In Touch Ministries

CASE STUDY:
In Touch Ministries
LOCATION: Atlanta, GA.
GOAL: Delivering a global message to over 2,600 Radio and TV outlets.
SOLUTION: Primestream’s FORK™ software-based platform for media asset management
and production automation.
;
Gary Longenecker – Production Manger - In Touch Ministries
IN TOUCH MINISTRIES
DELIVERING A GLOBAL MESSAGE TO OVER
2,600 RADIO AND TV OUTLETS.
Undeniably, technology has changed the way houses of worship
spread their message. It used to be that the primary means of reaching
worshippers was through an on-site service once a week or so, and
outreach was mostly limited to the people who physically came to the
building and listened to the sermon. But there was no way to expand
the ministry in any meaningful way short of building another building
and establishing another in-person congregation.
As technology has evolved, however, it’s become possible for houses
of worship to reach ever-greater numbers of people more easily than
ever before.
In Touch Ministries is one example of how technology can drastically
broaden a house of worship’s reach. In Touch Ministries, the teaching
ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, senior pastor of the First Baptist
Church of Atlanta, reaches people through worldwide broadcasts.
An Overview of
In Touch Ministries
• Founded in 1972.
• “In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley”
can be heard around the world via
radio and television broadcasts,
podcasts, the handheld In Touch
Ministries Messenger, In Touch
Apps, and the Web.
• Programs are seen and heard on
more than 2,600 radio and television
outlets in more than 50 languages
worldwide.
• The ministry produces CDs, DVDs,
books, discipleship resources,
and the award-winning In Touch
magazine, delivered to more than
1.5 million households every month.
“
FORK is the heartbeat
of everything we do.
Every asset we have flows
through that system.
It streamlines our
workflows, gives us
checks and balances
we didn’t have before,
and ultimately improves
quality.
”
John McKinnon, Director of
Broadcast Operations,
In Touch Ministries.
Matthew Johnson – System Administrator – In Touch Ministries
FORK HAS BECOME THE BACKBONE
OF OUR FILE-BASED OPERATION
It started in 1972 with a half-hour program called “The
Chapel Hour,” which ran on two Atlanta-area television
stations. A few years later, the Christian Broadcasting
Network contacted Dr. Stanley about including the
program on its new venture, a satellite distribution
network to cable systems that today is one of the
largest television ministries in the world. With that, the
broadcast grew from a few thousand local viewers to
a nationwide audience in a single week. Today, “In
Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley” can be seen and
heard around the world on more than 2,600 radio and
television outlets in more than 50 languages, and also
via podcasts, In Touch smartphone apps, the Web,
and a solar-powered, hand-held audio device known
as the “In Touch Ministries Messenger.” “Clearly our
ministry has embraced technological advancements,
which have allowed us to get our message to many
more people than we could have back in 1972,”
says John McKinnon, In Touch Ministries’ Director
of Broadcast Operations. Part of this expansion is
thanks to digital file-based media. The broadcast
industry has been moving away from tape for the
past decade, and the ministry decided to follow suit.
After transitioning to digital cameras, they migrated
away from our previous media asset management
(MAM) system and began using Primestream’s FORK
software. “In the several months that we’ve been
using it,” McKinnon says, “FORK has become the
backbone of our file-based operation.”
“
We migrated away from our previous media
asset management (MAM) system and began using
Primestream’s FORK. In the several months that we’ve
been using it, FORK has become the backbone of our
file-based operation.
”
By John McKinnon,
Director of Broadcast Operations, In Touch Ministries.
David Possien – Editor - In Touch Ministries
PRODUCTION WORKFLOW
THE HIGH-RESOLUTION RECORDINGS ARE LOADED INTO FORK, AND FORK
MAKES LOW-RESOLUTION PROXIES AND TAGS METADATA.
The television Ministry functions more like a post
house than a broadcast operation, and it works on
one primary program: “In Touch with Dr. Charles
Stanley.” To create the show, they start by recording
two recitations of a sermon every Sunday. With the
program feed plus nine different ISO cameras, they
end up with 20 different recordings of the same sermon. The high-resolution recordings are loaded into
FORK, and FORK makes low-resolution proxies and
tags the metadata. From there, producers can access the proxies from their own workstations to make
notes and rough cuts using the FORK Proxy Editor.
Then our editors take those notes and create a project in Apple Final Cut for postproduction.
“One of the great things about FORK is that it works
with just about any nonlinear editor, ” John McKinnon
says,“ so if we decide to change systems, we know
FORK will be compatible. During the week we’ll create pickup segments, such as ads for in-house CDs
or DVDs, programs, or commercials for our ministry
partners,” he explains, “which are loaded into FORK
to await integration with the Sunday sermons.” “Once
the Sunday sermon production is complete, that
show gets segmented into 30-minute and one-hour
pieces. These get packaged along with the commercials or promos, published back into FORK, dubbed
onto tapes as needed, and sent to the various TV and
radio stations or distributed in other ways.”
