Church Tech Arts

Training is a great way to learn things. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of videos, read books, attended seminars and learned from real, live people. This is all very useful, but has the disadvantage of also being easily forgettable. Much like our own lives, the lessons that stick with us the best come when we are under pressure. It’s easy to forget God when things are going well; however difficulties tend to draw us close to Him. Likewise, it’s easy to learn a product feature in a seminar, but if you really want to sear it into your brain, wait for the day when the service is actually running and something goes wrong. That’s when you learn things.

Such was the case yesterday at church. We had a new lighting volunteer, though since he’s been observing for the last 4 weeks, he’s not really new. He had no trouble programming the cues for the service, and everything ran perfectly during run through. We thought we were all set for the beginning of the service. When it came time to dip to black for the intro video, all the lights stayed on. And the band lights (with color changers) actually looked brighter. What the heck?

Since the video was already running, I grabbed the grand master and pulled it down. I went into the blind and looked at the cue. It looked fine. All the fixtures were at 0. Now I was puzzled. But the video was ending and we needed to come back up. So we fired the next cue, pulled up the grand master and waited to see what happened. The lights came on, and everything appeared normal.

However, when we went to run the next video, the same thing happened. No lights were going down. We scrambled around for a bit, and used the grandmaster to get us in and out, but things were not right. The band lights were all up when just the speaker lights were supposed to be. I looked at the cue in the blind, re-recorded it and fired it during the prayer. Same thing. Band lights, and speaker lights. We managed to muck our way through the rest of the service, but it was not pretty.

Between gatherings, I started playing with it. We went to top of the cue list, and starting firing off cues. Same thing. Somehow, the lights just wouldn’t go down. I tried a whole bunch of things before I had the “Doh!” moment. Somehow, the operator accidently fired a cue in the C/D masters, and that took over most of the lights. Normally we run everything in the A/B masters, but since the C/D side already had most of the lights lit, all we were doing with the A/B side was bringing the color changers in and out. I hit clear on the C/D faders and everything returned to normal. Crisis averted, time for dinner.

Lessons Learned
So what can we learn from this? First of all, it’s important to realize that mistakes happen. I wouldn’t blame this on the light op, because I could just have easily hit “Go” on the C/D bus as on the A/B bus and had the same problem. Now that we know the result of that kind of mistake, we focused on prevention. We but a piece of board tape below the A/B Go button and drew a big arrow to it. That will help. If I really wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again, I could create some kind of cover for the C/D buttons to make sure they’re not hit. But that’s just prevention.

What about when something like that happens again. I’ve written about this before, but the first thing to do is not to panic. After you’re done not panicking, you need to quickly come up with a temporary fix to keep the service moving forward. We needed to take the lights to black, so I grabbed the grand master and pulled it down. That bought us time to think. Second, look at the big picture. Barring outright equipment failure (which happens less often than we initially think), most of the problems we encounter with our gear are man-made. We push the wrong button, assign the channel wrong, improperly place a mic. 

I initially blamed the board, and though it went out of control (I’m only partially justified in this, as our previous lighting system did occasionally go rouge). Had I taken a deeper breath and stood back and looked at the board, I would have seen that there was cue fired in the C/D bus, hit clear and we’d have been back in business before the video ended. To his credit, the new lighting op said he saw that, but didn’t know what it meant. Another point of training. He saw it and didn’t know what it meant; I didn’t see it, but would have known had I seen it. What was missing there was communication. If you’re troubleshooting with another person, speak what you see. You may not know the significance of it, but they might. And don’t assume that what you see is not significant, even if you have far less experience that the other person. Sometimes, problems are solved when one person says something that triggers a thought in another person and the trouble is found. Talk to each other (it’s a good rule in life, come to think about it…)

Get to know your equipment, and learn how it works. I’ve gotten pretty good at our lighting board, an ETC Expression 3, but I’ve not played with using the two master busses much. Had I spent more time with it, it would have been more obvious to me what the problem was. Next time it happens, I’ll know. The same thing can happen with other types of gear. One of the first times I mixed on the M7, I spent a good 2-3 minutes trying to figure out why the bass wasn’t coming through. I had input signal, but it wasn’t coming out anywhere. I checked my patching, the master, inserts, finally, “Doh!,” it was assigned to the wrong DCA, and that DCA was turned off. Had I glanced at the DCA assignments in the channel overview page, I would have checked that earlier.

