Ushering in a New Digital Era
These are exciting times for church and worship production. The digital revolution is sweeping the broadcasting industry worldwide, paving the way for high-definition TV and other innovations that are redefining production values and quality standards everywhere. One key group of beneficiaries is churches, who now have at their disposal a wide array of field-tested, file-based technologies with which to upgrade their own operations. As a result, today’s houses of worship are embracing digital technologies and HD to ramp up the sophistication of their live and recorded services, and bring the message home to their congregations in newly vivid, meaningful ways.
Taking their cue from broadcasters, many houses of worship are making the transition to digital production in incremental fashion by phasing out video-tape based equipment with new file-based technologies as their budgets allow. Broadcast-quality digital video recorders (DVRs) are a good example of digital systems that are easy to bring into a church’s existing workflow and yet have a profound effect on operations. In this article, we’ll discuss the latest advances in DVR technology and how the systems can be effectively applied to enhance production in houses of worship.
Not your home TiVo, and definitely not your VCR
In simple terms, a DVR records a broadcast stream as a digital file and enables the operator to play out the recorded video using familiar controls such as play, pause, reverse, and fast forward. Although they operate on the same basic principal that lets you record Thursday night’s episode of The Office while you’re out having dinner, broadcast-quality DVRs are a far cry from the TiVo in your home. These professional-grade systems are designed to acquire and produce the highest-quality video images possible and make it easy to manipulate and play them out to discriminating broadcast audiences.
Video cassette recorders (VCRs) have long played an important role in church production as a means of capturing and storing video, but DVRs are rapidly taking their place as houses of worship continue to transform their facilities with digital, file-based workflows. In today’s sophisticated church production operations, a broadcast-quality DVR provides a superior and cost-effective antidote to the inefficiencies, less-than optimal recording quality, inflexibility, and high storage costs of videotape.
Because computer files won’t degrade over time, DVRs offer a more durable alternative to tape, which has a shelf life and a tendency to stretch and wear with each use. As an added bonus, digital systems eliminate the costs and hassles of storing and maintaining bulky tape stock.
In addition to the physical storage considerations, DVRs offer many capabilities for houses of worship that simply aren’t possible using VCRs. Some DVR units offer the ability to simultaneously play out video as it is being recorded; for instance, a church can record the pastor’s sermon in one hall, and then play it in real time or with a time delay in another hall or location – or even to an encoder or streaming device for presentation on the Web.
Unlike VCRs, recordings made by DVRs can be stored as electronic files on a central server for fast and easy access, retrieval, and viewing from any computer on the network. Rather than spend their time manually searching through piles of tapes to find the right piece of footage, production engineers can access the desired segment in a flexible, non-linear fashion by simply jumping to the exact point in the recording they need – no time-consuming fast-forwarding or rewinding required. Also, unlike tape recorders that require a few seconds to roll before recording, DVRs have near-zero lag between the time “start” is press and the first frame is captured – ensuring that every critical instant of the production is recorded.
Some DVRs offer video synchronization capabilities which make them especially useful in multimedia presentations for worship services. Take, for example, a production consisting of multiple screens and video streams: one is a live shot of the pastor delivering the message, another provides his (or her) talking points, and still another is a file video that illustrates the theme of the message. With the proper interface, such as the RS-422 connections that are standard with all Fast Forward Video systems, the engineer can control video streams coming from multiple DVRs and instantly access the desired point in each stream, automatically synching it into the production for playout at the correct time. Plus, DVRs enable operators to build a playlist of content stored on the unit and play out any length or segment of video in a nonlinear fashion, without requiring the services of an editing room.
DVRs can also play a key role in repurposing of church video content for a wide range of uses, such as creation of DVDs that can be distributed to the congregation or made available to the public. Today’s most leading-edge DVRs provide video output in QuickTime format, which can be quickly and easily downloaded into an editing system for creation of top-quality DVDs.
The role of compression
Perhaps most important, the compression capabilities of digital systems deliver video quality that is orders-of-magnitude higher than that produced by even the most expensive broadcast-quality VCRs. Some of today’s most advanced DVR systems are capable of recording at extremely low compression rates, such as 4:1 – 6:1, which deliver significantly higher-quality output than the Hi8 compression used by traditional tape media.
One important recent development in compression technology is motion-JPEG, a codec that uses a pixel block match system to minimize the degradation to images as determined by the amount of compression selected by the user. Motion-JPEG takes the original JPEG still file compression technique, originally created for use with still image distribution for the computer and print industries, and applies it to every frame or field of a video or film sequence while leaving all frames intact and accessible. This is in contrast to MPEG, which handles video compression by using the difference between frames to decrease file size. MPEG does not retain every whole frame; thus frame integrity is often compromised.
Motion-JPEG focuses on areas within each frame that lack detail (such as a blue sky that doesn’t change from frame to frame) and compresses those areas first – with the highly detailed areas compressed last. The result is exceptional picture quality and image integrity, which preserves the final details in each frame for applications such as slow motion, frame-accurate editing, reverse content review, and accurate color correction.
