with Clair Brothers to go over all the systems.  We’ll have a little bit of room tuning to finish up, and we still have a walk through to do on the AVL systems.

Once past the Grand Opening, it’d be easy for me to let down, but if I do things will never get finished, so we’re plugging away at it.

Now it’s to the task of recruiting and training more volunteers.  I’ve had some good conversations with some experienced people, and also some younger volunteers who are stepping up.  I’ve been there for the last three weeks, but need to work myself out of a job.  Looking for camera ops, ProPresenter operators and lighting operators, and FOH audio mixers.

Y’all take care.  How many of you are in the process of recruiting and training.  Any favorite techniques or recruiting methods?  I’ve found a tap on the shoulder of the right person is pretty effective, but what secrete tricks do you have?

Practical Suggestions for Securing your Resources

Church Security can be difficult for a number of reasons.
In order for equipment to be readily available for people to use means that it can be exposed to theft or vandalism. Also, churches tend to stay open because of events and ministry activities.

Here are some practical steps we’ve taken to beef up our security:

1.  Kensington style locks for laptops. These cost around $25.00 and can be found at most electronics stores. Lots of manufacturers are including Kensington style locking capability not only on laptops but displays and other equipment as well. We even discovered that the grills over the air filters on the Avid SC 48 will accommodate at Kensington lock. It might not stop a thief, but it’s at least doing SOMETHING to secure a resource.

2.  Inventory your equipment. A good model number and serial number, plus a sales receipt are the most important elements of recovering stolen equipment.  Pawn shops are heavily regulated (at least in Texas) and are not allowed to sell merchandise for a specified length of time after they purchase it.  That will give you time with to work with the police if you ever have anything stolen.

3.  Steel cable and aluminum ferrules.  Home Depot sells steel cable in various sizes by the foot.  You’ll need the cable, some cutters, ferules, and a crimp tool.  I just purchased 100 feet of cable, both tools and a couple dozen ferules for $100.  We run the cable through computer monitors, and though the security port of our computers.  You can also usually find a place in the back corners of dvd players to drill small holes and secure those devices to media carts.

4. Culture change of security consciousness.  My staff and I are getting into the habit of checking doors, closing our office doors, even while just down the hall.  We’re keeping each other accountable, and helping each other remember to close doors, lock doors, put equipment away, etc.

There are others, which I haven’t tried like LowJack for Laptops, and RFID labeling which I’m researching, but sounds expensive.

Do you have any tips or technology that is helpful in securing your resources?

Thoughts on Opening a New Church

The First week of services at our new campus, Munger Place Church, is in the books.  We had our preview service last week and things went really well.  I’ve been involved in the opening of a few churches in my career so far, and here are a couple of things I’ve learned (your experience may vary):

• You’ll never have all the time you want for sound checks and rehearsals. People have great intentions, and you work hard to meet goals, but things happen beyond your control, and beyond your G.C.’s control.

• Ideas seem great on paper, but a blueprint sometimes has little connection with reality.  When hammers are swinging and saws are buzzing, you need creative field solutions to problems that never showed up in a blueprint.
• Things won’t go 100% they way you want them to.  Sounds like every week, huh?  Just know that going in and you’ll manage your expectations and disappointments better.
• No matter how things go, there is probably SOMETHING to celebrate.  We had a pretty good first Sunday.  Lots tweak, and lots of pressure for our grand opening this coming Sunday.  I am celebrating that our PA performed well, with limited sound-checks.  Also, our lighting was handled by a relatively new volunteer.  He completely owned it for the weekend!  I’m celebrating that we laid a very solid foundation for the relationship between band and the tech crew.  We’re fortunate to have not only great musicians, but great musicians who are genuinely nice people.  That doesn’t always happen  (Thanks, Kate).

We’re all looking forward to this weekend, and expect God to show up, along with a full house of eager worshipers.

