VITEC Digital Video Innovations -Life Church

Memphis, Tennessee, is the gateway to the most influential and soulful music genres in American music history - blues, rockabilly, and rock-n-roll. For a church, soulfully serving this iconic and diverse city is a hefty mission but one that is at the heart of Life Church. The church offers its services not only at its main location in Houston Levee but also four satellite campuses around the city, including a newly opened location in North Memphis. It unites all its visitors and fosters a rich community-focused environment by utilizing sophisticated broadcast technology to deliver the same powerful message, from the spiritual push and vision, including the stories and jokes, to every church at the same time.

In the background, Brian Pitre, Life Church’s video producer, had been searching for years for a technology that would not only simplify this workflow but improve the quality and experience for the congregation. The church tried multiple different systems with limited success. That changed when the church discovered VITEC’s scalable streaming solutions.

Well-known in the house of worship market, VITEC utilizes cutting-edge HEVC encoding technology and the industry-leading Zixi™ error-free streaming protocol to transmit high quality, reliable, and flawless streams to churches of any size over the existing IP infrastructure.

50% compared to H.264. Because it supports both HEVC and H.264, it’s built for the future without losing support for legacy receivers and decoders. MGW Ace provides user-intuitive web management software that’s ideal for Life Church’s volunteer team, which often run the satellite locations, as well as high-quality streaming to desktop, TV, and mobile devices over limited bandwidth. Ideally suited for worship, MGW Ace Decoder is designed to always provide the best possible viewing experience and never miss a single frame. When paired with MGW Ace Encoder, the set becomes an end-to-end streaming solution that affordably transmits bandwidth-efficient, artifact-free video that meets the demands for streamed worship services. With its unique flexible 4K-capable FPGA architecture, MGW Ace Decoder is a future-proof solution and ensures multi-site live streaming on private or public networks.

Another factor that played into Life Church’s decision was the seamless integration of VITEC’s house of worship streaming solution with Renewed Vision™ ProVideoServer™ (PVS), a four-channel HD video server from the most trusted technology provider in the worship space. PVS enhances the VITEC system with recording, playback, and time-slip capabilities. This allows Life Church to easily record its high-quality broadcast stream with embedded time code and multichannel audio and play it back with the necessary delay at each of the satellite campuses at any time. Similar to a DVR, with the PVS' time slip feature, Life Church can immediately playback the video stream from the main site even as it records.

• Affordably stream HD quality video at reduced bandwidth over existing IP network
• Deliver exceptional live services with ultra low latency streams at any bit rate
• Eliminate errors over unmanaged networks with support SMPTE-2022 Pro-MPEG Forward-Error Correction (FEC) support  and the revolutionary Zixi™ technology
• Freely record and playback streams with time-shift playout, allowing every worship campus to be united with the main campus’ message
• Easily add additional campuses with a scalable platform that can grow as the congregation grows

Life Church takes video quality very seriously, seeing each service as a time where members are free from the distractions of the modern world. For years, Life Church had recorded its Saturday evening service as MOV files. These files were initially recorded to a hard drive that was then hand carried to each location; later, as the technology developed, the church was able to distribute them via Dropbox. The file was then played back at the other campuses in time for their Sunday services.

This workflow was done to ensure a smooth, flawless production. However, it wasn’t a live feed, which meant that the Sunday services for the main location were different from those offered at its other campuses. The playback was also prone to errors, which detracted from the experience. Life Church sought a streaming solution that would allow its small, five-person production staff along with a large volunteer crew (with varying degrees of skills) to easily and reliably record a high-quality broadcast video from the main location to the satellite locations simultaneously without errors and with delayed playback of their choosing.

Life Church’s extensive search for a streaming solution ended with VITEC. VITEC’s house of worship stream solution matched Life Church’s vision, providing an enhanced video delivery that truly engages followers. With VITEC’s state-of-the-art compression and Zixi’s forward-error correction technology, every stream is flawlessly delivered in low latency, ultra-high quality. The MGW Ace Encoder and MGW Ace Decoder’s Time-Synchronized Playback ensures perfect synchronization of multiple independent IP streams for each of the church’s locations. Now staff or volunteers don’t have to worry about glitches disrupting the service or relying on a previously recorded services to fill the slot. They can enjoy an error-free, distraction-free environment where they can hone in on one live message that is shared with the entire Life Church family.