Share your mistakes and solutions. One of the things I’ll take away from this experience is to make sure I go over this with the other lighting operators. I’ll show them exactly what happened (I may even simulate it, and have them try to solve it), so they’ll know too. The only thing worse than having a problem like that in a service is having it happen again because you didn’t train everyone on it. We all make mistakes. What separates good technicians from the great ones is that the great ones learn from mistakes–theirs and the mistakes of others. Perhaps, this article will help bail someone else out of a jam. That’s my hope anyway!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently picked up two Chauvet D-Fi wireless DMX units. The motivation behind this purchase was to save the hassle of running 200′ of DMX cable from our tech booth (in the back of the balcony) all the way to upstage left–and picking it up every weekend. We needed to control two of our portable 4-channel dimmers from our Expression 3, and wireless seemed to be the way to go.

Initial research suggested that wireless DMX units were pretty pricey; often exceeding $500-600 per end (a transmitter and a receiver is needed for any such system). While running the cable would be a pain, spending $1000+ was not an option if I wanted to get anything else done this year with my meager budget.

Enter the Chauvet D-Fi. The units themselves are pretty unglamorous. Made of simple extruded aluminum, they seem reasonably rugged. A model of simplicity, each unit can be switched to be a transmitter or a receiver. One end houses 3-pin input/output/through jacks, while the other end has a jack for 12v power (external wall wart), dip switches for selecting frequency and Tx/Rx mode, the antenna, and LEDs for status indication.

The D-Fi has just been updated, and I managed to hit stock turnover just right. I received one of the old units and one of the new units. There are only 2 differences between old and new–the original unit used one of 2 frequencies in the 900 Mhz range, while the new is selectable between 6; for an antenna, the old came with a 1/4 wave, the new has a 1/2 wave. Presumably, the 1/2 wave antenna will provide a little better range, and the additional 4 channels will help ensure you can find a clean frequency for operation.

What attracted me to the D-Fi was the price. You can find them all over the web for $180 each, which means you can sent an entire DMX universe a few hundred feet (it’s rated for 100 meters, line of sight) for just over $350. Since a simple 200′ DMX cable was going to cost me $150, this seemed like a reasonable upgrade, especially considering the labor savings for an eight-week series.

But that’s only if it works. I’m pleased to report, it does. Quite well. I was initially disappointed to see the inclusion of 3 pin connectors for the DMX. According to the official DMX-512 standards, the correct pinout is a 5 pin. The audio industry standardized on 3 pin XLRs for audio many years ago; it would be nice if the lighting industry would do the same with 5 pins. This is especially important since a mic cable does not have the correct impedance (110 Ohms is specified for DMX), and including XLR connectors on the D-Fi encourages the bad practice of using mic cable for DMX cable.

However, a few minutes with a soldering iron and some DMX cable solved that issue; I simply made up some 3 pin to 5 pin adapters to properly interface with my lighting board and dimmers. Once I had cabling out of the way, setting the units up couldn’t have been easier. Simply set the dip switches to a matching frequency, pick one as transmitter and one as receiver and you’re done. I placed the transmitter up in the light cove above our tech booth, and plugged into universe 2 on our Expression 3. I placed the receiver on stage (about 100′ away, with no obstructions) and plugged into the dimmer. The lights indicated that I had a connection and after a little patching on the Expression, I was controlling lights on stage. It was that easy.

One thing I noted is that the LEDs are very bright. As in annoyingly bright. I ended up placing a few pieces of gaff over the LEDs so they wouldn’t be distracting as they blink constantly when a link is in place. 

We have used the D-Fi with our portable dimmers on for 2 weekends now, with excellent results. We also used them to save us some work running cable for a large mid-week event. Instead of running cable up a balcony to hit 3 Martin Mac 700s, we used the D-Fi. Again, it worked flawlessly. I couldn’t detect any lag in the issuing of commands, and looped cues that moved the lights around during walk in ran perfectly. 

For that event, we connected the D-Fi to the output of universe 1, and looped through to 3 other lights on the stage. It was nice to be able to loop through instead of using a second universe and re-patching all the fixtures. 