For HD recording, look for DVR solutions that utilize JPEG 2000 (J2K) compression. As one of the newest standards for digital image compression, the J2K codec records HD-SDI signals with virtually no loss in signal quality as compared to the native camera output. As with motion-JPEG, J2K captures video detail at the frame level and preserves the integrity of every frame. When using J2K compression, the DVR system must be able to record at a bit rate of at least 100Mbits/s to ensure virtually lossless results, and to provide the post-production and editing functions with as much data to work with as possible.
So why is compression so important in a worship environment? The biggest reason is the 30-foot (or larger) screen in your sanctuary. When video is compressed using MPEG, it becomes progressively blocky and pixilated the higher the compression rate used, and the effects are magnified when the video is projected onto a large-format screen. With Motion-JPEG and J2K, however, higher compression rates (greater than 100mbs) will result only in a slightly softer picture. Since data rates of 100mbs or higher deliver virtually no loss in quality, pictures projected to a large screen are free of pixilation and have a clarity and depth that can’t be matched by any standard-definition VCR or MPEG-based DVR.
DVRs and HD
As houses of worship continue to make the transition to digital, file-based operations, some are beginning to embrace the possibilities of high-definition production as a means of attracting and engaging parishioners – many of whom have high expectations based on their own home experience with HDTV. A new class of DVR designed specifically for HD output is helping give these churches a cost-effective path to delivering state-of-the-art HD productions.
When evaluating DVRs for HD, church production staff should keep a couple of considerations in mind. First, the recording system should capture the video using the most advanced compression techniques available, such as J2K. The DVR should be capable of recording at data rates of 100Mbits/s, at full HD resolutions including 1920 x 1080 (1080i) or 1280 x 720 (720p).
Also, workflow is a buzzword that should never be overlooked in any HD strategy. The extent to which you can develop a file-based workflow, from end to end, will greatly enhance your HD operation by simplifying your ability to manipulate video and move it through the production processes – and the simpler the workflow, the lower your production costs. The state of the art in HD DVRs embodies this notion of a file-based workflow because it digitizes the video at the moment of acquisition, when it then becomes easy to edit, play out, and archive. For example, Fast Forward Video’s Elite HD DVR attaches directly to the camera’s HD-SDI outlet to capture high quality footage at 100 Mbit/s, and then saves it directly to a 2.5-inch drive. Operators can easily remove the drive and plug it directly into an editing system such as Final Cut Pro without having to play the video out or transfer it to another device. This saves many steps and helps preserve quality, since the editing system is working directly with the high quality 100mbs Jpeg 2000 data stream captured directly from the camera’s HD-SDI output.
Other DVR considerations
Today’s advanced DVR solutions offer numerous other capabilities that make them ideal in a church production setting. Here are a few other considerations as you evaluate DVR solutions for your environment:
• Dual SD and HD recording. If you’re making a gradual transition to HD technology, maximize your investment in DVR technology by choosing a system that records in both formats. You can incorporate it into your existing SD workflow now, and then you’ll be ready to go when you convert to HD.
• 4:2:2 sampling. This refers to the DVR’s color recording capabilities. Unlike the 4:1:1 or 3:1:1 sampling provided by other systems, 4:2:2 records a higher degree of chromance or color detail – and the greater the color data to work with, the more precise your editing and color correction tasks will be in post-production.
• Removable, standard-format storage drives. Top-quality DVRs provide removable storage media with USB connections that make it easy for engineers to move content from one unit to the other, for playout on different devices and at different times. Look for systems that can record at 100 Mbit/s while utilizing standard 2.5-inch SATA or SSD drives, which are significantly less costly than other formats such as P2 cards. The following chart shows a comparison of today’s most common storage media:
Format Size Cost Record Time Mbs Cost per Minute
P2 16Gb $ 885.00 16 100 $ 55.31
P2 32Gb $1,650.00 32 100 $ 51.56
SxS 8Gb $ 500.00 25 35 $ 20.00
SxS 16Gb $ 805.00 50 35 $ 16.10
SxS 32Gb $1,453.00 100 35 $ 14.53
2.5: SATA Drive 320Gb $ 150.00 320 100 $ 0.47
2.5 SSD Drive 128Gb $ 400.00 128 100 $ 3.13
Conclusion
With the surge in high definition broadcasting and the growing affordability of HD televisions in homes, viewers are developing highly discriminating taste in video quality — and they’re bringing those expectations to church. This might be especially true of younger worshipers, who have been raised in a digital era and expect to be dazzled and entertained. These dynamics are not lost on today’s most progressive houses of worship, who view emerging digital and HD technologies as a prime opportunity to attract and engage ever-larger communities of worshipers at all age levels. With their advanced video acquisition capabilities and ability to ease a smooth transition to HD production, today’s leading-edge DVRs can play a critical and yet cost-effective role in a church’s overall strategy for digital production.
