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Wouldn't it be nice if your church's technology director could train volunteers to operate video switchers and lighting consoles within a matter of days, let alone hours? The key to making someone's job easier, of course, is limiting the number of choices they need to make. That's why a touchpanel with six buttons is inherently easier to "teach" than a broadcast switcher with a hundred. Everyone, after all, can use an ATM.
With a networked video and audio system in place in your church, you're one small step closer to taking a Sunday off. This article assumes that your church already has or is planning to install at least one of two elements: a distributed audio system built around a matrix switch; or a display or displays that are connected to multiple sources via some sort of hardware switcher (whether seamless or matrix). Without at least one of these, a control infrastructure would have limited utility.
A few megachurches have already adopted control systems from major manufacturers such as Richardson, Texas-based AMX and Crestron of Rockleigh, New Jersey. So isn't touchpanel control technology out of the price range of all but the largest churches?
The major manufacturers of touchpanels and other types of control hardware say no. According to the guys who make the networking and control backbones, the newfound ubiquity of large LCD and plasma screens in various environments has increased the demand for their gear as well. That means economies of scale for them and lower prices for the end user. I'll look at a few cost-effective full setups below.
What Can Control Do for You?
Robert Noble is CTO of AMX, a company that is, along with Crestron, one of the dominant manufacturers of touchpanel devices and A/V matrix switchers/routers. He's also a member of Prestonwood in Plano, Texas, a large Baptist church that makes quite extensive use of AMX devices to control both video recording and audio adjustments.
However, "It's not very often that you have a touchpanel set up to be a virtual mixing board," he says. That, of course, would require the programming of page after confusing page of touchscreen menus. Noble says that touchpanels are used mainly to execute mixing adjustments in very common situations with known quantities of microphones. "Preset one might be an ensemble that's singing," he says, "and here are the mics they're using. Here's a preset two, when someone comes up to speak at the lectern."
Most of the time, the idea is to give a less technologically savvy volunteer the power to execute simple events, such as dimming the lights during a certain segment of the worship. Joe Hoffman, regional sales manager (commercial) at Crestron, says the emphasis is conforming the video and lighting to specific "scenes" that recur from week to week, such as a low-light "meditation" scene in which, after a button-press on the touchpanel, both of the sanctuary's projectors are automatically turned off. That's due mainly to the amount of software programming that a systems integrator needs to do on the front end before signing off on a control system. This is generally a one-time expense―and opportunity―so it's crucial for your church leadership to know what it wants as it begins to pursue an integrated control infrastructure.
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Trevor Boyer is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York. He likes to write professional A/V and video production stories (like this one) that can be reported via subway travel.
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