I'm part of a two-person video team at our church. We have zero budget, so everything we've done has been done with our Sony Digital 8 cameras and equipment/software we've purchased ourselves. We've been saving up to buy higher-end equipment, and we're looking at maybe purchasing a couple Panasonic DVC30's.

Our church is now in the process of giving birth to a new church, and there IS a budget for equipment this time. I've been asked the question of whether we can get a couple of cameras that we can use both for our video projects AND that we can use live for church services (not recording, just live feed to two video projectors). We will be using a high school auditorium for some time, so everything needs to be portable.

We need to combine two cameras, a DVD player, and a computer feed into one unit (switcher/scaler?) and feed two projectors. Transitioning between one feed and another doesn't have to allow cross-dissolves, just clean cuts, so I believe we can get away with a simple switcher/scaler that hides the cut without having to go the full-blown TBC, genlocked camera route.

I have $10,000 to work with. I'm wondering whether I can move up from the DVC30's we were looking at to two Panasonic DVX100a's, some cable to hook 'em up, and a switcher/scaler to hook it together.

Any experiences/recommendations/opinions out there? I've heard that other churches just starting out have done this, but haven't had a chance to talk to anyone personally yet...