Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church, a pioneer in religious broadcasting, recently made history as the first church in the area to install digital video recording and editing equipment that will serve its congregation well into the new age of digital television.
New Psalmist's Pastor Rev. Dr. Walter Scott Thomas, an internationally-known preacher/revivalist, had already been reaching 200,000 viewers with his Sunday sermon on TCI Cable, when in January, they debuted on FOX 45. As a result of this new growth and opportunity, church leaders decided it was time to upgrade their video equipment, and with insight into the future of broadcasting, the church selected a new video format with the specifications to accommodate the changeover. They purchased JVC's DIGITAL-S, a recording format with 4:2:2 component digital processing and virtually lossless compression, required for the coming age of digital television (DTV). This digital format is actually superior to formats being utilized by Baltimore television stations.
The New Psalmist Baptist Church is expected to be a DIGITAL-S "trendsetter" in Baltimore, according t Rev. David Brown Jr., media ministry consultant and news director at Baltimore's WGBR radio. "At least three churches in town are moving to the format," he reported. "People have come from all over for tours of our facilities. With DIGITAL-S, we feel we have the Cadillac of broadcasting."
According to Rev. Dr. David L. Blow, assistant to Rev. Thomas, the church was previously using 3/4-inch VTRs with cameras that were no much better than security camera quality. Now the church has four JVC KY-F55B remote operated 3-CCD cameras, a BR-D80 DIGITAL-S editing recorder and a BR-D50 DIGITAL-S player with variable slow motion. All of the recording equipment is housed in a control room in the rear balcony of the church sanctuary.
The 10,000-member church was, "in search of a tape format to take it into the next millennium," said Rev. David Brown. "We checked into DVCPRO, a 4:1:1 system which offers quality similar to consumer digital recorders, but we didn't like the small tape load, and DIGITAL-S just looked better." DIGITAL-S has a 1/2-inch, more robust tape with a recording time of 104 minutes.
"The 4:2:2 component digital recording and editing capabilities of DIGITAL-S are very important to us," said Rev. Brown. "We make several dubs for our broadcast, and we didn't want to lose generations in editing. We also have a video tape ministry to get our message out. We sell about 400 tapes every Sunday, and DIGITAL-S meant we wouldn't lose quality in our video."
"Another important factor in our decision included the price-performance of DIGITAL-S," Rev. Brown said. "It was surprisingly less expensive than we expected considering the exceptional picture quality."
Rev. Brown edits the programs on DIGITAL-S then dubs them to analog for deliver to FOX 45 and to TCI Cablevision. To fulfill demand for the church's tape ministry, "S-VHS decks are looped to the main DIGITAL-S VTR so 15 tapes are available immediately after each service, " said Rev. Dr. Blow. Large-volume orders are filled later at a Baltimore dub house.
The New Psalmist Baptist Church matches its high standards for broadcast quality with big goals for its ministry. Its exciting plans include Rev. David Brown's current negotiations with the Black Entertainment Television (BET) cable network for national broadcast of Pastor Thomas' sermons.
In addition, the church is preparing to us its DIGITAL-S gear for other church-sponsored events. A recent conference on women's issues, which had 2,000 registrants, featured promo messages recorded and edited to DIGITAL-S and displayed o a pair of 12x19-foot screens. "The big-screen pictures were very sharp considering the size of the display," noted Rev. Dr. Blow.