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Patrick Buescher, Director of Experience Innovation and Infrastructure, Crossroads Church
When a house of worship keeps growing at the rate of Crossroads Church, it can be hard for new campuses to keep pace with the number of attendees. For this Ohio-based church with eight locations and counting, the answer was Crossroads Anywhere, an online presence that engages viewers with the imagery of Ikegami CMOS cameras.
Patrick Buescher, Director of Experience Innovation and Infrastructure for Crossroads Church, oversaw a video upgrade that called for eight Ikegami HDK-95C/4K Full Digital Portable CMOS cameras in the Oakley, Ohio, campus and two Ikegami HC-HD300 CMOS Camera Systems at the Uptown campus in Cincinnati. “We are a church of many sites,” Buescher says. “However, it's really not scalable to keep constructing multimillion dollar buildings. Crossroads Anywhere is how we can best create a church community outside of our Metro area network.”
“So what we had to do is provide the best experience we could through a TV or other Internet-connected device,” Buescher continues. “We recently completed a $2.4 million dollar project to build a video system to support that. The Ikegami HDK-95C cameras at our broadcast campus are a big part of it – they look perfect, the color is effortless, and they provide extreme clarity in environments that are lit for a speaker/presenter, which is essential in worship. It was also important to us that they use CMOS sensors, which represents the most advanced optical technology.”
The Ikegami HDK-95C/4K cameras are deployed throughout the Oakley campus' 3500-seat auditorium, situated around the room, with one on a dolly and another handheld onstage for maximum movement. The cameras feature an HD-SDI trunk that provides Buescher's team with an added layer of flexibility while decreasing the amount of necessary cable. “We change things up all the time, and sometimes we need to put a camera in an unusual place,” he explains. “With the HD trunk, I can use an Ikegami camera as a tie line to send the signal back to the CCU – that's extremely helpful."
The systems integrator on the project was Florida-based Pro Sound & Video, which oversaw the design/build. “A lot of churches have multiple volunteers operating the cameras,” notes Craig Compton, Designer/Engineer for Pro Sound & Video. “The Ikegami cameras fit by not being too complicated. They have simple menus that can be set up quickly, and an ease of functionality.”
The HDK-95C/4K HD portable digital camera is a flexible system in Ikegami's Unicam HD line equipped with Native multi-format 2.5 million pixel, 2/3 inch CMOS sensors. Providing end-to-end digital processing, it features a low-profile docking camera head for fiber, triax, or wireless applications. The HDK-95C/4K provides a simultaneous 4K output when the camera is operating in a 1080p format, such as 1080p/59.94Hz. Ultra HD band image enhancement is provided for the 4K signal.
After the HDK-95C/4K cameras were onsite in Oakley, Buescher looked to Ikegami again for new cameras at its Uptown campus in Cincinnati. The ideal fit there was the Ikegami HC-HD300 CMOS camera systems. A flexible, docking style camera that represents Ikegami's most affordable HD studio camera system, the HC-HD300 features a newly-developed 2.5 million pixel 1/3-inch 3-CMOS optical block design, with the same imagery and rugged construction of the broadcast-ready Unicam HD line.
“The imagery from the HC-HD300 looks terrific,” Buescher says. “The low light sensitivity is right on for a 1/3rd inch camera, the reliability is amazing as is the user-friendliness for my operators. For all of our cameras, the service and support is exactly what we're looking for. I feel like a lot of other companies will just put me on hold, but Ikegami always answers my call.”
Since launching Crossroads Anywhere, the impact of the enhanced video plant speaks for itself. The church is seeing week-to-week growth, with 10% of their weekly attendance coming from online. “Streaming has allowed us to see a larger engagement from outside of our Metro area,” confirms Buescher. “Ikegami has been a phenomenal partner in helping us to achieve that.”
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