The Hollyland Mars 4K offers dual HDMI and SDI connectivity for low-latency 4K UHD wireless video connectivity at up to 30 fps, with a range of up to 450 feet.
If you’ve been watching church livestreams like the ones we suggested recently, you’ve probably noticed the pleasant hand-held shots that a lot of churches are working right now. Bethel Church is probably the king of the hand-held shot, and they were doing it pretty much before anyone else.
Getting those shots requires a little doing and a little training, and they’re a bit of a pain if your operator is attached to an SDI cable. I’m sure you’ve already thought about that, so you’re probably asking, “What about going wireless?”
That’s a great question, and we’ve got great answers from a couple of the best to do it right now. Church Production sat down for a few minutes with Jesse Maitland, the broadcast director at Bethel Church, and Chris Troyer, the worship and production pastor at New Tribe Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Here’s what they had to say:
First up—RF
“The first thing is just frequency. If you've got somebody who has the capabilities, you know, and equipment to do scans and find out what the best frequencies are, then basically unless you have that guy, I would just find something that's simple and kind of scans the frequencies and finds the cleanest one that day. That was a big reason why we went with the Teradek Spark,” Chris says.
Did you know that on Sundays, your sanctuary is full of RF absorbing meat bags called “people?” And all of those people are carrying powerful little RF transmitters in their pockets. Church sanctuaries are a nightmare for RF stability, so Chris is definitely correct here, but his advice get’s tweaked later. Before we get to that, I will say that receivers and transmitters with a good auto-frequency tool are absolutely worth it.
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"There are lots of places in your wireless system to cut costs, but your transmitter-receiver pair should not be one of them."—Chris Troyer
Second—Batteries
"If you need [your cameras] to go for an entire service, it might not be a bad idea to look at something that has an interchangeable battery so that you can have a few that are charging,” Chris admonishes.
Most cameras come with some kind of rechargeable battery, and while that’s Chris’ current solution for his hand-held rigs, don’t forget about external batteries. Here at LifeMission, we use some SmallRig hardware and larger external V-mount batteries to power all of our hand-held rigs through Sunday morning services.
You can’t get away from latency
“You know, I've actually done a latency test between all the various technologies,” Jesse says, “and there is always going to be some. That's just the nature of it. We found a little bit of latency that can creep up is typically not all that noticeable. So if you have a hand-held system, or if you're going hand-held with them, you really don't notice it all that much. I think the other half of that, though, is the source of the video signal you're putting into the Teradek—if you're looping through a monitor, you're going to introduce a whole other device's latency, which is going to just compound.”
Latency is a concern, for sure, and generally here (Jesse agrees with this) you get what you pay for when it comes to latency. There are lots of places in your wireless system to cut costs, but your transmitter-receiver pair should not be one of them. That doesn’t mean you have buy the most expensive thing out there, but you need to do your homework and make sure you’re getting good value, not just a good deal.
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"If you have slightly noticeable delay in your IMAG, find the delay dial on whatever console you have and slowly add in 50ms of delay at a time until you start to notice the IMAG delay dissipate."—Jesse Maitland
Another note about latency—you can find a sweet spot for audio delay between your stage and IMAG to help with slightly noticeable latency. If you have slightly noticeable delay in your IMAG, find the delay dial on whatever console you have and slowly add in 50ms of delay at a time until you start to notice the IMAG delay dissipate. Check your adjustments against your speaker or musicians on stage to make sure their mouths still appear in sync with your audio. In theory, you’ll have about 150ms to play with.
Go Light With Your Camera Rigging
“We tend to be really light on our rigging. A lot of our cameras are fitted with multiple products. We're not using any kind of rails, but we are using camera cages, and of course, that's for mounting different grip sizes. We do have a kit from Shape, which we use for the top handle and again the side handle,” Jesse says.
This is really solid advice. I mentioned v-mount batteries earlier—well, I went to big when I bought ours, and they’re heavy. At least a couple of pounds per battery. In hindsight I would have purchased something smaller to make life easy for myself and the other operators.
At the same time, consider an Easyrig or something similar. These backpack-style camera stabilizers take on all the weight of your camera rig so you can focus on the shot. The branded Easyrig models are the originals, but Amazon bargain units will work, too.
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"You’ll want to make sure your receivers are high enough off the ground so that people people don’t get in the way of your connection."—Chris Troyer
A final word about RF
This is where Jesse and Chris disagree. “I'd say get it off of auto. Don't use automatic frequency mode.
Do proper RF management and antenna placement—line of sight is critical,” Jesse adds.
Jesse is mostly right here. If you find a solid frequency slot where your signal can live undisturbed, don’t give it up. That’s going to be the best case scenario, but, for what it’s worth, we use the auto frequency mode here at Life Mission and haven’t had any problems with it.
However, we’ve had our fair share of line-of-sight issues. You’ll want to make sure your receivers are high enough off the ground so that people people don’t get in the way of your connection. In general, I’ve found that a few bodies are ok, but it’s better to just mount your receivers high.