40 REP ORT: VIDEO & VISUALS
PHILIP S AR E N A AN D IN F IN ITE E N E R GY C E N T ER COMPANY: RENEWED VISION LOCATION: ATLANTA, USA Passion Conferences collegiate ministry held its annual gathering the first week of 2018, bringing together more than 32,000 students from 700 universities and 35 countries to three arenas. The conference, which has been active for over 20 years, consistently sets new standards for high-quality productions and this year was no exception. As in previous years, Renewed Vision’s software solutions played a major role, with ProPresenter6 and its new PVP3 media server - both now equipped for NDI support - responsible for driving graphics, lyrics and video content across large displays. The biggest challenge in each in-the-round venue - Philips Arena and Infinite Energy Center in Atlanta (the third venue, Washington DC’s Anthem, is a traditional theatre) - was the use of six large angled trapezoidal shaped screens on which live camera shots, worship lyrics, and pre-produced videos were shown. Trussing was hung over the stage with a central spine and three thrusts 120° apart from each other, with two of the uniquely shaped screens hanging back to back from each
of the thrusts. This resulted in two screens being visible from most viewing angles in the arena. To make the most of the effect, Passion’s requested the text on these screens be angled and aligned to the centre. This presented a challenge to Renewed Vision, as the text - typically right or left aligned using ProPresenter - had to be aligned flush to an angle as opposed to a perpendicular line. In addition to the custom work Renewed Vision completed on ProPresenter6, they also made use of the newly implemented NDI playback functionality to power the ProPresenter video streams, including alpha key, to the screen control system that was located approximately 300 metres from the workstations. The machine used for the screen control didn’t have the necessary number of inputs to handle a separate key/fill, and they were investigating buying more video cards to ingest the lyric feed. Instead, decided to use NDI and it worked flawlessly, saving both time and money for new expenditure. While ProPresenter powered the lyrics and
scriptures shown on the screens within the three venues and the graphics on the live web streams (viewed by over 80,000 people), PVP3 made its Passion debut doing video playback simultaneously with multiple aspect ratios and sizes from one location to the other venues. To keep a feeling of cohesiveness across the three gathering locations, it was imperative that elements run on time. An optical fibre backbone between the two Atlanta-area locations and the Washington DC location allowed for bi-direction communication of audio and video between the hosts in each location. All video packages, however, came from a PVP3 video server at Philips Arena. Because there was a large variety of produced video content provided for multiple screen sizes and aspect ratios, the flexibility of PVP3 was immediately evident. Some video cues came with separate files for the variety of aspect ratios, while others were only available in a single aspect ratio. www.renewedvision.com
