ChurchTechCast.com Q & A: Webcam zoom, WordPress, and Being Spiritual and technical


http://TrinityDigitalMedia.com/church-tech On today’s ChurchTechCast.com Q & A, questions on: Webcam zoom, WordPress, and Being Spiritual and technical

Here are the latest questions:

on CTL:
DV asks:
Who Builds Your Pro-presenter Content

Wondering in your church who builds your pro presenter? Lyrics, Sermon points, backgrounds, announcement videos ..exct..
Who puts it all together and builds it for weekend services?

Tech Director or Creative Director?

BB asks:
Getting fed spiritually with headsets on…

Ok so this topic is not tech at all. I’ve been the media director at our church for the last 3 years and the week to week grind is beginning to get to me. No idea if this is normal, or if I’m just in a funk.

But for me, I haven’t really been to church to relax in 3 years as I’m always working.

How do other do it? Is this just normal and I need to get over it? Or is there something specific to rotating and getting time off? For me it seems like the Senior Pastor and I are the only staff members that are 100% focused every weekend. Although he gets 1 month vacation and sabbatical. ha ha!

I’m not trying to complain, just looking for some wisdom of this amazing forum that have done this longer than I.

Thanks a ton and God Bless!!

on G+:
DS asks:

So I’ve been playing with YouTube Live to stream our Sunday and Wednesday services. I like everything with one MAJOR exception: YouTube’s ContentID system keeps flagging us for streaming copyrighted material. Last night they even killed our stream. We’re returning back Sermon.net – who we’ve been using for years.

Anyone else have similar experience?

JG asks:

Any of you folk running your Church’s website on WordPress? I’d love to know what things you find difficult about setting up and running a WordPress site from a church perspective?

JC asks:

Hi all, I’m looking to finally start using power point or equivalent to create sermon art and slides. Can anyone recommend a service that they use as a slide generator? Thanks!

DM asks:

ProPresenter question!

Is it possible to set pro presenter to output audio to a secondary sound card in order to leave the original sound card as a wirecast audio preview?

I’m using the computer to do both wirecast and pro presenter for our stream and need to be able to monitor the audio coming from wirecast while being able to play a video from pro presenter with out getting feedback.

Mac Pro with PP5. 

on CMN:

brochris asks:

Webcam with decent zoom?
We’re a small church with a small budget. We’d like to start to stream video of our services live (we’ve been streaming audio only for about a year). I’ve tried several cheap webcams (one even said it had 10x optical zoom), but none of them have zoomed onto the pulpit close enough from the back of the sanctuary (about 30ft from the pulpit).

I can’t justify spending more than about $50 at this point. Do you know of a webcam for less than that with a decent optical zoom? Thanks!

mikesg asks:
Will a scaler make my switcher seamless?
I have an Extron System 7SC video switcher. From the VGA output, it goes into a Hitachi CP-X445 (XGA) projector. Sources for the 7SC are two computers, a component DVD player and a component 1080i video camera. The Hitachi projector negotiates the source changes well. There is typically less than a second of delay, and the screen is momentarily black during the switch. Even though the 7SC is a scaler, currently set to XGA, HD signals such as the camera are passthrough. The Hitachi projector don’t seam to miss a beat.

The problem is, the Hitachi projector needs to be replaced. The new ViewSonic Pro8520HD projector is not happy with the switching. There is a six second lag between sources. During this six seconds:

– A new source is selected, and seamlessly displayed without delay
– Then the screen goes black
– Then the bright blue ViewSonic background with the birds appears (no way to set the background to black!)
– Then the screen goes black again
– Then the new source finally pops up to stay

Needless to say, this isn’t acceptable. A person I contacted brought out a Compass CO-2001 seamless switcher to test against the 7SC. This produced glitch free source changes. As the 7SC isn’t seamless, I’m wondering if I can put a separate scaler, like an Extron DVS-204, in between it and the projector to maintain signal integrity. Purchasing a replacement for the 7SC isn’t in the budget right now. I’m not married to Extron, just familiar with it. I would like to keep the solution under $200 if possible.

Are small single purpose scalers such as this Manta unitthis Manta unit a possibility? That one is inexpensive but has positive reviews. I don’t mind converting to HDMI at the projector, but don’t want to replace the VGA run.

What say you?

JLR asks:
Camera needed
Don’t do much in this season of my life with media ministry and feel a bit out of touch. So I thought I would come to those in the know! The youth pastor at our church has been given a sum of money to use on a video camera, $700 to $1000. After talking with him, he is really wanting to use it in multiple manors from man on the street stuff to event and service recording. So given the price range what do you suggest I look for? We are not necessarily looking for new, but we need something that is reliable. Would really appreciate make and model numbers if you have them so I can look and compare with the youth pastor to make the final decision…

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