I can go on about all the bad that came from the Covid lock down, but one good result is that people who weren’t previously technically savvy, stepped up their game to learn new skills and start establishing an online presence.
My friend Pete is a smart guy who belongs to a church that has money and elderly congregants. When Covid hit, most of the members of the Christ United Church were exactly the people most at risk. Pete is retired from a job that didn’t require computer skills, but he has always been good at figuring out what he needs to know to get his computers to behave. When Christ United decided they needed to put their services online, Pete volunteered to figure it out.
That is much harder and more expensive than is initially obvious. Pete gave me a tour yesterday, so today, I thought I’d check out one of their Youtube services. I’m not one for going to church, but if I was, I’d want one of those Black Baptist churches with a James Brown preacher like in the Blues Brothers.
Don’t pay attention to the people reading or the pastor’s sermon. Well, you can if you want, but notice the picture-in-picture text of readings, the transitions to different cameras and the quality of the sound. Pete chose the system to use, figured out what could be done and is still learning new things. He has a team to help out, and they have been at this for a couple of months. The quality is very good, the style is consistent and they continue to improve.
In the church, there are two large flat panel monitors for the congregants, one monitor for the pastor to reference. Four pan-tilt-zoom cameras are distributed around the church, along with microphones for the pastor, choir, reader, piano and organ along with several wireless microphones. A loop is installed in the church so people with hearing aids can use the built in telecoil to assist them.
Betsy in the office produces a Powerpoint presentation every week with lyrics and anything else that shows up in the picture-in-picture box. During the service, one volunteer technician advances the Powerpoint when appropriate. Another technician mixes the video on from the Powerpoint and cameras, along with inserting labels when needed. That’s all done on a Black Magic ATEM video panel and streamed to Youtube. That technician also controls the pan, zoom and tilt of the video cameras. A third person runs the sound board. The organ and piano are not amplified for the attendees, but is amplified and processed by the sound board for streaming.
There is a lot going on, but many tasks can be saved in advance as a macro preset. As I understand it, the pastor and Betsy produce an order-of-operations. It’s kind of a lesson plan. Betsy takes that to generate her Powerpoint. On Friday, the A/V team does a practice session. Everything is choreographed in advance, but as you seen in the video, there are short activities, occasionally with kids, that occur during the service. The camera guy has to be ready to improvise to continue putting on a good show for the people at home.
I learned about video production during the remote learning phase of Covid. I became proficient at Audacity for sound editing, DaVinci Resolve to edit video, experimented with OBS for video mixing and went much farther on Powerpoint. Now, Pete and I know much of the same stuff. OBS is a poor man’s mixing board, his sound board does some of what Audacity can do and he is getting proficient at Powerpoint.
Maybe because I had such a steep learning curve during Covid, as a retiree, I don’t want to learn a bunch of new technology. I do want to learn Fusion 360 drafting software to 3D print, need to learn more about WordPress for this blog, want to set up a game server to play ARK Survival and Battlefield 1942 and am moving toward home automation, but I am not happy about it. Good for Pete for stepping up, learning what he needed to stream church services and being eager to learn more about what all that complex equipment can do.