Customer Success Story
The Crossing Church
The Crossing is a multi-site church with three campuses located around the St. Louis area. They broadcast from their campus In Chesterfield, MO to their campuses in Fenton and St. Charles County, as well as to the web. The Chesterfield campus has went through several phases of expansion since opening in December 2003.
In November 2013, The Crossing completed phase 3 which included a 1200 seat auditorium and production suite for broadcast video and audio. It was designed to better serve the needs of their growing multi-site ministry, with the existing 850 seat auditorium redesigned to become a multipurpose room for youth and as an additional video venue.
The Challenge
As The Crossing designed the video systems for their new auditorium and production suite, they chose to reuse a lot of their existing gear to keep costs in line. But they still needed to include several new key infrastructure items, such as a new router and production switcher in the design to expand their functionality – as well as to minimize future install costs and disruption to services.
Prior to phase 3 of their expansion, The Crossing’s core video system was two Panasonic switchers and an Evertz multiviewer. They used one switcher to drive live camera content to their multisite campuses, as well to their video venues in Chesterfield, and they used the other switcher to drive camera and video content with graphic overlays to lobby TV’s, live webstream, and web video on demand.
“The biggest limitations of the original set up was the number of inputs and the coordination of two different switchers. We needed a new switcher that could meet our needs in these two areas”
The Solution
Already a customer of Ross with the purchase of two original Carbonite 1ME switchers – one at each multi-site campus, The Crossing had already experienced Ross’ amazing customer service before and after the sale. The switchers already proved to be flexible, powerful and unmatched in the industry with price point, and so they decided to not only purchase a Ross router, but also a third Carbonite switcher. They chose a 16 input, 2ME switcher with custom DashBoard to improve the user experience – they felt that the combination of a hardware panel and software/touch screen best fit with their workflow.
“Carbonite has definitely improved our systems and processes. We have additional miniME’s and Aux outputs for ad-hoc needs, custom controls for simplifying complex steps – as well as improving repeatability for users, expanded multiviewers, and tally functionality is definitely better! Trying to coordinate this for two switchers proved to be extremely difficult.”
The Result
“The Carbonite is at the heart of our video broadcast system. It feeds the services from our auditorium to our two multisite campuses, video venues and overflow spaces of our broadcast campus, our live webstream, and our recordings for video on demand. We no longer have to re-route inputs to the switcher on the fly due to limited inputs, and now we can more reliably and quickly add cameras for special events without negatively impacting our worklow.”
The biggest benefit that Ross and Carbonite has given The Crossing, is the ability to focus on their production and not the gear. It has simplified their setup and processes – freeing their volunteers to do their best.
“We have always received high-quality and timely support from Ross Video. We wish more companies served customers as well as they do.”