While I realize there are more expensive (and arguably better) wireless DMX units out there, the Chauvet fills the bill for what we need. The cost/value ratio is very high, and I would recommend it to any church looking to send a DMX universe from here to there without wires. Since it occupies the 900 Mhz space, the DTV transition is a non-issue. If I were touring, I might worry about the fragile nature of the power connection, and perhaps the antenna, but I’m not and I take care of my gear. If we go portable for a while next year when we plant, I will be using this every week for sure. Otherwise, it’s a handy problem-solver to have at a reasonable price. This one gets the Church Tech Arts seal of approval.

When I joined Upper Room, our tech booth was in need of, how to say, a little rennovation. There was a lot equipment packed into a small space. Some of it was hooked up, some not. Wires were coming in from all over the church; some labeled, some not. And there was some equipment that could best be described as “temporary.”

This is what I walked into when I started. (click on any of the photos to enlarge)

This is the view looking in from the doorway. Welcome to Minnesota!

The video control desk. I’m not even kidding, this is what it looked like.

I have nothing to say about this.

How about that lightboard. Yup–it says Behringer. And yes, those are cinder blocks.

The reason for the cramped table space was this huge rack,
with hardly anything in it. Part of the original deisgn-build.

Clearly I had some work to do. What you don’t see is some really bad wiring (BNC ends not crimped, but put on with heat shrink; DMX cable running next to fixtures with melted insulation; a DMX network with no splitter or DA; a single audio feed from FOH that had 9-count ‘em 9- Y-cords in it; etc.). For the first month, my main task every Sunday was just trying to make things work. I don’t like having to function in such a situation, so I decided to start tearing things apart, and making it better. I wanted to be like Ty and just blow it up. But they wouldn’t let me. So a rennovation was in order.

As the first step, we pulled all of the DMX cables and ran new ones. We had been having issues with lights turning on and off randomly, or not responding at all. Rather than mess with it, we ran new. I also installed a DMX DA to properly split the DMX signal to the 4 dimmer racks and color scroller. Contrary to popular wisdom, you’re not supposed to split a DMX signal without a splitter. Causes all kinds of relections and other bad stuff.

Next, we tackled the audio feed. I pulled all the Y-cords and used a proper DA (which, oddly enough was lying on the floor in a pile of cables…go figure). I also cleaned up the video table with a proper rack, and replaced the monitor. We moved the rack to a better part of the room, and added another table. In the process, we dumped the el-cheapo DJ style Behringer light board for an ETC Express 3 (which, also oddly enough, was sitting in a closet, unused–I wish I had good explanations for this…) Just doing this was a huge improvement.

You feel better already, don’t you?

It’s starting to look like a real tech booth now.

The video desk still has a big clump of wires on the floor, but at least you can put your feet under the desk now and not worry about turning the cameras off (that was a real issue before. I wish I was joking).

The extra table gives everyone room to spread out, and easily accommodates the new light board. I can now stand between the presentation tech and the light tech and see what’s going on in the room. There’s now an iMac on the left side as well, but I forgot to take a picture of that.

I call this phase, part 1. Clearly it’s an improvement, but I knew there was more work to do. It got us through the last half of the ministry year, however, and everyone just felt better coming in to do their thing. It’s amazing the difference the physical space has on how one performs their job. In the old space, which was clearly in chaos and not thought highly enough by anyone at the church to clean up and improve, the volunteers felt unappreciated and didn’t take their jobs too seriously. It was fun watching the looks on their faces when they came in the first time after phase 1. Not surprisingly, everyone’s game improved.

As I said, there was still work to do. Though Cat-5 cable was pulled all over the church, and video over Cat-5 baluns purchased, the system to route the video was a bit convoluted. This made for some challenging times at Easter and a later large funeral. Though we had a tie line between the stage and the booth, using it to send video (or SGA signals) down there was difficult. And we could not easily address the projectors and any other video destination separately.

Audio was also an ongoing challenge. Though I’ve taken to mixing our own mix remotely using Studio Manager (read about it here…), controlling the volume was a challenge. And I found we were sending too hot a signal to the DVD burner, which meant most of our recordings were distorted. While I had sorted out the big problems during phase 1, what we needed was a plan. A holistic plan to accomplish what we needed to, and make it easy. Here’s what I came up with. You can click to enlarge, or view a PDF of the file here.

