Client Background

Loft City Church is a multi-ethnic, non-denominational Christian church in Richardson, Texas. Sunday worship is the heart of its week, with Bible studies held throughout the week. For a congregation that also worships online, the livestream matters: it’s how members who can’t attend in person stay part of the service.

When the church began a full renovation of its sanctuary, it brought in Pickafro Productions Inc., a Dallas-based video production company, to handle the video side of the project.

The Challenge

The renovation covered new lighting and a new LED wall. It also covered the church’s camera system, which had fallen behind. Loft City Church was still capturing services on consumer camcorders that were about 10 years old. They lacked the reach, control, and image quality a modern livestream needs, and they gave online viewers only a limited view of what was happening on stage and in the room.

The church needed full HD cameras that could follow the pastor, isolate the worship team, and show the congregation. The cameras also had to fit cleanly into Pickafro’s SDI-based production workflow. And they had to be simple enough for a volunteer team to run every Sunday.

The Solution

Pickafro Productions chose to keep the church’s existing camcorders for the wide shot and add two BG-ADAMO-JR20X Adamo JR 20x 1080P Auto-Tracking PTZ Cameras for the close-up work. A BG-Commander joystick controller gives the operator control of both cameras from one position.

Each PTZ camera has its own job during the service:

• Camera one auto-tracks and auto-focuses on the pastor during the sermon, holding a clean shot without an operator driving it.
• Camera two captures tight shots of the musicians during worship. It also turns to the congregation, so online viewers get a real sense of the crowd and how the room responds.

Connectivity was a deciding factor. The Adamo JR includes a native 3G-SDI output alongside HDMI, USB, and IP streaming, so Pickafro connected both cameras directly into its SDI switcher, with no HDMI-to-SDI converters in the signal chain. That means fewer boxes, fewer failure points, and a cleaner rack.

For control, the cameras and the BG-Commander run on a closed network built on two Ubiquiti Pro Max switches, which keeps camera traffic isolated from the rest of the church’s network.

The Results

Loft City Church is now past its obsolete consumer camcorders and has a camera system built for streaming. The operator can see and direct what is happening across the stage and throughout the sanctuary, and online viewers get a service that feels closer to being in the room: the pastor tracked automatically, the musicians in tight coverage, and the congregation in the frame.

On the integration side, native SDI on the Adamo JR let Pickafro plug straight into its existing switcher, which simplified the build and removed conversion hardware from the system.

Pickafro’s team also found the BG-Commander and the camera’s web-based interface intuitive enough for operators who aren’t production professionals, which matters for a church that depends on volunteers every week.

Customer Experience

“After watching a few videos on YouTube, it was nice to communicate directly with the BZB team and find the right camera for our needs. It didn’t take long for us to decide to use BZB for our integration. The user interfaces on the Commander and the web-based GUI are very intuitive, even for the non-professional.”

— [Timothy Scott, Creative Producer], Pickafro Productions Inc.

Why BZBGEAR

For Pickafro Productions, the difference came down to the people behind the product. The team has called BZBGEAR Technical Support about everything from minor questions to major problems it couldn’t solve alone, and got real help each time.

“They never make us feel like we’re wasting their time, no matter how small the issue may be. That positive human interaction goes a long way with our team.”

— [Timothy Scott, Creative Producer], Pickafro Productions Inc.

Products Used

• BG-ADAMO-JR20X — Adamo JR 20x 1080P Auto-Tracking PTZ Camera with HDMI, 3G-SDI, USB, and IP streaming (2 units)
• BG-Commander — PTZ Joystick Controller (1 unit)