Feeling hemmed in by SDI’s 300-foot limitations and point-to-point connectivity? The tech team at Church of the City in Spring Hill, Tennessee, has been feeling the need to upgrade its video infrastructure for this very reason. While everything they have is currently working, plans for expanding video capabilities across the campus are currently limited by the need for SDI or fiber cables. So, as part of the Church Production Road Test User Experience, JR Benton, Church of the City’s director of production, was interested in checking out the Dante AV networking platform, as well as AJA Dante AV 4K-T, and 4K-R AV converters for integrating their existing video equipment onto the church’s Dante Network.
The Dante AV media over IP networking protocol from Audinate has received the Church Production Road Tested certification.
“Unfortunately, with most converters, you can get some pretty bad delay or some artifacting or compression issues, but with these Dante AV devices, we didn't experience that at all,” Benton reports. “The codec and the bit rate are extremely high while being efficient on our network. The other thing I love about these devices, is that they're 4K capable, meaning that we would be future-proofing our system far into the future by having these devices in the proper CAT6 cabling.”
Their current video system is all Blackmagic cinema cameras, their router is a 40-by-40 from Blackmagic, and they’re running an 8ME Constellation as the main video switcher. Benton says one of the best things about utilizing the Dante AV converters was how simple it was to add them to their existing Dante system, which opened up a world of options for expanding AV throughout the building.
“Whenever you have a building that's outfitted with a Dante infrastructure, but not a ton of video infrastructure everywhere, it makes getting video to some auxiliary spaces or rooms incredibly easy,” Benton enthuses. “So even if there's a room that you don't have video network set up, if you have a Dante network, all you have to do is just connect these converters, integrate them onto your Dante network, and you can send high-quality audio and video to every room that you need to all over Dante, you don't have to run SDI or Fiber.”
To hear more about Benton’s experience with the Dante AV platform and AJA Dante AV 4K-T and 4K-R converters, watch this video!
