The end of the 700 MHz Debate
Posted on February 8, 2010
For 700 MHZ wireless, the end is finally near!
The deadline has been set. Finally! The FCC has made official their order regarding wireless mic systems operating the the so-called 700 MHz band. As of June 12, it will be illegal to operate wireless mics in this spectrum. This has been a drama played out over more than 10 years. It’s nice just to have a firm date. There is more background on the “why” behind this decision this morning, over at TechnoPraxis if you’re interested.
So, if you still have systems operating between 695 and 806 MHZ, what should you do?
First, if you have not already done so, it’s time to contact your dealer to replace your now obsolete systems. You can check your system on the FCC website to see if it’s covered by the new rule.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/wirelessmicrophones/manufacturers.html
The good news is that the major manufacturers have extended their rebate programs through the end of June, so you can get some help with the financial impact of this decision.
Beyond that, expect the remaining spectrum that we are allowed to use for wireless to get a bit more congested. The FCC has stated that wireless mic usage takes priority over these new broadband devices, but only when it comes to preventing interference. If you’re operating a wireless microphone, the THEORY is that the new devices should avoid you and pick another frequency to operate on.
There will be a registration database that will allow wireless users to stake a claim for specific frequencies in specific locations. There are also ongoing tests to create workable sensing technology. The new devices will check to see if you’re operating a wireless mic before they operate on a specific frequency. We may also see the development of wireless beacons. Think of it as a wireless lighthouse. Wireless mic users will transmit a signal that will tell these new broadband devices to stay away.
Regardless of how this all shakes out, one thing is clear. The airwaves are getting more crowded, and wireless mics are expensive. You can avoid all of these problems pretty easily, by simply using wired microphones whenever possible. If the talent isn’t moving around, and moving around a lot, think wired. As my friend tp:// is fond of saying, “the cheapest wired microphone on the cheapest cable is FAR more reliable than the most expensive wireless system available.”
That is good advice.
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» Tags: 700 MHz, rebate, Sennheiser, Shure, wireless microphones
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Spring National Church IT Roundtable March 11-12!
Posted on January 29, 2010
Republished from Jason Powell’s site. Thanks, Jason!
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Church/Ministry IT staff and volunteers from across the country will descend upon Saddleback Church in warm sunny Lake Forest California to partake in 2 days of invaluable peer learning, networking and inspiration March 11-12.
If you can only attend one IT conf this year, this is the one I recommend without hesitation! Regardless of your church/org size, I guarantee you’ll leave with new knowledge, new friendships and loads of inspiration. I’ve been to every National Church IT Roundtable since 2006 and I leave each one totally amazed at what I’ve gained. Not to mention the incredible friendships I’ve built over the past few years are invaluable on both a person and professional level. So in other words – make every effort possible to get to this event. If you need me to write a note to your boss to help your plight let me know
We’re still firming up final costs, but it will be under $100…and that will include lunch and snacks both days…and if we get enough sponsors hopefully even dinner both nights.
Sponsors? Yes, we’re asking vendors to help offset the costs. Please encourage your favorite vendors to contribute. Even a small amount will be helpful. Vendors can contact info@citrt.org for more info on how to help.
Spouses? Yes, a number of us have been informed by our spouses that they TOO will be coming to California 
Spouses are encouraged to join us during the evening gathering times. Perhaps during the day they can form their own IT spouse support group and hang out together at the beach
Final details are still being nailed down, but here’s the schedule gist …
March 10 – optional pre-event informal gathering in the evening (possible dinner)
March 11 – Day 1 – 9am until late … Saddleback “behind the scenes” tour in late afternoon, group dinner, then a special worship service
March 12 – Day 2 – 9am until 5pm … then optional dinner for those flying out Sat/Sun
More details can be found at http://citrt.org … hope to see you there! Questions? Leave a comment or email info@citrt.org
For the latest up to the minute Church IT Roundtable news follow CITRT on twitter and/or facebook
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Goodbye 2009, Bring on 2010
Posted on December 31, 2009
Over a year ago, I decided that Church Tech Matters had run it’s course and I felt I had given this site all I could give. I wrote this post about a month earlier and a year ago today, I posted it. I had some other ideas of how I wanted to spread my wings and had some other potential opportunities. Ultimately, a year ago today, I felt free. Kind of like ending a job or ending a relationship, this had been a long time coming and it was a huge relief to have finally reached the end.
