SWS - Behind the Scenes for ProPresenter

Here's a look at some Behind-the-scenes footage of our latest service at Pauley. We're a very, very flexible church so we make changes to best inform the congregation and to tweak our services to make them the best they can be. Sometimes that means making some last minute changes. Of course, we're usually totally on-time, planned, all together, 100% cool and under control - hahaha.

Pro Video Presenter - was awesome!

Remember how we played all those videos at NSWN and SWS at Pauley - on the center screen and side screens. Well, there was a little piece of cool software behind it all.

Thanks to Brad and the others at Renewed Vision for their help in getting us a trial license to test out their application in a real production setting. I have to say that everything worked out very, very nicely. We had a few snags but we worked through them. Our biggest complication was using PVP with ProP.

Here's how we did our setup:

* Although this was against best practices we did use the primary machine and the slave over a private wifi network.

* The primary was a MBP outputting to two projectors via a dual head matrox external video device powered by USB. This gave us a resolution of 2048x768.

* The slave machine was a MBP outputting to 2 side projectors via a kramer pict tools 1 --> 4 duper. Basically the same image to both projectors.

* Imbetween we used a Kramer scaler vp710 and Corio scaler to manage the middle projector and side projectors.

* I can give more details if you'd like. Some of it is documented on the previous posts.

A VERY NICE about the PVP software is that it'll playback the video in the resolution that the machine it's on is playing. So the primary could output to 2048x768 and the sides could do 1024x768. We didn't even take advantage of the tiling...partially b/c of license constraints.

We're in the process of evaluating the software and will determine shortly how we can integrate this into our present environment at Willard Auditorium.

Imagine If...

We could have service at Pauley every Sunday. Wow, to think that we could have a facility so close to campus would be so nice for everyone. We'd have to do 2 services and the setup would be a little lighter than the NSWN setup. I think setup would be a solid 2 hours but I'm sure we could streamline some of this. The only thing i would see as a problem is the stage pieces...maybe we could leave some at Pauley. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Imagine just having this every week!

OK. I'm dreaming. But I can dream right? being so close would be so nice. Anyway, just dreaming out loud.

NSWN 1 and 2 are over!

It's hard to believe but we're done with both welcome nights! I just want to thank everyone for all their hard work. Everything went so smoothly. I think our hard work and advanced prep was crucial and really effective in preparing for the two nights. Great job everyone!

I wanted to document our timeline of events on Wed.

12:45pm - arrive at Pauley Ballroom Garage. Sound trailer, Overflow trailer, and Davis Trailer. The stage pieces were in another trailer and unloaded on Bancroft.

1pm-1:30pm - unloaded all the equipment by 1:30pm

1:30-2:45 - built the stage, instruments on stage, attached sound pieces to the truss. put up the side screens.

2:45 -4pm - put up the large 30ft screen, most of the lights were attached and ready.

4pm-4:45pm - began run through for skit

4:45-5:30pm - began run through for praise.

5:40-6:30 - full run-through

7pm - nswn starts!

NSWN 1 is OVER! NSWN 2 is TONIGHT

So NSWN 1 is over. I can't believe it. Praise the Lord! It was an awesome night. My rough estimate put our total at over 900 people at one point. We had to shuffle our upperclassmen and even sophs out to make room for the newcomers. That's simply amazing. And all the technical aspects were just right on. I counted only like 5 or so errors. That's like nothing. It was so smooth. I'm speechless really. Here are some pics Evelyn and I took during the setup and a few during the performance. Gracepoint Berkeley will have some more up later...

Oh and for our first time using PVP. There were some bugs and kinks to work out but props to Jackson, Irene and MK for making it happen. Let me tell you there are few pressure situations like that one. AND this was Allen's first time on the board mixing for the skit. Great job all!

NSWN - WEDNESDAY

Setup for our NSWN begins at 1pm today at Pauley Ballroom on the UC Berkeley Campus. I'm excited and a little nervous. Although this is just a single event, it's a huge opportunity for us to really welcome new students and connect with them and help them connect to the gospel. This is always the most important aspect of all of our technical endeavors. From the sound to the stage, to the lights, it's all about creating a safe, warm and inviting environment to share the gospel. And doing this well and creatively is what really excites me about all the work we do. Every we're faced with a challenge to do our best AND to have greater heart and care as we do it.

In this week's devotion text Jesus talks about how we ought not to take the seats of honor when invited to a banquet/dinner. But we should take the humble seats. As I thought about this passage and some of the reflection questions that followed I had a sudden thought...Why am I even invited to the banquet at all? I don't deserve to even be a part of it. And that's how I feel and think about my life with God and even to be part of something like NSWN. No matter what part of the church I serve in, it's ALWAYS a privilege. So as I approach the work, stress and battles I face today during setup and all the possible problems we encounter, I'm asking God for constant perspective and gratitude.

