Originally published by Church Production:  https://www.churchproduction.com/sponsored/audinate/how-dante-av-and-aja-4k-converters-solve-av-challenges-at-ch/

Feeling hemmed in by SDI’s 300-foot limitations with video over IP? The tech team at Church of the City in Spring Hill, Tennessee, has been feeling the need to upgrade their video infrastructure for this very reason. While everything they have is currently working, plans for expanding video capabilities across the campus are currently limited by the need for SDI or Fiber cables. So, as part of the Church Production Road Test User Experience, JR Benton, Church of the City’s Director of Production, agreed to a trial integrating Dante’s AV Platform as well as AJA 4KT, and 4KR AV devices into the church’s existing Dante Network.

“Unfortunately, with most converters you can get some pretty bad delay or some artifacting or compression issues, but with these Dante AV devices, we didn’t experience that at all,” Benton reports. “The codec and the bit rate are extremely high while being efficient on our network. The other thing I love about these devices, that they’re 4K capable, meaning that we would be future-proofing our system far into the future by having these devices in the proper CAT6 cabling.”

Their current video system is all Blackmagic Cinema Cameras, their router is a 40 by 40 from Blackmagic, and they’re running an 8ME Constellation as the main video switcher. Benton says one of the best things about utilizing the Dante AV converters was how simple it was to add them to their existing Dante system, which opened up a world of options for expanding AV throughout the building.

“Whenever you have a building that’s outfitted with a Dante infrastructure, but not a ton of video infrastructure everywhere, it makes getting video to some auxiliary spaces or rooms incredibly easy,” Benton enthuses. “So even if there’s a room that you don’t have video network set up, if you have a Dante network, all you have to do is just connect these converters, integrate them onto your Dante network, and you can send high quality audio and video to every room that you need to all over Dante, you don’t have to run SDI or Fiber.”

To hear more about Benton’s experience with the Dante AV Platform and AJA 4KT and 4KR converters, watch this video!