Well, as time went by, things progressed and this site was reborn into what it is today. I am so proud of what is being done here although, I think we have only just begun in what we can accomplish and what we need to accomplish.
2009 can really be viewed as a year of transition for Church Tech as we worked to pull a team of writers together and figure how this can all work. We still have some things to work out but I am looking forward to next year and all that it will bring.
Church Tech Matters is now a site for church tech volunteers written by church tech volunteers and those who lead them, which leads us to still equipping the church to effectively use technology to reach people for Christ.
What lies ahead for 2010? I honestly don’t know. Some thoughts:
- Expand our reach – Reach more tech volunteers and more smaller churches
- More ways to share knowledge – As I said, we have only just begun and we have some new ideas that just need to get implemented.
- Increased traffic to this site – The traffic to this site had been declining downward for the last 6 or 8 months of 2008, but it is now steadily increasing well beyond where I took it on my own. Based on current trends, I would expect traffic to continue to increase into 2010.
Coming soon we will share some new ideas about doing more to reach and connect with fellow church tech volunteers and strengthen our community.
Thank you to everyone who didn’t let me fade away into the sunset!
Thank you to all the current writers and contributors!
Thank you to all of our readers and fellow volunteers!
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» Tags: Goals, volunteers
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To Stock or Not?
Posted on December 24, 2009
I posted a tweet recently and it triggered that thought process in me.
The one that said “weren’t you meant to write a blog post about this?” one. So here I am. And what I want to discuss is twofold; whether we should use stock photos in church material and if so, where can we source them for free. I always like free, especially when it comes to not spending money that could be better spent on God’s kingdom.
So, first things first. Should we be using stock photos in church material? As ever there are several factors to consider:
- How photogenic are your members?
- Are any of them on vulnerable lists and need to maintain privacy?
- If building pictures need to be used is yours suitable?
- Do you have the necessary equipment?
- Do you have the experience?
- Do you have the objects you want pictures of?
And I’m sure there are more I haven’t thought of.
The point here is that whilst you may have the necessary resources and members willing to be photographed i it right to use them? Morally I don’t have any problems and legally I don’t think, except maybe in the case of minors, we should have any issues either.
So should we use stock photos then? Personally it’s a wholehearted yes with a major caveat! That being only if the picture is appropriate. So no using cheesy pictures of Hollywood B-list stars with smiles brighter than the sun if you don’t have people like that in your church.
Once you’ve established you’re going to use stock photos the only remaining question comes down to paid, free or free with limitations. You need to be aware that with stock photos free isn’t always free. In this case free means you are free to use it within the limitations / guidelines set out by the publisher or photographer.
These ‘free’ restrictions could include:
- Usage – as in where it will be placed in your material.
- Duration – how long do you want to use the image for?
- Print Run – not relevant in web terms but when printing brochures, etc
- Territory – some images are restricted to use in limited locations
- Size – how large is your use going to be?
To be fair though, most free stock photo sites are just that – free and even though it isn’t requested it is polite to cite where you got the picture from.
So now we’ve determined acceptability and usage we can finally go find what we want. But where?
- stock.xchng is my all time favourite. Requires a free registration and most images are restriction free. They are definitely the largest out there that I know with >300,00o images. Part of this maybe because they are backed by iStockPhoto one of the larger fee based stock photo sites.
- morgueFile in contrast is probably one of the longer running free stock photo sites having been around since 1996 and certainly is my first stop for images. They’re not as large as stock.xchng with >200,000 images on the site.
