Many churches are producing videos of their weekend services, and do a fine job of it. But I'd venture to guess that not many of those churches are producing three distinct versions of their service videos before the weekend is over, using a 10- to 12-member volunteer team for camera operation, shading, lighting and graphics.
That's precisely what Video Director Traci Tyson's team at Mariners Church in Irvine, Calif., does each weekend. Starting Saturday morning with pre-production planning, Tyson's team will shoot three services over the course of the weekend and do post-production on each, which are immediately transferred to satellite campuses and the Internet. Then, a second round of editing
occurs to produce DVDs of the services as well. All before Sunday evening is over.
To accomplish this goal, Mariners uses four Sony DXC-50WS video cameras feeding into a Ross Synergy 2 switcher. For graphics, Renewed Vision's ProPresenter software is utilized running on an Apple Mac computer with Blackmagic HDLink hardware installed. HDLink enables ProPresenter to output graphics with an alpha channel signal, enabling the switcher to overlay the graphics on top of the live video with broadcast-quality transparency.
"Buying a broadcast-quality character generator for live applications would have cost us about $20,000," states Tyson, "which was out of the question financially. And this high-end gear would have introduced a layer of complexity into our operation that was unacceptable due to our wide use of volunteers on the weekends. Instead, we put this very cost-effective solution in place for under $2,000."
The output video is then captured using Telestream's Pipeline tapeless capture system. Pipeline captures the SDI video output from the switcher and stores it digitally on a file server in QuickTime format, ready to edit in Final Cut Pro. As a backup, it's also captured to a Mac running Final Cut Pro as well as to a Sony DSR-1000 hard disc recorder.
Minimal post-production editing is performed using Final Cut Pro, and then media is rendered out for delivery to the satellite campuses and the Internet, and DVDs are produced for sale in the church's bookstore.
Tyson states, "Our biggest time crunch has been getting the services online as our service provider required Adobe Flash media. However, they are now accepting MP4 files, so that is cutting down on the time to get the service up." The MP4 format eliminates the additional trans-coding step to Flash media. Post production work currently takes Tyson's team about four to six hours.
To build her team, Tyson employs a peer-training model, partnering new volunteers with veterans in the position they are interested in to bring them up to speed. "We've seen success with peer training and are using that more and more," Tyson states. "It also gives some ownership to our veteran volunteers and helps when the staff is overloaded."
For churches looking to move into a new area of technical ministry work such as live video and video production, Tyson strongly suggests visiting other churches who have already mastered what you want to do. "Don't be afraid to seek information or input from other church techs. Network with other tech people in your area. They're doing the same thing you are and will most likely be able to help you with questions. There are a lot of tech folks on Twitter now and that is a great resource. I've found leaders at many churches very approachable and very helpful, so make use of that."