This plan gives us a lot of options. We can send video to anywhere, in full RGBHV resolution, without effecting any other destination. I can address our sanctuary projectors independently, and can send sanctuary cameras, or computer, or DVD, to the multi-purpose room, fireside room or fellowship hall for overflow–all with the push of a button. Audio can now be controlled properly, and the booth volume no longer effects the record volume. Best of all, I’ve posted this diagram in the booth, so anyone can take a minute and figure out how to get video and audio where they need it.

I also went through and labeled all the cables. I’m a big proponent of labeled cable. It takes no time to do, and saves so much time down the road. One of the interesting things about this plan is that it required very little new gear. Most of the equipment on the diagram was already there, it just wasn’t utilized. Or it was in another room not being used. I did buy a new scan converter, a scaler, a BNC patcbay (so I can turn around our tie line to the stage and use it as an input or output), and I’ll be picking up a DBX 266 compressor to manage levels on the booth feed. Otherwise, my predesessors bought everything else.

After two really long days, this is how the booth turned out.

Finally, it looks like it should. It’s almost Zen-like now, wouldn’t you agree?

Oh, I forgot, I also bought the Alesis M1 powered speakers. And the hardware to wall-hang them. I’m very happy with those. There’s still a lot of wire running down the wall…I may wiremold that some time in the future.

What was once an unruly mess is now a comfortable workspace. I even left some desk space open to put my laptop on Sundays. There’s an 8 port network switch tucked back there, so I can go wired.

This rack used to be half-empty, and what was there was not all that effective. I’ve moved all of our RGBHV routing, switching and distribution here. This keeps the runs short, and makes it easy to wire. The Cat-5 video also leaves from this rack now. Future updates will include moving the Clear-Com base station up here (from FOH), and additional Cat-5 video baluns, as well as the aforementioned BNC patchbay.

So there you have it. Already, people who have seen it feel really good about it. It’s much easier to work in, and it just feels better. There’s so much to be said for having a workspace that feels productive. And when you raise the bar in your physical plant, the people who work in it will step up as well.

We still have some gear that could be upgraded. Our camera package is essentially a security camera system. Our video mixer, the MX-20, is getting a bit long in the tooth. And some real broadcast monitors would be nice. But given what we actaully do with video right now (which is not much more than archive), the current gear is fine. And I want a new PA first.

Personally, I feel really good about it. Many were thrilled with Phase 1, but I knew it was only 1/2 complete. Now that it’s done, I’m ready to go on to our next project. I’ll be telling you about that in the coming weeks. For now, I’ll just say that this was good practice.

It’s half-way through sound check. So far everything is running along fine, but then it happens. You get to the acoustic guitar played by the worship leader and…nothing. She fiddles with her settings, taps the tuner and…nothing. You check your settings on the board, all appears to be OK and…nothing. This may never happen to you (wink, wink), but it’s happened to me.

Some days, it seems all I do is solve problems. Perhaps it’s just part of my chosen profession, my strengths makeup, my inability to say “No,” or just something I’m really good at. Either way, I do a lot of troubleshooting. It’s even to the point of regular troubleshooting sessions via phone or e-mail with friends in different parts of the country. Not that I mind, really. I enjoy the mental exercise of tracking down what is wrong, and the satisfaction—however brief—that another problem is at bay. With that in mind, I thought I would jot down a few notes about what I’ve learned in 20+ years of troubleshooting AV systems. For this article anyway, I’ll focus on signal path issues, as those tend to be the most common in churches. While I’ll use examples from the world of sound, the principles are equally applicable to video and data signal lines.

Stay Organized
One of my first rules about troubleshooting has nothing to do with troubleshooting at all. Staying organized will help you troubleshoot should the need arise. If during a soundcheck a mic isn’t working, and you have a huge pile of cable on the stage and don’t remember what’s plugged in where, finding the problem will take an inordinate amount of time. If you set everything up in a clear, organized, logical manner, finding the offending part will happen much sooner. I could tell you how to do all that, but that’s another post.

What Changed?
My first question is always the same, “What changed?” If something worked yesterday and now it doesn’t, what changed? If it’s a wireless mic, the obvious first answer is a battery. A sound or video system could have been re-patched. If you can answer the question, revert back to the pre-change state and see if it works. If it does, you need to determine what negative effect the change has. If not, you have other issues.

Go Linear
Random access is great for video editing and brainstorming, but not so great for troubleshooting. The best approach is to start at one end of the signal chain (I like to follow the direction of signal flow) and work your way to the end. True, sometimes by randomly changing out a cable or a DI you might get the result quicker than I would with a linear approach, but the truth is it’s a lucky guess. And you can waste a lot of time (often other people’s time if you have a stage full of musicians, and a house full of tech staff waiting on you) running around trying things that might work.

