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[Jason Davis]

Hello,

I am new to the video world, am a computer programmer by trade, and run the sound at my church.  I am having a very hard time figuring out a solution to my problem.  This is my first post so please let me know if I am doing something incorrectly.  I appreciate this community and hope I can get some guidance from the experts on here.

Here is my situation:  setting is a small but upbeat church service.  Pastor (father-in-law) wants me to send live service audio and video to three rooms around the building.  I currently have a submix from my FOH console (Yamaha O2R96) of the entire worship service being fed to my Panasonic video camera.  I use the firewire interface on the camera to feed a live webstream of our service to the web every week.  I am using Windows Media Encoder to encode the stream.  This same PC is used for the overhead projector (S-Video) and also the live recording of the audio wav file for the CD duplication of the message.  PC is Dell quad core, 3.5 GB ram, nVidia 8600.

Ok, so I know I need to get the signal from the camera or computer to some sort of distributor, but I don't know how to do that.  I was thinking that I could possibly add another video card and have the PC send a signal of the video and audio to a splitter that would send the signals the 100-150ft to the various rooms.  The computer currently has two video outs, one for a monitor and one for overheads and announcements.  A third, via second video card, could be used for video stream output.

So, to recap:
1.  is what I’m trying to do impossible?  I still need to webstream from PC, but I also need the signal distributed to 3 separate TVs.
2.  if not impossible, how do I get video from camera or pc to distributor?
3.  any suggestions on distributor brands/models?  TV’s will most likely have HDMI and standard inputs
 
Any help is GREATLY appreciated!  I'm very happy to have found this site!!

Jason

[Brad Weber]

Maybe not the specific answer you wanted, but I have to say that it sounds like you are using a lot of devices to serve multiple purposes.  For example, using the camera as your audio interface and using the same computer for audio and video streaming, audio and video playback and audio recording.  That may work but it puts 'a lot of eggs in one basket', if the one PC has a problem it affects quite a bit of your functionality.  It can also make expansion such as that now desired a bit more complex.  Using S-video out of the computer to the projector is also a bit unusual, you would probably get a much better image using VGA or DVI/HDMI and driving the projector at its native resolution.

What are you wanting to send to the remote video displays?  Are you wanting to always send the camera or a computer output or do you want to switch between the camera and the PC or send what you are streaming or what goes to the projector?  Do you want to send just video or video and audio?

[Jason Davis]

Hi Brad, thanks for the reply!  I checked your website and found that you and I are neighbors.  I'm over in Woodstock off 92 and Hwy 5.  www.ngca.org.

I originally thought we were only going to send the signal from the camera (audio and video), but now you got me thinking that maybe we could loop overheads and stuff during breaks.

I will have a definite answer for you by the end of the day.  If it's just video/audio from the camera, I just realized that maybe I could use the s-video output on the camcorder and not even touch the firewire/pc setup.  The s-video from the camera could feed (along with an audio signal) to a simple distribution amplifier and that would be it!  If I find out that the pastor wants overheads from the PC, then I guess it will get more complicated at that point.

Thanks again for your help!

[Jason Davis]

reading back through my original post made it sound like I am feeding the audio for the CD recording through the camera, which I'm not.  That is a direct connection from my console to my pc through a digital audio pci card.

I know this computer is doing a lot, but it hardly breaks a sweat even when encoding an audio stream for the cd recording, encoding and uploading a separate live web audio and video stream, and displaying overheads during worship, all at the same time!

[Jason Davis]

I found out that for now they just want to have the video and audio from the camcorder on the 3 displays.  They mentioned that if we need to display the overheads, we can just point the camera at the overhead screen.  I know this would be extremely ghetto.

I also got the green light to get another PC or two if needed.  To save myself from having to point the camera at the overhead screen, do I have any options?

[Greg Hertfelder]

There are a couple approaches one can take when designing institutional systems. With a PC, one can do many things at once (centralization), but it's not always the best idea long term to have many capabilities dependent on one device or one operator. Mainstream design convention is to modularize capabilities into different devices and preferably different stations of operation (de-centralization).

There's a huge difference between designing a operation in your home in which one device does several functions, and designing a system for an institution in which several operations are occurring simultaneously. If only one person (you, probably) has an intimate understanding of everything that needs to occur during a service, and all those functions occur on one device, you are creating operational risk and stunting the growth of your ministry by making operation requirements too complex.

I recommend that you first design the capabilities on paper in a block diagram, and then research and delegate electronics designed for each function.

While it's okay that you are feeding a camera to a computer via firewired for streaming, I recommend using an analog output from the same camera, and the mixing console audio output to feed distribution electronics. Then distribute audio and video to the different rooms. Here are mainstream distribution schemes:

- Radio Frequency: Modulate the audio and video to an RF channel (example: TV channel 3) and distribute to the rooms via RF. This scheme is the least expensive and troublesome to implement. but can require additional amplification, trial and error.

- Balanced audio / baseband video: Two cables per room, with audio (Belden 9451 or equivalent), and composite or S-video cable would be a step up in quality over modulation.

- CAT5/6: Electronics are available that leverage use of Category 5/6 cable for audio and video distribution (often called "baluns"), which result in cleaner audio and video.

Your next step is to create your block diagrams on paper and identify components. Web sites like All Pro Sound, Full Compass, BH Photo Video, Markertek and Comprehensive are all useful sites for equipment research.

I concur with Brad Weber that S-Video is a limited quality method to feed a video projector. I recommend that you minimally upgrade to RGBHV 15-pin, or possibly a digital scheme, and you will see the video image improve exponentially.

[ProSoundWeb Community]