The houses of worship vertical encompasses a broad range of religious institutions, each with its own set of AV needs. Robert Stacy, general manager for Asia Pacific at AJA Video Systems, gives his thoughts.
He says: "Whether a small facility or a megachurch, every HoW holds unique AV requirements spanning the simplest of setups to extensive live production and post pipelines. Regardless, HoW technical directors require professional-grade gear that will deliver quality audio and video, but that can be used and operated by volunteers, often with little to no AV experience. From AJA HELO and U-TAP to BRIDGE LIVE, OG-DANTE-12GAM and more, AJA’s technology portfolio is designed to meet the diverse needs of the market with several solutions that fit a broad spectrum of AV applications in HoW.”
One such toolset includes AJA’s U-TAPs. These plug-and-play USB 3.0-powered capture devices make it easy to capture HDMI and SDI sources for integration into live streams with no driver software to install, with broad application compatibility including Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and much more. For a stand-alone option, AJA Video Systems created HELO, which brings high quality streaming, plus recording to SD cards and network drives, with support for HDMI or SDI sources. At the top end is AJA BRIDGE LIVE, which provides single channel 4K or multi-channel HD streaming.
The device supports a broad range of codecs and transport protocols to ensure high-quality, low latency, real-time video streaming. Additionally, BRIDGE LIVE’s support for SRT and encryption provides security and low latency for moving signals across the public internet. For audio over IP, DANTE has emerged as a preferred audio networking technology among HoW professionals and AJA’s OG-DANTE- 12GAM openGear card provides a simple way to bridge DANTE audio sources with SDI video sources in HoW environments. The demand for content creation and streaming solutions has only grown in the last year as more churches have pivoted to virtual service offerings amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stacy says: “As lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings were put into place at the start of 2020, houses of worship were looking for a way to remain connected with their congregations, and ‘going live’ doesn’t get much easier than with UTAPs or HELO. U-TAP integrates with Zoom and Microsoft Teams, seamlessly being seen as a native webcam by the OS, as well as a host of other software that runs standard on a laptop. HELO also provides the option to bring in other content streaming devices via SDI or HDMI and supports streaming to a variety of CDNs as well as local recording. So, if people simply want to stream to Facebook Live or another CDN, HELO is an easy solution. And in today’s climate, that means everything, as streaming has become a core component of HoW operations. For those looking to bolster their streaming capabilities U-TAPs and HELO are the first steps on that journey.”
There is no doubt that streaming in houses of worship has grown, but what’s on the horizon? Stacy concludes: “There’s a continuous drive within pro AV and HoW to enhance the viewer experience, and video quality is a key part of the equation. With this in mind, in the future we expect to see more market demand for solutions that support streaming in higher resolutions and with less latency. Monetization is quickly becoming a focus for some houses of worship, which means they need to be able to do more with their content for less. In some cases, churches may just be looking for more options to up-level their content creation capabilities. When considering quality, you inevitably start looking for the right combination of technology to achieve your vision.”