Lakepointe transforms operations and worship experience with SMPTE ST 2110 Infrastructure from Imagine.
Modernizing to pursue new opportunities for ministry
With six locations across Texas — Rockwall, Mesquite, Garland, Forney, North Dallas, and East Dallas — and an online platform, Lakepointe Church engages nearly 35,000 people each week through its services in English and Spanish.
To reach them, the Church had previously been relying on an outdated system at its Rockwall headquarters to disseminate its message across various buildings, different campuses, and the internet.
across Texas
across the United States
engaged each week
With its broadcast infrastructure on its final leg, the decision was made to upgrade to a new system that would bring Lakepointe up to speed with the latest technology. This would allow the church to take advantage of new ministry opportunities, while ensuring the reliability, day-to-day flexibility, and expandability for future growth that it required. To provide the system, Lakepointe turned to Oklahoma City-based Skylark.
“After meeting with Lakepointe leaders and discussing their needs, it was clear that deploying an ST 2110 system was the best way to meet them,” said Chris Winnie, senior systems engineer at Skylark. “Not only would it offer the Church enhanced audio and video quality, but it would deliver the versatility required to handle a variety of events, while providing the scalability needed to adapt to the Church’s evolving operations.”
In the process of choosing components for Lakepointe’s setup, multiviewer image quality stood out as a critical consideration. Winnie said, “With many vendors shifting towards software-based solutions, maintaining sharp, clear images can be challenging. Therefore, we needed a solution that would guarantee clarity and minimal latency.”
Finally, ensuring workflows would be user-friendly to accommodate non-technical weekend volunteers was key to Lakepointe’s requirements. Winnie added, “It was also essential to complement this with a control system that was both user-friendly and adaptable, capable of managing SDI and IP routing effectively. Imagine Communications was the clear choice to fulfill these requirements — offering a cohesive and efficient ecosystem.”
At the heart of Lakepointe Church’s new setup — the most extensive ST 2110 system in a house of worship at the time of its launch — are 19 Imagine Selenio Network Processors (SNP), which can be easily reconfigured with different functionality by simply enabling the appropriate features.
In the current setup, 12 SNPs serve entirely as IP gateways — one backstage, one in the baptism suite and 10 in the main control room — enabling the church to seamlessly integrate its existing SDI hardware and ensure a cost-efficient implementation. Another five SNPs in the control room are configured with the SNP Multiviewer personality, which provides a highly scalable multiviewer system optimized for low-latency production workflows. In addition, one SNP in the online campus suite and one located at front of house are flexibly configured as half IP gateway and half multiviewer.
The Magellan Control System from Imagine delivers SDI/IP and PiP routing through user-friendly, highly customizable control interfaces and panels. For precise PTP synchronization across the network and between SNPs/SNP Multiviewers, Skylark employed Tektronix SPG9000 generators. Meanwhile, IP-to-HDMI conversion, facilitating the connection from the SNP Multiviewers to the multiviewer screens, is handled by AJA Video Systems. Additionally, the setup incorporates NVIDIA Mellanox switches and utilizes the Tektronix PRISM media analysis platform, ensuring thorough video quality oversight.
“While other vendors required unique configurations for each product, we were able to configure one SNP and copy and paste it across the rest — making them nearly plug and play.”
See how Selenio™ Network Processor’s enhanced capabilities support the growing needs of House of Worship Campuses
In addition to its technology offerings, Skylark chose Imagine for its extensive expertise in ST 2110. Several of the company’s engineers were instrumental in developing the protocol and were at the ready to support Skylark with various facets of the unique deployment.
Winnie remarked. “We weren’t working with a cookie-cutter system — we crafted it from scratch, tailoring it to fit within specific budget constraints — so Imagine’s know-how was critical to the success of this project.
“Another area in which Imagine shined was in solution configuration. While other vendors required unique configurations for each product, we were able to configure one SNP and copy and paste it across the rest — making them nearly plug and play. It may sound minor, but this greatly simplified the setup of such an extensive system.”
JJ Ammons, senior technical director at Lakepointe Church, said, “Our new system has been operational for several weeks, and it has been well received by everyone — from our leadership to our nontechnical weekend volunteers. The clarity of the images on our SNP Multiviewers is outstanding, and our team loves the Magellan Control System, which marks a significant improvement over our previous setup.”
In a house of worship environment where it’s not uncommon to have an event every day of the week, the 2110 system has been a gamechanger. Ammons said, “The system’s flexibility allows for easy adjustments to accommodate various events, and even permits customization to suit the unique preferences of different directors and staff.
“As we encounter new opportunities for ministry, the scalability of our new system enables us to easily extend our infrastructure to support them. Previously, due to the limitations of our old system, there were instances when we had to decline certain requests from our leaders because the technology simply couldn’t support them. Now, we’re equipped with a modern starting point, and I’m eager to see the growth and new directions it will enable for us.”
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