"Camera one-give me an establishing shot of the stage. Two-tight on the worship leader. Four-an over-the-shoulder of the keyboard. OK-service is starting; standby one-dissolve one. Standby four-dissolve four. Standby two. One-get me the backup vocals. Take two."
And thus begins another service in the video control room of churches across the country. As churches have gotten bigger, and technology has become within reach of more church budgets, IMAG, or Image Magnification, has become quite common in many churches. But for as many churches that are doing IMAG well, there are probably as many, or more, doing it poorly.
Mark Hanna, live video director of Hope Community Church in Raleigh, N.C., states, "When IMAG is done poorly, it's a huge distraction because the main thing on the attendee's mind will be ‘Oh my gosh-that's awful!' And that obviously detracts from the service."
Why Implant IMAG in Your Church?
"'Because it's the next thing to do' is always a bad reason for doing it," Hanna points out. There needs to be a more compelling reason for IMAG than just conquering that next technological hill, or to keep up with First Megachurch of the Anointed down the street.
"A church should consider adding IMAG when the people in the back of the church cannot see facial and hand expressions clearly," states David McCauley, director of design development for Audio Ethics in Charlotte, N.C.
Hanna agrees with this assessment. "It's really about what experience the people in the middle- and back-third of the room are having during your service. Can they see the pastor well enough to stay engaged? If yes, you probably do not need IMAG. If no, then maybe it's time to start talking about it."
Let's take a look at some of the key aspects of an IMAG system.
SD or HD?
A key up-front decision is whether to go with SD (standard definition) or HD (high definition). "If you are trying to keep costs at minimum you will probably still end up with SD," suggests John Fuqua, vice president at All Pro Sound Inc. in Pensacola, Fla. "But you must look two to three years to the future when making these decisions." The trend toward HD as the accepted standard continues to drive HD costs down and this must also be considered.
Paul D. Henderson, Ph.D., principal with Design 2020 LLC in Harrisburg, N.C., adds that if you're doing a completely new installation, then it probably doesn't make sense to go with SD. "But if the church needs to reuse existing equipment for part of the IMAG ‘upgrade,' then it might make sense to operate in native SD. Any new equipment that is purchased should be capable of at least handling 720p or 1080i standards natively to pave the way for future upgrades, even if it is operated initially in SD mode."
McCauley, too, sees value in considering an SD installation. "If you get a great deal on older SD studio cameras and lenses then, definitely. I would just format the image or scale it to have a 16:9 aspect ratio."
Cameras
"Consumer cameras shouldn't be used at all," states Hanna. "It's going to cause more of a headache than just spending the money and getting it done right."
The problem with using simple consumer cameras from your local department or big box store is the lack of control over what the camera does. To get a good quality image, you need to be able to control the exposure level of the camera and the focus. Auto-exposure as found on consumer cameras will often set itself based on the average light level entering the lens; often the faces of people on stage is brighter than the surrounding areas, resulting in faces that are over-exposed and washed out.
Similarly, auto-focus wants to focus on what's in the center of the frame. If you're getting a side shot, the speaker may not be in the center of the frame, and the camera will focus on the background. If you're getting a front shot and the speaker moves out of the center of the frame, the camera will shift focus to the background, resulting in images that come in and out of focus. Prosumer and professional cameras will provide the manual controls you need to ensure proper exposure and focus.
There are other advantages to higher-end equipment as well. To switch between cameras, the cameras need to be synchronized with each other, starting each frame at the same time. Better cameras will accept a timing signal (called "genlock") that keeps each camera in sync. Lower-cost cameras will not have this ability, and either separate frame synchronizers or a switcher with built-in synchronizers will be needed, and the synchronization process introduces some delay in the video signal. When enough delay is added, it becomes noticeable to the attendees, and another source of distraction-like watching a foreign film with an English voice-over-things seem out of sync.
"That's where the balancing act comes in," Hanna says. "If you use cheaper cameras, you typically have to spend more money making them work with your video system than you would if you just bought a good camera to start with. If you get a cheap camera, what other pieces will you have to add to the signal and control chain to make this camera do what you need it to do? It's better to buy a pretty solid camera for more money which will work as-is."
