New Control Room at Historic Trinity Church Built Around FOR-A Switcher

	New control room in Manhattan's historic Trinity Church is centered around FOR-A's 2 M/E HVS-390HS video production switcher.

Located in the heart of Wall Street, Trinity Church was the first Anglican church in Manhattan. Founded in 1697, the iconic church has a rich history, including several signers of the Declaration of Independence (Alexander Hamilton is one) being laid to rest in its burial grounds. Aiming to preserve its 17th century roots while using 21st century technology to spread the message of the church, Trinity began planning the construction of a new control room early last year. The new control room was completed last month and is centered around a FOR-A 2 M/E HVS-390HS video production switcher.

The switcher first caught the attention of the house of worship's director of media, production, and operations, William Jarrett, at NAB 2013. "The HVS-390HS switcher is a perfect fit for our church," explained Jarrett. "We appreciate the amount of inputs it offers and its optional video outputs. A frame synchronizer with every channel was also a big draw to us. We found that there's an elegance about it that inherently made sense. We needed a system that was easy to use, and the flow of the switcher is simple for our operators to understand."

In addition to using its video technology to perform IMAG (image magnification) production during Trinity's services, the parish webcasts all of its Sunday morning and weekday services on its website, reaching viewers worldwide. Concerts from its Grammy-nominated choir, conferences, and other special and live events are also webcast. The first major production in the new studio was Handel's Messiah, a widespread oratorio house of worship Christmas tradition that was first performed in the New World at Trinity Church.

The new control room was commissioned and blessed on December 8. The event was webcast on Trinity's website and can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvlgXhB_pMg&feature=youtu.be. Jarrett estimates that the switcher will be involved in 450-500 events throughout the course of a year.

"In building a new control room, we made a commitment to doing it right and designing a system that's future resistant," said Jarrett. "We live in a multi-platform world, and we created our control room and associated workflow with that as a focus. It's modular in design. Our technology is designed to ease the production process and make it more streamlined, and we have the ability to swap out a piece of equipment without that affecting everything else. Using high-quality technology to convey the mission of Trinity is critical to us, and FOR-A's switcher is an integral part of our new control room."