May 09th, 2020

New Life Church Colorado Springs, a longtime client of Lambda, has a large congregation and a large vibrant worship team. They already stream their services on a weekly basis, but with gathering restrictions in place they wondered what they could do to make their stream even better for their regular weekend audience. 
​

Lambda worked with Scott Lebeau, New Life’s Lighting director, and Evan Duran, the Technical Director, to add new levels of quality for their service online. Scott and Evan, both industry professionals, started their changes by deciding what their goals for the service online would be. They knew they wanted visuals and sound that closely mimicked the in-person experience as much as possible. For audio this was an easy swap. With system capability already current and with multi-tracking technology, the only change that needed to take place was to mix a live capture and then mix in post philosophy to add some extra polish.  ​

For visuals, this was team effort with Scott and Lambda. They decided an area they would like to make changes to was lighting. For regular weekend services they focus much of their lighting and content to be visually effective for members in the room rather than their online venue. Scott worked to tweak most of the visuals in the building for a look that could fit within the lens of the camera. Since cameras have a much more limited field of view than the eye, the looks had to be shrunk to be able to see more detail. In changing up the looks, the cameras were also moved forward to put them within better optical range and allow more light pickup and better sharpness. See some of his examples to the right.  

The last step in the process was the craziest and probably the most fun too! It was to take the systems from 1080i quality to 1080P. 1080i is not full HD, it is a broadcast trick that shows only half of the resolution at any given time. Motion is not as sharp, and detail is lost. Converting, however, is not an easy task. This system was based around HD-SDI signal transmission, however not all HD-SDI is created equal. Over the years, many differing standards have been used creating complications.

Before

After

Specifically, the transition from 1080i to 1080P is one of the hardest to make. 1080i to 1080P is a data rate change. 1080i is 1.5gbps and 1080P is 3.0gbps. This means that some gear just does not work and some cabling is not up to the task over distance. Additionally, 3.0g HD-SDI saw the issue of A vs B or two different ways the same signal could be sent over a cable. Some gear can only see A, some can only see B, and some can see both A and B. This created a complicated transition to move everything over to 1080P. We turned to a number of our favorite conversion tools such as the Blackmagic Up-down cross HD SDI to HDMI converters for gear that couldn’t handle the signal at all, and new hyperdeck mini recorders to replace aging 1080i only software recorders.  
​

Before

After

New Life saw a drastic growth in quality moving up to a new level of online campus. As things eventually transition back to meeting in person this new level of quality will help to support reaching many of those who would normally would not come in the doors of the church or may not be able to because of physical, geographic or economic restrictions.  ​

Last, but certainly not least, as the load increased on the staff at New Life due to smaller number of volunteers or number of people allowed in the building, Lambda was able to send in a few of our pro staff members to fill in for positions. This is always an option and something we love to be able to provide at Lambda AV. If you are feeling shorthanded during this time, please reach out! Lambda is a great place to be connected to some pros in the areas you need most and can help fill that empty spot!