The Importance of Tripods
To ensure smooth camera shots, the camera operators have to be comfortable, and that means easy access to the camera controls and a quality tripod. Provide controls for focus and zoom on the tripod handles to prevent the camera operator from having to access small on-camera controls, which will destabilize your shots and tire the operators.
Also, tally lights are a plus in a multi-camera environment. A tally light is turned on automatically by the switcher when that camera's shot is live, indicating to both the camera operators and those on-stage what camera is currently in use. "You can do IMAG without tally lights," Hanna says, "but without them a camera operator may not realize their shot is live, and start moving the camera around. In that case, you start seeing ceilings and floors on your auditorium screens."
Another feature that isn't absolutely necessary but makes everyone's life easier and delivers better quality video is a CCU (camera control unit) for each camera and a person performing the role of shader for all the cameras. A CCU enables the camera's iris and color controls to be operated remotely from the video control room. When you have this option, the shader in the control room is responsible for adjusting the brightness and color of each shot before it goes live, ensuring matched shots. And it's not just for when you change camera shots-if you have a pastor that likes to wander across the stage, a shader can keep the brightness of the shot consistent while the camera operator concentrates on keeping the shot framed and in focus. "CCUs will help," adds Hanna. "If it's in your budget to make that happen, it is money well spent."
Switchers
The switcher controls what shot is live. It can also send different cameras to different outputs (called buses), so that one camera is live in the auditorium on a close-up for IMAG, while another camera is capturing a wider shot for an overflow room or DVD of the service. It's also an expensive piece of gear, and one that could drastically limit your future video growth if chosen poorly.
"If you utilize an inexpensive, basic switcher without asking the right questions, you will make a big mistake that will be noticed immediately," Fuqua adds. You may buy a one-output switcher now to support IMAG in your auditorium, but if a year down the road you need to add an overflow room and want to send different camera shots to that room, you now have to replace your switcher. Get your church leadership to really think about where they see the church going, and growing, over the next five to ten years before making your selection.
McCauley adds that latency is a huge consideration when selecting a switcher. "You want the fastest switcher you can afford." All video equipment, including video cameras, introduces some time delay from input to output. If your overall latency grows to more than a few frames, it'll be noticeable to the congregation and become a distraction. Or even worse, if the worship team can see the IMAG displays, and there's a noticeable time delay in the video, it can throw off the timing of the musicians because what they see on the screens is happening at a different time than what they hear.
Keeping in mind the native video format is also important. "You need a switcher that is capable of operating in the native format that the cameras and projectors are capable of," states Henderson. The less conversion the switcher has to do, the lower the latency that will be introduced. Hanna indicates that, like the cameras, trying to save money doesn't always actually save you money. "A $25,000 switcher may be exactly what you need, but if you go with a $10,000 switcher, you may find that you ultimately have to invest in another $20,000 worth of gear to get that $10,000 switcher to do what you need. In that case, the $25,000 switcher would have been better stewardship."
Training
Like other aspects of the technical ministries, training is critical. To get the best shots, cameras need to be operated in full manual mode, and learning to adjust zoom, focus and exposure on the fly in a live environment takes lots of practice.
"Set up a night when you have people running the cameras while you have a person walking the stage, and sit in the control room and watch what they are doing and give feedback as they go," suggests McCauley. "Sunday is no time to practice. Get prepared beforehand or don't do it at all."
Hanna comments that when Hope began working with IMAG, their camera operators and director worked each service for two months before they ever showed a camera image on-screen. They captured the video on DVD and reviewed the recordings as a team until they felt they could deliver quality video. Delivering poor video to the congregation because the team isn't trained well enough will make the congregation wonder why they gave of their resources to pay for video that detracts from the service.
Bringing it All Together
Our experts believe that for a multi-camera IMAG system that interfaces with an existing projection and graphics system, a minimum investment of about $50,000 is probably necessary. And that's just for the cameras and switcher. It's important to understand that lighting and audio are also crucial components to live video.
For lighting, the entire platform needs to be well-lit with little variation in lighting levels across the stage. For audio, especially if you're also using your video for overflow rooms or satellite campuses, a quality, noise-free mix is vital. "Audio is king," Hanna says. "What you see on video is great, but if what you hear is bad, it really doesn't matter what you're seeing. So even in video, audio is king."
