Calvary Church Communications Blog

New Logo

This week we're officially rolling out our new logo.

   

New Logo:	Old Logo:

Vendors We Use

I often get inquiries about what vendors we use for our Communications needs, so I thought I'd list some of them here:

Offset Printer (Bulletins, Brochures, Letterhead, etc.) - APD
Business Cards - Overnight Prints
Website Hosting - VitaSite (Alliance Software)
Email Hosting - Google Apps For Non-Profits
Copiers/Printers - Datamax
Video Equipment - B&H Photo/Video
Folding/Binding Machines - SBPI, St. Louis
Video Rentals - VMI, St. Louis
Signs (Interior) - Banacom
Signs (Interior, Temporary) - FedEx Kinkos
Signs (Banners) - MarkIt Promotions or Goldman Promotions
Misc (DV Tapes, etc) - Costco

Tricaster Pro

I thought I'd give you a little info about the video switchers we use at our extension campuses.  We use an all in one solution - TriCaster Pro by NewTek.

Here's a quote from their website:

The process of creating live network style television can be very costly, requires massive amounts of expensive equipment and a large crew of people to make it work, TriCaster™ changes all that. In one small, lightweight, portable system (small enough to fit in a backpack) you have all the tools, including live virtual sets on most models,  required to create, broadcast, web stream and project your show.

         

There is a reason TriCaster is the standard in “portable live production” for major players like Fox Sports, MTV, VH-1, NBA D-League and the NHL, it is simply the most complete, reliable and efficient system available for live production and web streaming. The small footprint makes it possible to broadcast from literally anywhere and only requires one person to make it work. No matter where your live broadcast plans take you there is a TriCaster in the TriCaster family perfect for you.

There are plenty of reviews out there so I'll not devote any more time to telling you how "great" they are...instead I'll just share why and how we use them.

Why We Use Them
The reason we chose the TriCaster for our campuses (other than the Mid Rivers Campus) is because they offer many features for a low price point.  The other factor was how mobile it is for our Mills Mall Campus (a mobile campus that meets in a theater).

How We Use Them
We use the TriCasters switching between a laptop with PowerPoint and the on board DVR which we use to fire our produced videos from a video file (more about that below).  The TriCaster has the ability to support multiple camera inputs, to do downstream keying, and to do title overlays...but we do not use it for those purposes (yet).  TriCaster also has a built in version of SpeedEdit, NewTek's non-liner video editor.  We don't use that function either (we do all of our editing in the Adobe Suite).

Problems We've Had
Our problems with TriCaster have been a plenty (in fact, my entire motivation behind this post is to help you avoid some of our problems).  When we first got them, the uncompressed .avi video files that we would try to play on the machines would cause it to crash.  So, our computer-expert volunteers went to tinkering and were not able to solve the problem.  We sent them back to NewTek to have them reset to the factory default and got ourselves a NewTek DV codec to use when exporting our video files.  We were still having problems and determined that the NewTek codec and Adobe Premiere Pro do not play nice together, so we sought out a solution that, for a few weeks at least, has been working great.

Solutions We've Found
We now use a stripped down, as clean as we can get it, DV file.  We've found that Panasonic's DV file works best for us.  We export the Panasonic DV file out of Premiere Pro and copy it on a 16 gb flash drive and send it via interoffice courier to our various campuses.

What's New With Calvary Communications

Wow!  It's amazing how quickly time can pass between posts.  I thought I'd give you a quick run-down with what's new with Calvary Communications:

ReVisioning
We're taking a look at the media we're producing, particularly videos and electronic newsletters, to determine the appropriate balance between disseminating information (namely, event information) and telling the 'Calvary Story.'  I'll be blogging more about this soon so keep checking back.

ReBranding
We're looking at possibly rebranding Calvary.  This would basically be a visual rebranding, as we feel that our brand is fine - people in our church and our community have a good idea of what Calvary is "about."  What we're considering is a new logo, a new website, new letterhead, etc.  We've been busy assembling proposals for the Elder Board to consider.  We'll submit to their authority on the best timing and course of action for the potential rebranding.  If it happens, you'll undoubtedly know about it.  If you don't hear anything else about it, well, it wasn't the right time.

Equipment Updates
Our disk array that we keep our production files on was running out of space so we added some new hard drives to the array and inadvertently wiped all the data on it off.  We were able to recover the information (praise the Lord!), but it opened our eyes to our data backup and integrity processes.  So, we're in the process of installing some new (and some new-to-us-used) servers and equipment to make sure it doesn't happen again.  Here's a brief post on our IT guy's website.  I'm asking him to put together a post that has more information but isn't quite as "techy" for any Communications guys/gals out there in case you need a solution.