Life Church, an outreach-driven church in Wesley Chapel, Florida, has installed Analog Way’s Pulse 4K multi-layer video mixer and seamless presentation switcher to power a new LED videowall in the sanctuary.
A new product from Analog Way, the Pulse 4K is uniquely suited to the worship market with its full feature set and cost-effective price point. “The Pulse 4K offers an array of features like high-quality scaling, seamless switching and low latency at a price point that represents an incredible value for houses of worship,” notes Brian Smith, Southeast Sales Manager at Analog Way. “The Pulse 4K just started shipping and is already in half-a-dozen churches nationwide.”
The powerful 4K60 multi-layer video mixer and seamless presentation switcher has ten inputs, two active outputs plus a dedicated multiviewer output. It features advanced VFX and audio processing, eight concurrent 4K still images, ultra-low latency processing and flexible control options.
Technology solutions provider AVnew, in Altamonte Springs, Florida, served as the integrator for Life Church. “They wanted to enhance their stage presence for the worship experience and decided on a 36 x 18-foot Thor AV 3.9mm LED videowall as a backdrop,” explains Gil Parente, CEO and Owner of AVnew. “They needed a processor that could handle the videowall’s custom resolution, offer multiple layers for PIPs, be user friendly for the operators and cost-efficient. Analog Way’s new Pulse 4K fit the project from all of those aspects.”
Steve Mink, Production Director at Life Church who heads a technical staff of three, says that the church used standard video projectors prior to acquiring the LED videowall. The sanctuary has approximately 1,200 seats, which were filled to 80-90 percent of capacity on any given Sunday prior to the coronavirus.
“There’s a big disparity between projection and an LED videowall,” he notes. “The videowall communicates to the whole sanctuary, from the stage platform to the back wall about 135 feet away – a deep viewing area. Content is bigger and easier to read for teaching and speaking, and the videowall enables us to create a more immersive atmosphere around the songs. As soon as we got the wall and put content up we saw how it pulled the back of the room forward to make everyone in the sanctuary feel part of the content.”
The new LED videowall displays looping motion video backgrounds during the worship portion of a service. Content is also created in-house relating to sermons or holidays, such as a short video that was recorded for Christmas Eve. Supporting a full contemporary band, with 10-12 vocalists, which fills musical needs during services, the videowall displays lyrics, generic motion video backgrounds and custom content with lyrics embedded.
While Mink relied on Gil Parente to choose the Pulse 4K, Mink had used an Analog Way processor and other Analog Way gear before so he was very familiar with the brand. “We wanted our new purchase to be flexible: to do what we needed to do now and offer us the potential to do more in the future,” he explains.
Mink cites the LED videowall’s custom 2688 x 1280 pixel resolution and the need for “a lot of scaling and manipulation to happen within the Pulse 4K. We output a full-resolution image inside a 4K signal and after we control that first step Analog Way does the rest, outputting the LED wall’s custom resolution.”
The tech staff uses a web GUI to log on and control the system. AVnew installed Lyntec relay panels for remotely powering the system on and off. AVnew also integrated Q-SYS control on several touchscreens so the church’s volunteer operators can easily turn the system on and off, trigger presets and change settings.
Although the Pulse 4K was just recently installed it drove VFX backgrounds in a pre-recorded video for the annual Vision Sunday service and it displayed PIPs when kids played games with their parents on stage during the annual Family Service where kids and youth take over the main Sunday morning worship service. The Pulse 4K also powers an array of creative backgrounds that are used like greenscreens for the hosts and guests appearing in the church’s weekly video podcasts. The system is set up to display IMAG on the videowall during services, but this technique has not yet been implemented.
“The Pulse 4K is just great,” reports Mink. “Frankly, I don’t think or worry about it. It just works!”