- freerange is fairly new to me but still good. They differ in that they aim to provide free stock photos to commercial as well as non-commercial alike. Secondly, they have a small but dedicated team of photographers who take, edit and tag each picture. The emphasis here is definitely on quality not quantity. A free registration is required.
- flickr I couldn’t do a list without including the grand daddy of photo sharing sites. So you’re just as likely to find a nightmare as an ideal picture here but I find flickr is superb when looking for ideas that aren’t easy to pin down such as ‘love’ or ‘tension’. Again a free registration is required to download most pictures and they are typically offered in a range of sizes. I find it best when using images from flickr to drop the author a quick note saying how you plan to use it – so far I’ve not had any negative replies.
- everystockphoto is not a stock photo site per se but a search engine for stock photos. However, unlike it’s title it doesn’t search every site but a limited selection of sites … most of which are free. My advice, use the advanced search and un-check the options you don’t want.
Naturally there are many, many more sites I could list but with the above five I usually find what I want. If these don’t satisfy you then I have one more link that should meet your every need as a designer …
Blue Vertigo – as their entry banner says “more than resources”. I came across this site a few years ago and their links section (see my hotlink) is continually expanding and is constantly checked by their team. The site has an odd way of presenting itself with a static top half and the bottom half scrolls left to right through the links – you’ll also need good eyesight or a larger font as they are quite small.
What sites do you use?
Do you use stock photos? Why or why not?
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Social Media Overload
Posted on December 7, 2009
Isn’t social media cool?
- FriendFeed
- Google Wave
- YouTube
- Flickr
- Many others
Plus, there are so many ways to communicate one on one (or even with multiple people):
- Google Talk
- MSN Messenger
- Yahoo Messenger
- Texting
- Cellphone (or <gasp> home phone – I think people that still have a home phone are in the minority now)
- Many others
At what point do we say enough is enough?
Are you at that point yet?
Did you reach that point long ago?
Catch more on this topic here.
Join the discussion at the CTM forum here.
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Frugal Sermon Podcasting
Posted on November 30, 2009
This is a guest post written by Angela Mullins, a volunteer Technical Arts Director at Sixth Street Baptist Church in Alexander City, Alabama where she leads teams responsible for all audiovisual and information systems duties.
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I am a volunteer Technical Director of a small to medium size church with an average attendance of 250 each Sunday morning. Our area has also been hit badly by the economic downturn. Maybe you can identify, but needless to say, money is tight. I’m still a stickler for doing things as professionally as possible, so I am constantly on the lookout for quality ways to do things cheap.
When I assumed responsibility for our audio media ministry a CD recorder had just been purchased to make the move from recording to cassette. That process required ripping the recorded CD to the computer, editing the head and tail of the sermon track in Soundforge and then uploading via ftp to our church website. The whole process was a little more time consuming than I, as a volunteer, could keep up with at times. Not to mention the cost of CDs, labels, and cases – two per week.
We have since turned off the CD recorder and send the post fade auxiliary feed directly to the computer – the same computer we use to project from EasyWorship during the service. So far our Dell Dimension 9200 has had no problem recording and sending audio/video out. I purchased an M-audio Transit external sound card for about $80 to handle the dual I/O delivery, and it works like a charm. However this purchase is not necessary to the overall process.
Our program for recording is the free, but powerful Audacity. I used Mike Sessler’s tips on recording & processing to create a smaller file for podcasting. Usually the PC operator for the service runs the compression process then exports the Audacity file to mp3 and closes everything out. Later, I open the mp3 file in MP3DirectCut, which is also free, to clean up the head and tail of the recording.
MP3DirectCut is a simple mp3 editing tool that doesn’t have to convert to its own format. It’s convenient for us since I usually do my little bit of editing after the recording has been saved and Audacity has been closed out. Most audio editors save an editable file in its own extension which creates another file on the computer. For us we would have both the .mp3 and .aud audio files for each recording taking up space on the computer. By using MP3DirectCut we never save a .aud file. We only work with the mp3.
