A Portable Church in a Case

Or several cases...

A local church in town, Zeal, came to us asking to help them build a portable church system. They already had a few pieces of equipment but were looking for a few more tech pieces to have a service every week in a school building. At first glance, it may not sound too tricky or like an excessively big job. What do you need for a portable system, just some speakers and a mic and you are good to go, right?? The task was a little bigger than that. 

One of the things we try very hard to do in a portable church setup is to make it as simple and repeatable as possible while also making it durable. Remember, this is gear that is getting set up and torn down every single week. Plus, it’s not always the same person setting up the gear every week, so anything we can do to help to make setup simple and straight forward, can save time and a headache. 

The two areas we covered for the church were video and audio, but before we start into what gear was used, let’s talk about the true hero behind this build: Custom cases from OCD Labs! OCD Labs provided all the casing needed to put this church literally into a box…well…multiple boxes! OCD Labs specializes in custom-built packages that are tailored to your unique needs. With their help we were able to create a really cool package system for Zeal Church! 

Now, let’s take a look at the video components. The engine that the entire video system is running off is the Blackmagic TV Studio Pro HD. This 8-input (4 HDMI, 4 SDI) live production switcher, with integrated control panel, was the perfect choice for Zeal. Not only did it give them an intuitive control surface, but it also gave them room to grow in the future as we only used 5 of the 8 inputs. The video system consisted of two OCD Labs case racks with built in monitor mounts. One of the racks houses the switcher with Multiview monitor, and the other one is a control computer mounted along with all the converters needed in the video system. The other items in the control rack were a Blackmagic Ultrastudio HD for lower 3rd lyrics on their stream, a Blackmagic Hyperdeck for recording, and a Boxcast encoder (Our favorite encoding service by the way! Go check them out here!) 

Zeal already owned one Blackmagic 4k Pocket Cinema Camera, so to expand the video system we added two Blackmagic 6k Pocket Cinema Cameras complete with monitors, and a handheld rig for either shooting in the room or capturing other video throughout the week. Of course, all of these each had their spot in cases. 

To help Zeal get the two different racks correctly connected each and every time, we created custom laminated cards with step by step instructions as well as a laminated picture of what the final cable connections should be. It was a small add, but these instruction cards made all the difference to the setup. Since this was a mobile church, the person setting up the gear might not be the same every week. These cards gave anyone who was going to set up the system a guide to getting the gear working on the first try!

Zeal also wanted video systems for the both of their children spaces. For those, we used the same OCD Labs cases with built in monitor mounts and put all the video conversion equipment into the racks. This gave them a simple package to pull out and connect a single cable to the display in the room to have a working video stream. 

For the audio, Zeal had some of the sound equipment for the main room but were missing a few pieces as well as not having any of the audio pieces for the children’s spaces. For both spaces we used OCD Labs racks with Audio Technica wireless handheld mics. For the kids spaces we also provided them with a Behringer x32 Compact paired with a set of DB Technologies ES503 (One of Trevor’s favorite portable speakers!). For the other children’s space, we used a Behringer X18 with a set of JBL EON 612 speakers. One of the reasons we chose these setups for the 2 children’s spaces was the ability to take them and use them in a variety of other spaces with easy setup when the needs arose. (Parking lot, park, other spaces)

To round off the main room sound system, we added headphone amps (And OCD Labs cases of course!) for in-ear monitors, an OCD Labs rack with 7 wireless Audio Technica 3000 mics, and two large road cases of cables. One case for power cabling and one for audio and video cables. For those of you keeping track that’s a total of 12 cases for the entire portable church!

One of our favorite things here at Lambda is to find different ways to innovate and help our clients have the best use of their gear as possible. We enjoyed partnering with Zeal to create a portable church setup unique for their needs and easy for anyone to set up in a short amount of time!