Frequently Asked Questions

We often get asked what comm headsets our production team uses for our events and services. Ask no more!  Sensaphonics makes an earpiece called the TC1000. It runs about $600 (not including cost for in-ear molds and visit to an audiologist) and is an ear saver.  Why do we use this? Great question! When over the ear muffs are used in a live setting, the effect can sometimes be like a musician playing with a wedge for a monitor. The levels coming out of the muff (or wedge) have to overcome the ambient noise in the room, which can lead to extremely loud levels and hearing damage. Having an in-ear headset enables the user to use lower overall levels, which helps protect one of our most precious assets – our hearing. When paired with a molded musician earplug in the other ear, overall comm levels can be lowered for greater comfort

We record (capture) our services to several digital video recording devices. We use a networked digital recorder called Telestream Pipeline and also several AJA KiPro Rack recorders, which basically look and feel like a VTR replacement. The Pipeline is a two channel device that’s attached to a local PC and the files are recorded directly to our SAN, for immediate access by our editors. The KiPro recorders have 500GB removable hard drives and the files can either be copied from the KiPro over the network or the KiPro drives can be removed and mounted locally in an edit suite. We use the KiPro recorders for recording clean feeds, camera ISO’s and Program backup. Our house recording format is ProRes 422 at 1080i. The Pipeline recorders capture the “Program” feed on one channel and a “wide shot” camera feed on the 2nd channel. These two video files are available immediately following the

We’ve tried VidCAD and Visio, but Visio lacked the features that we wanted & VidCAD was very complicated. So, several years ago we tried out WireCAD as is was a true CAD wiring software with a fairly easy learning curve. We like it because it had a reasonable price, easy to use, online tutorials, great support and the best feature was the ease in building equipment blocks. WireCAD is a true wiring schematic software program. Sure, it can open any DWG file, but it’s main use is for wiring signal flow diagrams. We started out making easy signal flow drawings, and now we do al lour system documentation inside WireCAD. It keeps things organized , creates cable labels, does rack elevations and even patchbay layouts. I would say that it’s not as easy to use as Visio, but onc eyou get the hang of signal flow and how everything flows

The window shades in our Main Auditorium are custom made shades on motorized lines hafts controlled by iRig software. We have ten very large windows in our Main Auditorium, five on each side of the stage. Each window is approximately 14 feet wide by 40 feet tall. The sides of the window openings were fitted with a metal channel that runs the length of the window, on each side from top to bottom. This channel creates a light lock for the edge of the rolling window shade to fit into, thus keeping sunlight from peeking in between the fabric shade & the edge of the window. It works very well. The window shades are hand sewn fabric panels with a thick fabric backing to prevent light penetration. These hand sewn panels were then fitted onto a motorized lineshaft custom fitted to the window width. A software program called iRig is used to

Starting in 2010, the Leadership Summit has been recorded in HD with a full HD Production truck. However, the actual satellite broadcast has still been done in Standard Definition, mainly due to the fact that all of the satellite sites would need to have upgraded hardware & infrastructure to handle an HD satellite signal. We hope to be able to go to a full HD signal path in the next year or two. Regarding, which cameras we’ve been using for the Leadership Summit. Three years ago, it was all Sony HDC-1500U cameras, but the past two years, we’ve used mostly Hitachi Z-HD5000 & a couple of Z-HD1000 cameras. These are part of the TNDV Aspiration Production truck that we’ve brought in to do the show.