25 June 2020
By Elaine Murphy
elaine@TheCork.ie
ScreenshotAs soon as the ‘lockdown’ due to the Covid-19 pandemic came into effect on 18th March St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, like so many cathedrals and churches across Ireland, moved very quickly to provide worship and concerts online. At first this was done using technology immediately to hand – mobile phones, a tripod, existing streaming platforms and learning new recording and editing skills.
Thanks to a grant to each diocese from the Church of Ireland Priorities Fund and the Representative Church Body, the Cathedral was able to ‘up its game’ by installing professional and permanent equipment installed by Co Wicklow based company Churchservices TV.
The Dean of Cork, the Very Rev’d Nigel Dunne, commenting on the recent installation said:
“Our move to online provision of worship, weekly concerts and recitals, online choir practices for the choristers and the provision of music classes for primary schools (under the Diocesan Church Music Scheme) have all meant a steep learning curve for those of us involved. The live streaming element has been particularly difficult and we are delighted to have been able to solve that through this generous funding from ‘central church’. We now have a seamless stream to churchservices.tv via our website and on their own site. We will continue to stream from the new setup to our YouTube channel for another few weeks until people have had time to move to the new system.”
The new livestream currently provides for four different camera settings ranging from a shot of almost all of the cathedral right down to a close up of the High Altar. Two more shots will soon be added to provide for either a concert setup at the crossing or a close up of the crossing should someone be giving a speech or lecture.
The livestream can be viewed on the Cathedral’s website www.corkcathedral.webs.com or on Churchservices TV https://www.churchservices.tv/corkstfinbarre
