What next?

[CynthiaDesigns]

First I have to thank most all of you that post here as I have found the answers to many of my noob problems while hovering in the shadows reading post after post. I have been a graphic artist for most of my life and began (many-many years ago) writing html (don’t really remember why, I just did).

Last September I took on the job of online church service director at our church. Our pastor is a Mac man. The church had been converted totally over to iMac’s before I began working there. I am now converted (*hallelujah* - I’ve heard that every time someone buys a Mac an angel gets wings) Don’t know what I would do without my MacBook Pro.

We began streaming services a year ago come October 1st on http://streamingchurch.tv

With hours of online research, talking the ears off several people at the Mac store and Best Buy, I managed to put together the following and I realize there was/is probably a better way - thats why I'm posting. The pastor gave me one director order: "It all has to be Mac."

Our current set-up is (began using in January of this year):

Canon GL2 Camcorder connected via 6-pin firewire crossing 75 ft in distance in 15 ft segments of PCCABLES Firewire Repeater Extension Cables to a Mac Pro with OS X 10.5.8 Quad-core Standard config. running BoinxTV 1.6 (love this software by the way) also using all the ‘hoop-jumping’ software required to stream with BoinxTV: CamTwist, Soundflower and Adobe Flash Media Encoder.

We use an AirPort Extreme with 5GHz dedicated to the Mac Pro for streaming. I chose the AirPort Extreme because in the past when anyone else in the building would get online for anything at all during a service it really goofed up the streaming. The 2.4GHz is all theirs now and does slow down the streaming process at all.

Prior to the using the Mac Pro in January we were using the Canon GL2 with an iMac running QT encoder (which I did not like. a/v would get out of sync constantly & quality was grainy even with 10.0/10.0 broadband) and no editing on the fly software. Editing in iMovie or FinalCut took some time (adding scripture refs and so on.)

The combination of BoinxTV and Adobe Flash Media Encoder (a/v sync options work well) brought the video quality up quite a bit. Post service editing takes less then 30 min. Simply chop the music off the front in iMovie; export; convert to flash and upload to online library server. The Canon GL2 is a great camcorder, wonderful in low light... but now the pastor wants to go HD.

Sooooo...

Here are the future plans (Will it work and by work I mean work well?):

Sony HDR-XR350V Camcorder (I already own one and love it and will be using it for initial HD quality streaming tests. Low light features worked well in non-streaming tests of recorded services.) Connect that with Blaun HDMI 1.3 Over Single Cat5e/6 Extender Set and Cat5 cable to Mac Pro with soon to be newly installed Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro HDMI card to BoinxTV. BoinxTV has a built in 3 camera switcher so we can add up to 3 HD camcorders and Blackmagic cards as the budget allows.

With the HD camcorder I am most likely going to have to find a new source for audio. We use to go straight from the soundboard to the Mac Pro. BoinxTV mixed a&v without any problems. Our pastor can be very funny and the congregation gives feed back. In an online poll we found that online views felt disconnected form the service so we went with using the Canon GL2 mic. in BoinxTV. It picked up the house mix of our live band and singers as well as the congregation participation with the services; the online viewers love it. The sound is not that bad, but am not sure how its all going to pan out when we go HD. (Snowball?)

BTW: We use ProPresenter 4 on an iMac for the sanctuary screens. It works very nice.

And there you have it.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!


Cynthia

 

[F.biz]

It is very nice to hear that you have found the same path that we would like to follow. I have tested few DSLR cameras with HDMI output (which are not good enough for at least few reasons) and few hi-end consumer HD camcorders.

Most of those, which were tested work only with 1080i50 video output what makes video in Boinx TV interlaced and the software itself cannot make it deinterlaced even if the option is checked inside software preferences.

I believe we need HD camcorders with 1080p live output over HDMI (or 1080i already deinterlaced through camcorder) - do you know any?

It may be possible to put in only two Intensity Pro cards (following all articles, documentation and discussions that I have read). If you are able to set up the 3rd one please let me know. My idea was to plug in HDMI switch to one of those cards and switch between cameras 2, 3, 4, ... when the 1st one is live.

The sound from HDMI seems to be a little bit delayed but it can be acceptable. All test were made on Mac Pro Quad-Core, 16 GB RAM, two internal hard drives and two graphic cards - the only bottleneck which I expect is hard drive writing data rate. Good idea would be to invest in external RAID with few hard drives.

God bless you!
Sebastian

 

[CynthiaDesigns]

Dvr?

Most of those, which were tested work only with 1080i50 video output what makes video in Boinx TV interlaced and the software itself cannot make it deinterlaced even if the option is checked inside software preferences.

How about running the video stream from the camcorder to a DVR then to the computer HDMI Card?

I'm not to worried about the audio, we can always go back to the soundboard output directly in to the computer/Boinx and mix the sound- done that before, just needs tweaking. Going to use a mic suspended from the ceiling in the sanctuary.

I will getting in the last of the parts to give this a try first of next week, will keep you posted.

Cynthia

Doing the best I can with what I got.