Eliminate the Bad Component
By starting at one end of the chain, the goal is to find a point where it works again. Once you’ve found that point, back up one component and you’ve got your culprit. This concept should become more clear in the examples to follow.

Tools and Tips
When starting the troubleshooting process, especially if time is of the essence, take everything you may need to fix the problem with you the first time. Acoustic guitar not working? Better grab a 1/4″ cable, a DI, a mic cable and a mic. Why the mic? To test the line. You could also use a signal injector if you have one. As I said earlier, I like to find something that works, then back up a step. Again, the examples should make it clear.

It’s most efficient to start at the source of the signal and work your way to the destination. I say this because it’s my experience that most often, the sources are the problem. It’s pretty rare (in fact, I can’t recall it ever happening) that an amp goes bad. So, starting with swapping out an amp is not an efficient step. And if an amp really has gone bad, you’ll get to it before long.

No Acoustic Guitar
This problem happened to us this past Sunday. During soundcheck, the worship leader started strumming and….nothing. Not a slight tickle of the meter. First, let me give you an overview of the signal chain. Acoustic guitar —> 1/4″ instrument cable —> tuner —> 1/4″ instrument cable —> DI—> subsnake —> subsnake —> house patchboard—>patchbay—>M7 (I didn’t say it was a simple chain, or even a good one, but it’s what we have for now…). So here’s how we troubleshoot. First, make sure the battery is good in the guitar (I’m amazed at how often this is the trouble). Next, we check the tuner to see if it’s getting a signal. It is. Make sure the guitar is plugged into the input of the tuner, not the output. I’ve seen this on more than one occasion. Move on to the next part.

Now, at this point we have two options. We could grab a cable checker and check the instrument cable. Or we could just swap it out (because we brought one with us before we started, right?). This turned out to be the problem, but let’s assume it wasn’t. DI’s rarely just fail, but it’s good to check to see if it’s an active DI that needs phantom power, and be sure phantom is turned on. If that hasn’t fixed it yet, we have issues with our lines. Here’s how we check those.

First, unplug the DI and plug in a mic. Do you have signal? If so, you’ve got a bad DI or you need phantom. No signal, try swapping out the cable between the mic and the first subsnake. Still nothing? Go to the second subsnake and be sure you’re patched properly. It that looks good, unplug snake 1 and plug in your mic (you could have a bad line in your subsnake). Nothing yet? Head back to the patch panel and check that patch. Then plug the mic into the patch panel. If you don’t have signal yet, you have a house wiring problem, or the back of your board is re-patched. At this point, I would quickly verify that channel 15 is actually plugged into channel 15 on the board. If it’s still not working, pick another channel and get back to work.

Hopefully that example illustrates the process. The goal is to find some point that works. We could have changed it up a little and made the first step unplugging the DI and plugging in a mic. That would have told us that the problem is between the guitar and the DI. Noting the signal at the tuner, we would now have as suspects an instrument cable (a common point of failure) and a DI (not so much). Swap the cable and 90% of the time you’re back in business.

In any case, the point is to make the process as efficient and logical as possible. If you’re new to troubleshooting systems, work your way all the way through each time. As you grow in your knowledge base, you can begin to test common points of failure first.

No Sound in the Speakers
I got a call from my former church last weekend as well. They had been hit by a storm which knocked out power, then surged back on. Everything seemed to come back up, but there was no sound coming out of the speakers. They had checked everything they could think of, but still no sound. Thankfully, I wired the system, so I knew the signal chain. Here’s what I talked them through.

First, I made sure there was actually signal going to the main mix busses of the board. The meters were working and headphones verified signal at the main mix buss. OK, so everything upstream of the board is functioning. That leaves the DriveRack (a dbx DriveRack 260 speaker management processor)and the amps. I had the tech move to the amp rack and tell me what he saw. Input meters on the DriveRack lighting up? Sure enough, they were. So far so good, the board is sending signal and the DriveRack is getting it. I asked if the amps were lighting up with input lights. Nope. Hmmm, DriveRack getting signal, not sending, odd. I asked what program it was set to…yup it’s the right one. I asked if the output meters on the DriveRack were moving. Nope. OK, are the channel mutes on? Indeed, when the DR came back up from a power loss, it muted all the output channels. I’ve not checked to see if this is a protection mechanism or a software glitch but either way, it held up the signal. Five clicks later and sound was flowing freely.

