The Challenge
CedarCreek Church holds services at campuses across Northwest Ohio. Every week, members join together to worship at three campuses: the Whitehouse, Toledo, and Perrysberg campus. To address its continued growth, the church sought a solution that would enable delivery of live video amongst these campuses, and to new campuses as the church expands. Among the challenges facing the church was the possibility that, due to geography or limited availability, it would be difficult to link additional campuses over leased and dedicated connections, such as fiber lines. Even if those lines were available, the cost and inflexibility of a multiyear contract for use on a weekly basis resulted in the church having to find a more cost-effect alternative.

Both budget and practical considerations led CedarCreek Church to consider using standard IP connections for the transport of live video. However, the nature of the public Internet, with its inherent packet loss and jitter, makes it totally unsuitable for the transmission of high quality video. High performance network video demands the service levels associated with expensive and dedicated network connections (very low packet loss and jitter). To address their challenges, CedarCreek turned to systems integrator Eastgate Productions who proposed a combination of HaiVision performance network video technology and Zixi network appliances to deliver real-time high quality video to its church campuses.

The Solution
HaiVision Network Video’s hai1000 multi-stream system with the MAKO-HD high-performance H.264 codec was paired with the Zixi network appliance enabling CedarCreek Church to provide real-time video to its satellite campuses. Integrator Eastgate Productions installed the HaiVision and Zixi platforms in a turnkey solution to enable high-speed delivery of SDand HD-quality video over a standard IP connection.

From its main campus in Perrysburg, CedarCreek currently connects to two satellite campuses, one in Toledo and the other in Whitehouse. At each location, the hai1000 with the MAKO-HD codec from HaiVision enables the church to both encode and decode SD or HD signals to/from the IP network. The MAKO-HD supports high definition video up to 10 Mbps and standard definition video up to 6 Mbps. However, excellent video quality can be achieved at less than 4 Mbps and 1.5 Mbps respectively. Some of the CedarCreek locations are operating on as low as 3 Mbps consumer grade internet connections. Currently, CedarCreek is running the MAKO-HD codecs at about 1.5 Mbps standard definition, but are looking into upgrading their internet access to support full HD.

The HaiVision codecs combined with Zixi’s patented technology for timely delivery and recovery of lost packets make it possible for CedarCreek Church to realize affordable, low-latency delivery of SD and HD video over low cost common IP connections. Installation and commissioning required fewer than three days.

The Result
CedarCreek, without committing to costly dedicated network connections, now transmits live, real-time video between its three campuses. The combination of HaiVision’s exceptional low-latency H.264 codec with Zixi’s advanced network appliance technology gives CedarCreek the ability to receive a live video stream at any of its three campuses without committing to costly contracts or concern over the availability of fiber links. Furthermore, since all systems are bidirectional, CedarCreek has the flexibility to establish any of the sites as a transmission point or even establish bi-directional interactive communications between their sites. During evaluation testing, the HaiVision encoder output running at 1 Mbps proved equivalent to its competition streaming at as much as 4 Mbps. The cost savings realized with the HaiVision and Zixi systems are dramatic. The easy to use turnkey system was provided by Eastgate and put into use immediately.

Teaching pastors can now move from location to location, easily changing the direction of the communication flow, by transmitting from their location out to any other campus. A single-button control makes encoding and transmission quick and easy, allowing anyone, whether technically savvy or not, to use the preconfigured system.

In addition to enabling live streaming to virtually any location, this combination of encoding and delivery technology can also support video on demand services, allowing an event to be recorded and made available later to church members.

As the church continues to expand, with nine satellite campuses in its growth plan, the integrated solution from HaiVision and Zixi can be easily extended to support these additional connections. Since the MAKO-HD and Zixi platform both support delivery of HD video, CedarCreek can make a smooth transition to HD streaming as it upgrades its video production capabilities.