House of Worship

Christ Chapel Solves Event Production Challenges with Sony Anycast Station Portable System

Since it was founded in 1995, The Christ Chapel in Macon, Ga., has grown to include more than 1100 members. In addition to its expanding congregation, the church is also increasing its technological capabilities with the use of Sony's Anycast Station™ live content producer and portable production system.

The church has actively used technology since it was founded, recording its services and events. Now, with the use of the Anycast Station system, the church is able to capture events more effectively and also produce broadcast feeds more easily. The church also uses the Anycast Station system to record its services, and to stream each service live over the Internet.

"With the Anycast Station, we can send signals to a separate TV switcher when we need more channels," said the ministry's technical director Bryan Nichols. "We can also easily distribute content to multiple screens located across our complex. Everything is in one box - switcher, mixer, effects - and we can use the multiple cards to change our routing capabilities quickly and easily."

According to Nichols, there are 33 televisions throughout the building that can display content to overflow areas. Signals can be sent to two 12x16 screens in another arena that seats 500 people, as well as two other 12x16 screens in the main sanctuary. These screens are also used to run announcements and a five-minute "countdown" to let people know when a service is about to begin.

Nichols noted that this content distribution is accomplished by using a combination of the Anycast Station system, the ministry's television switcher and a computer. "If we are using DVD, DV, HDD, or if a presenter is showing a presentation directly from the stage it will be distributed from the Anycast Station system," he said.

According to Nichols, the ministry has plans to use the system more for outdoor events and other live productions in the future, and he's confident that the system's capabilities will be equal to the task, with its potential to remove many of the "headaches" traditionally associated with live production, specifically during set-up and tear-down.

"This technology can really free our crews, and allow them to focus on event content rather than event logistics," Nichols said. "Fast setup, advanced capabilities and simple operation make it practical for even small crews to create a big show out of this little box."

Designed for a variety of live programming including staging, presentations, conferencing, and on-site product promotions, the Anycast Station system (model AWS-G500) includes: a six-input video switcher, six-channel audio mixer, special effects generator, LCD screen for GUI control and preview/program monitor, PTZ control for Sony interface robotic cameras, RGB connection for PC and projector display and an encoder and Web server for delivering streaming media. All these features are packaged in a portable system that's roughly the size of a small suitcase.

Nichols noted that with the Anycast Station system, "the logistics for recording a service or capturing a live event can become much easier, potentially even reducing the number of personnel needed to operate individual pieces of equipment. "With the Anycast Station system," he said, "we might only need one camera operator instead of two or three, and one video engineer rather than three."

The Anycast Stations ability to control robotic pan-tilt-zoom cameras such as the BRC-300 and BRC-H700 can also allows crews to capture shots that wouldnt have been possible with camera-operated personnel.

"The ability to place and control robotics cameras allows us to get camera angles that we couldn't have gotten otherwise, and be less obtrusive," Nichols said.

The availability of recent free software upgrades for Sony's Anycast Station system have added new functionality to the portable "all-in-one" studio for live content creation. These include: jog/shuttle control of external HDDs, the ability to record individual sources onto HDDs as AVI files instead of raw DV, Picture in Picture, external tally support, storage, recall, importing/exporting of job files, VISCA™ support with Sony's new BRC-H700 camera and the ability for DV PGM output to be captured by a PC.

Later in 2006, optional HD interface boards will become available. This will allow ministries like the Christ Chapel to maximize the full potential of the system, which already has HD-capable internal signal processing.