See y'all tonight!

What's New at NSWN?

So, what's NEW this year at NSWN? Well, actually, not that much. We're doing a setup pretty similar to last year and in fact we've simplified some parts of it. We actually have fewer lights... But one addition we're adding is Pro Video Presenter. This is a big time software tool from Renewed Vision. I mean the big guys use this tool. Too bad we're not a big guy =(. We were able to rent one for a week to demo and see how it can work with our current setup. It's a great tool. How are we using it?

Well, if you've looked at our setup diagrams, which I'm sure everyone has thoroughly studied =), then you'll notice that we have 3 screens. The side screens are hooked up to one laptop and the double-wide center screen is hooked up to a different laptop. We want to play our new and exciting video on all 3 screens. But we ran into a few problems:

1. Center and Sides are at different resolutions - 2048x768 and 1024x768.

2. We're using HD resolution this year - 720 which is 1280x720. So the video natively will be a bit smaller to squeeze into the 1024x768 and won't use up the entire 2048x768.

3. Center and Sides have different inputs. How do you sync them?

We could play the video on the center only but we want everyone to see it well. We could play it on all 3 with smaller projector resolutions (1024x768) but that would be too small. Or we could play it on the center screen with the wide resolution and the side screens. But the different resolutions is what makes this so hard. So let's play them separately on each laptop. But how? And this is where Pro Presenter Video comes in. Using a special network protocol (yes over wifi), the software can sync itself across both laptops! It's amazing.

I'm sure I've confused some of you. Just come tonight and see it happen!

First SWS of Fall 2009 - Back at Pauley!

On Sunday, we went back to one of our favorite venues on the Berkeley campus. Few rooms can hold as many people and have such a large and great feel. We're lucky to have a room like this. We can bring in all of our gear and do the setup of our choice. It's a grand open space for us to work in and I love it. We did a similar setup as last year and our Saturday workday helped us prepare really well for the setup. Here are some pics of our setup - from the garage to the service.

NSWN Behind the Scenes - NL workday

We spent this past Saturday - from 1pm to almost 10pm setting up our potential design for the NSWN this coming Wednesday - in 2 days! We also got to setup for our SWS service at Pauley. For our first week back in a full scale Sunday Service I thought everything went pretty smoothly. I can only acknowledge the help of so many people who came out this past weekend to make it all happen. Thanks to everyone!

I'll try to describe what we did in a nutshell...We cleared some space in the NL MPR. We brought out all of our stage pieces - rentals and from Willard. Rental pieces are 4x8ft. Willard pieces are 4x4 Black pieces and 4x4 Joyland stage pieces and 3x8 wooden brown pieces. We setup the truss pieces - 10 x 3 for the main truss on the super towers. Then 4 x 10ft pieces on 4 large pass stands to be the posts for our 10ft screens and to hold some of our moving lights. The truss on the towers will support 3 projectors (2 at 5000 lumens, 1 at 3500) and 2 Ev non-powered speakers, and an array of Par 64s. We're doing things a little differently this year.

NSWN Behind the Scenes

Here are some pics of the layout of what we're doing at Pauley. It's my chicken-scratch handwriting but you'll get the idea. I'll try to post a better computerized diagram at some point.

Basic Speaker/Audio Layout

Basic Vocal/Instrument/Channel Assignment

Projector/Scaler/Screen Layout

Trailer List

Overall Layout

There's a lot more to each of these drawings and just tried to dump them out on some paper the other night. I'm starting with these to instruct/inform others.

Saturday is a major workday for us 1-6pm to do a test of all of our gear. Since all of our gear has been in trailers all summer we're just making sure everything still works as we expect. We'll also be testing out the new video on a wide screen. At one point we thought about making it a 3 screen projection system but we don't have a wide enough screen =(.

More pics to come soon.

The Fall - NSWN

The summer has been real quiet for our Sound Team and our SSL Team. We haven't had to setup for Sundays for months now b/c we've been in home worship. But we're back and in full force. We have our first corporate Sunday Service at Pauley Ballroom on the Berkeley campus this Sunday. Then we have two nights at Pauley for NSWN - same event both nights. And then we have another Sunday worship service at Pauley the following Sunday. And then we're back at Willard. Whew....We got a lot going on in the next few weeks. So I want to document everything we're doing so check back here often.

Here's a slideshow of some of the pics from last year's setup first SWS setup. NSWN changed a bit after that. but you'll get the general idea here.

I wanted to show people what goes on behind the scenes of some of the planning. I have been too busy to take pics of all the things I want to but maybe this Sat - our tech run through - we'll have some time. All the stage, lighting, sound and video stuff is really coming together. You'll see that in some of the posts after today.