Interestingly, we had set up monitors 1&2 to run through an UltraCurve EQ, and when he got to the amp rack, it’s display was frozen. A quick power cycle fixed that and it started passing signal as well.

Again, the process is the same. We started at point A, the board, and ended at the last point, the amps. Once we found the component that was not passing signal (the DriveRack) we could turn our attention to fixing it.

So the lesson is this; start at one end and work your way to the other, eliminating components along the way. Work logically, and make sure your setup is clear and logical, and you’ll be back in business in no time!

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Here’s a few quick tips that made our lighting a little more interesting this weekend. We’re currently in a series called I AM, examining the I AM statements of Jesus. This week was “I AM the light of the world.” So we contrasted light and darkness. People entered by candlelight only. When our speaker got up to speak, we had only 2 lights on him, the rest of the room was black. However, over the course of his message, we brought up the stage and ambient lighting to a bright wash. We ended up doing a 27 minute fade. However, our ETC light board maxes out a 10:39 fade (why? 999 seconds–go figure).

So we ended up doing a 3 part fade. Part one was a fade from 0 to 33%, in 10:39. Part two went from 33-66% over another 10:39. The final 34% came up in about 7 minutes (I didn’t trust the speaker to go a full 30 min; I know, weird). To make sure we wouldn’t forget to fire the next part of the fade, I used the “Follow” command. Follow is the time between firing the cue, and the time the board automatically goes to the next one. In this case, I made my follows the same as my up time, so it was one continuous 28 minute fade. Pretty cool.

Well almost. Seems when I programmed the third step, I selected the lights and hit “AT-1-0-ENTER,” not “At-1-0-0-Enter.” Whoopsie! I knew something was up at the end of step 2 when the lights stopped at 65%. A few seconds into the third step, they dropped to 64%. I immediately hit “Hold,” stopping the cue and went into “Blind” mode.

Blind mode lets me look at a cue and modify it, without affecting the stage lights. I pulled up the cue, and sure enough there sat all my lights at 10%. I quickly re-selected them and this time hit “AT-FULL” and re-wrote the cue. Switching back to Stage mode, I re-fired the third step, which restarted the timer and took the lights to full. No one was the wiser.

So there you go, a few tricks for doing long fades.

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Anyone that knows me well knows I love to read. I normally read 10-14 trade magazines a month, many cover to cover. I also try to fit a few good books in there as well. My theory is that things change so quickly in our field, and there is always something new to learn. In addition to the old standbys I’ve been reading for some time (Front of House, Live Sound, Pro Sound News, Church Production, Technologies for Worship, Digital Content Producer, Videography, Post, Studio, among others), I’ve recently been reading through some new ones.

Lighting and Sound America
As you might expect, the focus of this mag is on lighting and sound (those magazine guys are so clever!). They cover various topics related to the entertainment industry. The current issue has an article on the Rascal Flats tour, a Mary Kay Convention, Disney’s High School Musical tour, and Club Med Cancun. I find I don’t read every article, but there are some great ideas for stage design and I find it always pays to find out what equipment is being used by touring companies and installers. Check it out, you can probably qualify for a free subscription.

Live Design
This mag focuses primarily on stage and lighting design. Again, there are some great ideas here for churches. The current issue has articles on Eric Clapton’s Concert at Crossroads benefit, the future of club lighting, TWFM’s presence at LDI, and an interview with Rick Seigel, Director of Photography and Lighting Designer. It’s a pretty wide swath of topics. The articles are pretty well written and informative. Again, free subscriptions are available.

HDVideoPro
This is a new magazine that showed up on our doorstep a few months ago. I have to say, it is one of the most useful and informative video mags I’ve ever read. Every article was solid and educational, and they covered a wide range of topics. I learned more from that issue than from 6 months worth of other mags. From technical articles to equipment reviews to interviews with industry professionals, this one has it all. If you are doing video work in a ministry setting, this is a good one for you. Sadly it will cost you 20 bucks a year, but I would say it’s worth it.

So there you have it, a selection of my favorite new magazines for the moment. What about you, do you have any that you recommend? Leave a comment so we can all benefit!