Munger Place Progress

A while back I posted about a project my church has undertaken.  This weekend is our first Sunday at Munger Place.  It’s a preview service, to straighten out the kinks, tweak systems, etc.  Here’s what we still have to do this week:

• Install FOH console (Avid SC48)
• Install lighting console (ETC Element 60)
• Focus lights
• Tune PA
• Hang Televisions
• Install and test aviom systems
• Test HD video systems
• Install ProPresenter computer
• Rehearsal with band
• Lots of sweeping and dusting

It’s a very tight schedule.  We’ve got a lot to do and could sure use your prayers.

Brian

3 Church Tech Ipad Applications

I recently bought an Ipad for our department for the sole reason of connecting to our Avid SC48 via wi-fi, because our mixer is in the balcony and it’s a real chore getting downstairs.  I wanted something our FOH guy can take with him and troubleshoot, line check, and tweak on the main floor of the room.  It has worked really great.  Lot’s of people are doing this.  The VNC client that has worked really well for us has been the Iteleport app.  It’s $25.00 in the app store, and well worth it.

Another application that I’m in the process of setting up is the “Lighting Pad” by Alcorn Mcbride.  It is a very simple controller allowing you to name channel faders, record and play back cues.  The app is written for Ipad, Iphone and Ipod Touch.  For our main sanctuary, we have only par cans (82 channels).  All I need to do is write simple cues and store them for playback.  The app is $10, and it requires an ArtNet adapter, which is simply an ethernet to DMX converter.  The popular one seems to the the ETNTEC ODE, which sells for around $250.

The last application that I’ll mention is Apple’s Keynote for Ipad.  We’ve had a couple of speakers come in recently who have their presentations in Keynote, on their Ipad.  It works really great.  You’ll need a VGA adapter for the Ipad.

How is your Ipad helping you in your church tech?

Can’t See The Forest for the Trees

 

Dictionary.Com: “An expression used of someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole”.

It’s easy to get so wrapped up in the details of a project, or job, or worship service that it’s really easy to overlook the big picture.  I experienced this recently while trying to figure out a method for delivering a signal to our stage display.  Here’s what happened:

1.  We recently converted our video system from one running on a composite video backbone to HD-SDI.  So our feeds to the stage displays are HD-SDI and are converted to a flavor of VGA at the televisions on the stage.  That makes it super-easy to route whatever we want to the stage displays.

2.  We decided we wanted to scrap the tv’s on stage, and hang a large LCD on the face of our balcony.  Sounds easy enough.  So I  immediately started thinking, “How can we get our SDI signal to the front of the balcony?”  And “am I willing to tie up one of our high def scan converters for a stage display when I know I’m going to need it to route signals to projectors in the room?”  I spent a LOT of time and energy stressing over how we were going to do this without spending a lot of money.

3.  Then it hit me – “Why am I even thinking about SDI at all for our stage display”?  All I needed to do was send a VGA signal to my new display.  Sounds pretty simple, huh?  My problem was that I immediately started thinking in the same paradigm I started in.  I didn’t back up enough to get the whole picture. I paid too much attention to how we had been doing it.

4.  Once I got my head right, we hung the new tv, and sent the VGA signal to it from ProPresenter.  Done.

This was definitely proof of Ockham’s razor, which basically says “the simplest explanation is usually the correct one”.  How true.

A couple of suggestions to help you see the forest, in spite of all those trees . . .

• Talk through scenarios with others.  And it doesn’t have to be another tech person.  Sometimes someone with limited knowledge of your field can help you arrive at the best solutions simply because they are not bound by your assumptions.
• Ask yourself these questions: What is the overall objective here?  What is the big picture?  What do I have already to help me accomplish this goal?  In my case, I realized that I already had Cat 5 cable between my production room and the location I was to mount the television.  Coupled with a pair of cat 5 baluns that were in my desk drawer, I had a complete solution without ordering one piece of additional cable or hardware.

Featured Video – “I Was Here” Teaser

I’d like for you to take a look at a video someone on my team produced.  Dexter shot and edited this video for a sermon series teaser.  Take a look at his blog here.  And be sure to let Dexter know what you think . . .