The idea of a megachurch is a bit of an oxymoron to me but the idea of trading services for dollars is not. Thus we ran video at a megachurch.
Venue
First off I have to say wow! It was one of the most beautiful installs I've worked with. Meyer sound throughout, multiple LED walls throughout the building, GrandMA onPC with multiple wings and four monitors, digital snakes and audio console and of course, brand new construction. The LED wall was far superior to most. Bright vibrant colors with very good contrast and what looked to be either 2 or 4mm pitch. I ran it at about 90% brightness for most of the show. The in house crew was polite, knowledgeable, accommodating and nobody had an ego.
Our Setup
We had a DJ on stage that was to play music videos with embedded lyrics. I figured the easiest way to run everything was to take an HDMI feed from the DJ and pipe it into my Resolume machine. I was told that it was a 200' run from the stage to FOH. I brought enough Cat5 to do a 230' run.
Sometimes Bad Things Have Beautiful Outcomes
Unfortunately when I got on site (this was a last minute booking) I realized it would require no less than 350' of cabling. There was no in house cabling that would allow me to run video either. After a few minutes of thinking I came up with a solution. My idea was to setup a Resolume laptop on stage for the DJ that sent OSC data back to another Resolume computer at FOH and send the audio from FOH to the DJ. This would allow the DJ to queue up the music without any noticeable syncing issues.
After running up the stairs for what seemed to be the 20th time I arrived at FOH. With less than an hour before doors opened I asked the staff if they had an in house network. I connected both computers to their wireless network and discovered that the IT department had configured it so different computers could not communicate with one another. The other option was to plugin direct but I was informed that there was no ethernet connection on stage. I quickly connected both of my computers to the cheap access point mounted in my rack and 10 minutes later I was able to control the FOH computer with my laptop.
I ran back downstairs to the stage and started testing. I was able to control the content but there was a 4 second delay and the wifi kept disconnecting. Fortunately I had thought ahead and brought two Engenious ENS500 units. These are 5ghz wireless, outdoor access points configured as a bridge. I used them for a few months to connect two buildings together and it was fairly reliable. As soon as I plugged them in I received a great signal. I ran to the stage. I was able to wirelessly trigger clips with zero delay as if I was at FOH! I got a bit excited and quickly ran upstairs. I asked the engineer to send my audio signal down to the stage. Sadly he told me that it couldnt be done. I asked how is he running the monitor feeds. At that point he admitted that he was hesitant to start digging into a system that was installed just a week ago 45 minutes before a show. At last we had exhausted all reasonable options. It was up to us to supply video for the duration of the show. I quickly started searching my stock video sites, editing images, converting footage to DXV and organizing all appropriate clips. The tech director was very concerned about keeping the content rated G. I threw up a video that said Merry Christmas as they opened the doors and I continued to work on more content. 30 minutes later I was satisfied that I had enough footage to get me through the show. I looked up at the screen and realized that I was working with one amazing setup. I had never seen my footage look that crisp and vibrant. The in house staff took notice and the compliments started rolling in. My client was thrilled and even said that they where glad the music videos where not shown. All in all I can honestly say I was very happy with this beautiful disaster.