Anne MacMillan – Archivist – In Touch Ministries
WHY WE CHOSE FORK
“WE CHOSE FORK BECAUSE IT COULD DO MORE THAN OUR PREVIOUS SYSTEM
EVER COULD — WITH PLENTY OF ROOM TO GROW.”
Director of Broadcast John McKinnon has a long
list of reasons why In Touch Ministries chose FORK.
“The customizable scripting on the backend means
we’ve been able to create workflows that reduce our
need for manual processes, like automatically notifying producers when projects are available from an
editor, for example.” “Another factor that sold us
was the relationship we developed with Primestream
during the sales process, which played a key role in
our decision to buy,” he says. “From the moment we
met the Primestream team at NAB in 2011, we knew
Primestream would be a long-term partner. We use
multiple file formats and codecs because of our different cameras, however, Primestream didn’t bat an
eye; they just made it work.”
They also have a lot of old closed-caption files
linked with their video which they wanted to do word
searches on, but hadn’t seen any systems that could.
“While we were still in the decision-making process,
before there was even a contract, Primestream took
the initiative to develop just such a workflow,” John
McKinnon relates. “That dedication went a long way.”
WHY WE LOVE FORK
FORK HAS STREAMLINED AND AUTOMATED MANY PROCESSES. INCREASING
COMMUNICATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY ARE STANDARD FEATURES.
For example, when a project is created on an editor’s
desktop, FORK will automatically notify the producer
if he or she needs to create a clip from that project for
the Web or social media. The Producers can create
clips on desktops and then send them to FORK, which
will manage the transcoding and ensure the file gets
uploaded. FORK also increases both accountability
and communication — a standard feature.
An editor can place a project back into FORK, but
FORK won’t let it progress to the next step without
the proper information and sign-off. The information
required at each stage is specified during setup,
McKinnon explains, “and if a piece is not where
it’s expected to be at a given time, then we know
to go back to the last person in the chain or to the
producer for sign-off.” The fact that they can record
and manipulate content digitally rather than on
tape makes it much quicker, easier and more costeffective to prepare programming.
“We’ve reduced tape costs substantially because
we no longer have to make dubs during the post
process, and we’re sending out fewer tapes every
month,” he says. “Once the file is approved, it can
be automatically transcoded with our in-house
Telestream Vantage system and then distributed,
with everything flowing through FORK.”
PRESERVING THEIR LEGACY
NEEDED: CONVERT 35 YEARS(!) OF TAPED FOOTAGE TO DIGITAL FILES, A MAM
SYSTEM TO MANAGE 10,000-15,000 HOURS OF DIGITIZED FOOTAGE.
Besides the desire to keep up with industry trends,
another reason to go digital was that they were
starting to lose tapes to degradation. In Touch
Ministries knew they needed to convert those tapes
to digital files, and once done, a MAM (Media Asset
Management) system to manage the 10,000-15,000
hours in 35 years’ worth of tape.
“Because FORK can ingest content quickly, we were
able to log about 350,000 assets into the system in the
first six months,” says John McKinnon, the Director
of Broadcast Operations. “At this point, we’re about
halfway through our archive.”
EASY TO LEARN
“When we moved to FORK we also completely
changed our processes, so there has been a learning
curve, but FORK itself was relatively easy to learn,”
he states. “With a week’s worth of training, the team
picked it up and can find and distribute content
quickly.”
“The more we use it, the more we discover, and
the more we’re able to refine our processes. We’ve
already been able to expand the system to do things
we didn’t know were possible at first, and we’re still
scratching the surface.”
COMPLETE WORKFLOW SOLUTION
PRIMESTREAM SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS ENABLE BROADCASTERS
AND MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS TO CREATE, MANAGE, AND DISTRIBUTE
CONTENT OVER THE AIR, VIA SATELLITE, AND TO “SECOND” SCREENS
SUCH AS MOBILE PHONES, AND TABLETS.
The Primestream FORK line of products combine multiple modules in a single, integrated software
suite. This feature-set includes industry-leading media asset management, advanced metadata and
scripting that empowers media organizations to implement automated workflows – freeing humans to
do what they do best — create.
Based on an open and hardware-agnostic architecture, FORK integrates with a wide range of hardware
and software solutions from multiple manufactures. This high level integration provides complete control
for end-to-end management of the production process, with significantly improved efficiencies that
maximize the use and value of our client’s media assets.
Primestream delivers its solutions through a dedicated professional network of partners and systems
integrators — a team that adheres to the industry’s best practices and ensures the highest possible
engineering standards. Deployed in more than 300 broadcast operations across 40 countries,
Primestream’s proven solutions are implemented by some of the world’s leading broadcasters, news
and sports organizations, uplink services providers, online digital media operations, production and
post-production facilities.
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