Colombia. Manizales, Colombian municipality, capital of the department of Caldas located in the center west of Colombia, on the Central Cordillera of the Andes and overlooking the Nevado del Ruiz, is the epicenter of the Archdiocese of Manizales, a Catholic institution, led by Archbishop Monsignor Gonzalo Restrepo Restrepo, who decided to make technology an ally for the evangelization of the city.
To do this, it provides its signal to all those who wish to join through streaming from YouTube, Facebook and the grid of subscription TV operators that distribute it. In addition, he is aware that if he wants to reach young people, adults and children today, he must necessarily do so through the internet and social networks.
The Archdiocese made the determination to organize a working group that would allow it to send messages of high audiovisual quality to each of its faithful and followers. Under the direction of producer Sebastián Arias Restrepo, he shared this challenge and they overcame this first goal by acquiring a TriCaster and other systems from the firm NewTek. They even made virtual chapels that were received with satisfaction by their faithful and followers.
But they wanted to cover more and be able to better serve the virtual community that day by day does not stop growing. Therefore, when they learned of the benefits and resources of NDI, a greater challenge arose, to remotely transmit the masses and other events from the imposing Cathedral of Manizales, Cultural Heritage of the Nation.
It was a rather difficult challenge to achieve, according to Sebastián Arias, because this Cathedral is located 300 meters in a straight line from the headquarters of the Archdiocese where they have the master of production. In addition, because it is located in the historic center considered cultural heritage, they can not access issues of fiber networks or similar through the streets, so under the guidance of the company AVTech Ltda, they decided to implement a Ubiquiti antenna system point by point between Cathedral and Archbishop's Curia.
They placed NDI-HX PTZ cameras in the Cathedral and today they have the dream come true, they remotely transmit the Eucharists in real time from that enclosure without having to move additional personnel or production equipment to the cameras.
"I never thought I could produce something so complex and with one person at the helm of everything... it's great," said Sebastian Arias Restrepo. "In addition, because with NDI I have control of bidirectional signals, because not only do I receive the signal from the cameras and control them from my master's degree, but I can now send the program signal or the one I want to the screens installed in the cathedral. All by a point-to-point link of 200MB and with a UTP cable that enters both the Cathedral and the main headquarters of the Archdiocese."
He concluded that "NDI, TriCaster and AVTech Ltda have allowed me to facilitate the work, cover more, manage to overcome challenges previously unthinkable and with the quality and at the height of any channel that has invested great sums of money impossible to invest on our part. I could ensure that with the resources invested and with the equipment installed, I get results that we can present inside and outside the country without any qualms and at the level of any production house with high levels of production."
The results have not been long in coming. The number of followers through the Archdiocese's channels continues to grow and experiences of faith continue to increase as well.
