Broadcast Pix Granite 5000 Improves Productions at West Angeles Church of God in Christ

May 4, 2011 - PRLog -- Billerica, Massachusetts – West Angeles Church of God in Christ, located just west of downtown Los Angeles and led by Bishop Charles E. Blake, is one of the largest churches in California, with more than 25,000 members and seating for 5,000. Recently, the church installed a new Broadcast Pix™ Granite™ 5000 live video production system, which is used to stream live coverage of Sunday services to an online audience of more than 100,000 viewers per week and provide image magnification (IMAG) for the congregation.

Media director Will Hampton works with a staff of four and a group of dedicated volunteers on the four-camera HD production. Prior to its Broadcast Pix installation, West Angeles Church used an analog switcher and a variety of tape formats. Now, Hampton and his team have adopted a file-based workflow and are creating more advanced video productions.

“Broadcast Pix Granite 5000 has made our workflow much cleaner, and allows us to do other things now that we were not capable of before,” said Hampton. “Now we are able to key words over a picture, such as a live shot of our choir performance, while simultaneously showing song lyrics on the screen. This makes for a more interactive connection with our congregation.”

With Granite, Hampton is also able to incorporate footage from a DVD (16:9 or 4:3) into the production, even if new material is submitted at the last minute. “Additionally, we are now able to include Web sites and PowerPoint presentations with audio. Granite allows us to bring multiple signals into our program on Sunday,” he said. “For instance, our pastor has a major National Denominational Church Service during the first week of November in St. Louis. There is an hour between our Sunday morning services, during which people are just arriving to church and awaiting the start of next service. Now, with the Broadcast Pix, our congregation can view that service here in Los Angeles during that time.”

Laguna Designs, located in Placentia, Calif., provided the consoles for the West Angeles installation, while VMI, based in Garden Grove, Calif., designed and integrated the video production system. Bob Bolling, in-house engineer at VMI, said the Granite system helped keep West Angeles Church of God in Christ on budget. “Granite has 12 outputs,” he explained. “This made a huge difference, since it did the work of a large router.”

With the 2 M/E Granite 5000, Hampton feeds the IMAG screens and five stage monitors for the choir and deaf and hard of hearing, along with monitors for Bishop Blake and his wife, First Lady Mae L. Blake. Additional outputs feed the live Web stream, record decks, and various monitors around the building. For monitoring in the control room, the church uses a combination of Granite’s built-in Fluent™-View and an Apantec multi-viewer.

About Broadcast Pix Broadcast Pix is the leader in integrated live video production systems. Its Granite™ native HD systems are the only switchers with a server to provide the best file-based workflow. Its Slate™ systems create highly affordable hybrid HD/SD/analog productions. Both systems create compelling live video by integrating a production switcher with a suite of Fluent™ file-based software tools, including clip and graphic stores, CG, multi-view, watch-folders and macros. Broadcast Pix systems are a fraction of the cost of a conventional control room to buy, staff and operate. Customers include leading broadcast, webcast, entertainment, mobile, corporate, education, religious, and government studios in more than 80 countries. Learn more and watch a video demo of Granite at www.broadcastpix.com.

Broadcast Pix and Granite are trademarks of Broadcast Pix, Inc. Patented. Made in USA.

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