Adding Video

Just as the virus Lockdown was beginning, Village Seven Presbyterian Church came to Lambda looking for a solution to livestream their services. At the time the church had not done any live-streaming, but knew they needed to come up with an answer to keep their congregation connected during the unknown duration of the lockdown.

We met with several of their staff to discuss options and after some thought, they landed on a budget PTZ camera system from Datavideo. In addition a switcher from Blackmagic Design and some new integration from Propresenter 7 for graphics was added. This solution to their need was meant as an intro to live streaming for Village Seven. We love this little setup and have used it in many churches before! However, in this situation, when we finished the install it didn’t quite live up to expectations. Why was that? Village seven is an exceptionally large room in need of a large production setup. 

​While waiting for the budget setup to come in, the church rented a series of cinematic C200 cameras and had a church staff member doing post color correction and editing. When the budget system came in, it just couldn’t compete, but at the same time the C200 setup just wouldn’t work long-term for going back to in person services. Try as anyone might, jumping from no streaming or camera systems to a full production setup just doesn’t usually happen; especially in the middle of uncertain times.

We met with the church to do what we do best: listen and find a solution to their specific problems/needs. After renting the C200, they could now see the clear difference between the budget system vs the professional cameras and the church was open to other solutions. We repurposed the PTZ cameras as wide stage shots. The Black Magic switcher, being a 4k pro unit, allowed us to bring in a broadcast style Ursa camera and pro lens to be the center camera for the building. Lambda created a new demo for the church. We came multiple times and coached the church staff through realistic expectations of the equipment, opportunities for growth, and actual goals for streaming and going back to in person services. We even brought in Boxcast to manage the streaming and create a more seamless user experience for Village Seven’s volunteers.

We coached the church personnel on reaching groups anywhere across multiple platforms and helped them build what is now a streaming setup they can easily use and fits the needs they had not originally realized. It is hard to know what you need when you don’t know where to start. Being able to try different equipment, all the while having an integrator to give tips and help with positioning and color correction, gave the church a chance to make the changes they needed. If you didn’t know, our favorite thing at Lambda AV is to help identify the actual needs of our clients and help find a good place and training for all their tech teams. We can’t wait to see where Village Seven goes from here!