Church of the Highlands was founded in 2001 and has since grown to more than 20 campuses across Alabama and Georgia. The Grandview campus features a 1,200 seat auditorium for weekly services, along with a chapel that is used twice a week by Highlands College students.
Live production is central in shaping a creative, welcoming worship experience. For Church of the Highlands’ production team, that starts with technology designed to stay out of the spotlight – delivering reliable performance, simplifying workflows, and allowing operators to focus on the message rather than the mechanics.
The goal was to build a system flexible enough for Sunday services, yet simple enough for students to learn.
The Grandview Project represented a significant expansion: transforming a former corporate building into a multi-use facility supporting both church services and a college campus environment. The switching workflow needed to be easy for everyone – whether experienced professionals, or those new to the team.
To meet these demands, the team needed systems that were flexible, easy to use and adaptable to each space. Because the Church distributes video centrally to other campuses, precise timing control was critical. To make that work, the system was divided into multiple interconnected systems that functioned as a cohesive whole.
Clark, the Church’s longtime integration partner and a trusted collaborator with the Ross Video team, helped develop and implement this approach.
To turn this vision into reality, the system leverages Ross Video’s hyperconverged shared infrastructure.
Ross Video’s hyperconverged approach was chosen because its systems work seamlessly together, making them easy to set up, operate and support. This setup enables shared resources across systems, reduces the amount of cabling needed across the campus, and helps keep costs low.
At the core, Ultrix provides integrated routing and processing, paired with the Ultrix Carbonite switcher for live production, while openGear adds flexible, modular signal processing. Rather than running hundreds of SDI lines, only a small number of fiber connections are required. As a centrally distributed campus, typical slip times range from 30 to 60 seconds, making the addition of a Ross Video Tria playout server critical for timing control.
The right production foundation helps create an experience that feels polished and connected.
This project and the Ross Video technology behind it has given Church of the Highlands a production environment that supports the ministry today and enables future growth – making it easier to open new campuses and provide a consistent experience at every location.
This level of quality matters because expectations have changed; people are used to experiencing high quality content at home. It also enables the team to meet those expectations while letting the technology work seamlessly behind the scenes. For Church of the Highlands, quality is about helping people stay connected to what matters most during services. With the support of Ross Video and Clark, that vision is delivered every week across every campus.
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