Rolling Hills Community Church in Franklin Tennessee has hundreds of devices on its Dante network, but up until now, the church’s Central Production Director, Sean Miller has avoided adding video devices to that list. “I'm an old soul and they scared me,” Miller says. “I did not want to branch into that world. I love Dante and use it heavily, but I was scared to put video over the network and potentially bog things down. So, I was kind of a ‘leave video hardwired, leave audio on its own thing, and never the two shall meet.’”
Audinate's Dante AV platform has received the Church Production Road Tested Certification.
But as part of a Church Production Road Test User Experience, Miller agreed to venture into the world of Dante AV, a family of hardware and software solutions from Audinate that allows manufacturers and end users to add networked video to the industry-leading Dante media over IP platform. Audinate sent Rolling Hills Dante AV-H-enabled PTZ Cameras from PTZ Optics and a Bolin Dante AV-H decoder.
“And suddenly now we have a PTZ camera on stage. We have a PTZ camera in our booth, and we're not having to run an SDI, which we have done up to this point everywhere we needed a camera and you're taping down wires and this and that,” Miller enthuses. “I was very nervous about the amount of data crossing the network because of multi-tracking and all of the things. And we just have a standard gigabit network. Nothing crazy. We're not 10 gig here yet or anything like that - and it was flawless! It worked very well. I was watching it constantly. I was nervous and it was rock solid.”
Miller and his team decided to use it to set up an overflow room. “First, what made the most sense was our overflow space. Up to this point, we've obviously run SDI everywhere. So, [using Dante AV] allowed for one box, one cable to be dropped in that room and the audio comes out Dante already, and the video is HDMI to the projector, and boom, we have an overflow café. Before we would've taped wires to the floor and done this or that!” Miller exclaims.
He says using Dante AV was as plug-and-play as anything else he’s used and very user-friendly. “So, this has opened up a whole new world for us of routing and things like that from the push of a button. So for churches like us that are in the process of upgrading and making changes, especially if you're already in a Dante ecosystem, I think getting onto the Dante AV train absolutely makes sense.”
To see Miller’s interview, watch this video!