Next in the process is uploading files to our free account on sermon.net. Their Sermon Studio allows uploading of graphics, notes, scripture references, and audio file. You get your own sermon.net page where an archive of sermons is available for listening. Plus their sermon player is an embeddable gadget for your website with a built-in Bible for following along with the message. Sermon.net provides an RSS feed to iTunes as well.
Over the last couple of years we have developed a pretty streamlined process of recording and podcasting that now makes it possible to have our Sunday morning sermon available to the world by the time I sit down to lunch. The only cost is a few minutes of time.
Please comment with questions or observations, or better yet, join the discussion at the CTM forum.
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Follow Angela on Twitter: @acmul
Read Angela’s non-technical blog: Coffee House Conversations.
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» Tags: podcast, podcasting, volunteers
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Simple Copyright Solutions
Posted on November 23, 2009
I get more questions about copyright and the legal use of copyrighted materials in church than any other topic. Sadly, most of those conversations start with music pastor or tech director looking for a loophole, or trying to justify a copyright violation. So we walk through that conversation, but it ends up here.
Honoring copyright law, in both letter and spirit is simply the right thing to do. I wrote more about that on TechnoPraxis again this morning.
There is no question that copyright in the US is complicated. The law is dense. Fair use is a limited, and confusing area that often does not apply to the activities of a church. Churches, other than when performing or exhibiting religious works during religious services, enjoy no blanket exemption from the law.
Add to that the fact that we have three separate and unrelated performance rights organizations: ASCAP, SESAC and BMI. That makes licensing and staying legal more complicated.
Fortunately, there are some relatively simple solutions available to churches. Here’s a quick rundown of some of them. This is also the place that I should remind you that I’m not an attorney, and don’t play one on TV. If you have specific questions about your situation, go find a lawyer that specializes in intellectual property law.
CCLI
Church Copyright Licensing International offers the most well known blanket license. It allows you to do the following for all songs in their library:
- Print songs and lyrics in programs and bulletins.
- Create songsheets or songbooks for your congregation.
- Project lyrics for congregational singing.
- Create your own arrangements of covered songs, if no published version is available.
- Record your service and distribute those recordings, subject to restrictions on number of copies and price. NOTE: This does not cover creating a music CD of your worship band, whether it was done during a worship service or not.
CCLI does NOT allow you to copy music, to translate music, or rent or lend songbooks made under the license to other groups.
CVLI
Church Video Licensing International offers a blanket license that allows you to playback movies or other videos from covered producers in church or Sunday school gatherings. There are some restrictions, including one that says you MAY NOT promote a specific title. In other words, you can promote a movie night, but you can’t invite your congregation to a showing of a specific title under this license.
Christian Copyright Solutions – AKA Copyright Solvers has several great products.
They offer WorshipCast, which is a blanket license that covers web streaming of the music in your worship service. Much less hassle than getting individual licenses and reporting to three agencies. You can acquire this license pretty easily online directly from the performance rights organizations. You will, however, have to do reports for the music you use to all three. The ability to file one report with the blanket is well worth the minimal extra cost.It only covers streaming, however. It does NOT cover downloads of .mp3’s or other formats.
They also offer PerformMusic, which is a blanket performance license for playback of music outside of worship services. Yes, it is required! The Willow Creek Creek Association offers a similar blanket license, that I believe is simply a part of your association membership. Great benefit for members. UPDATE: WCA no longer offers this directly. Instead, they have a relationship with Christian Copyright Solutions, and members of WCA get some significant discounts!
Copyright Solvers also has a great new service called VideoReady. If you are a video producer, looking to do music videos with contemporary tunes, or funeral tributes with music backgrounds, this is the service for you. They offer sync licenses that are very affordable.
This list probably (almost certainly) isn’t exhaustive. If you know of another cool copyright tool available online, pass it on in the comments!
The bottom line is this. It’s possible to be legal about things. More than ever, it’s pretty affordable thanks to these new services. There’s really no reason not to stay copyright clean!
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