Setting up a camera/recording system to put your church's services online is not as difficult as it may seem. Our church has posted hundreds of sermon videos online at no cost, and our videos have been viewed over 175,000 times. It has proven to be yet another tool we use in getting the message of Salvation out to the world. Here is the equipment setup we are currently using:
* A donated professional tripod
* A donated 10-year old Hi8 video camera
* A donated portable DVD player
* A new Philips DVDR3475 DVD recorder:
We started with a Samsung SCL300 Hi8 Video camera that was donated. The camera's tape mechanism was no longer working but the camera still worked great. All 400+ videos on our tangle.com site (user name: cbbcfla) were filmed with this camera.
The A/V output line is connected to the input jack of the DVD recorder (yellow RCA port, see below)
The red and white audio input jacks on the DVD recorder are connected to a line that comes directly from the soundboard. The line is basically tapped off what goes to the main speakers. Your church's sound technician should be able to fabricate a cable that can connect the audio inputs of the DVD recorder to the line out of the sound board with little difficulty. You may have to do some trial and error to be sure that your output levels on your sound board aren't too high for the DVD recorder. It is a good idea to start low and work your way up until you find a level that works for your setup.
Another yellow RCA cable is used to connect the video out jack of the DVD recorder to the video input jack of a donated portable DVD player, which serves as an inexpensive LCD monitor.
By the way - never record more than 2 hrs per DVD. When you have recorded and finalized the disc, (be sure to do this – the disc will be unusable if you do not finalize it! Read your DVD recorder manual for instructions on how to finalize your recording) it is then time to edit the video. You can copy these recordings as is, but the menus are not appealing.
* * The Editing Process * *
Your computer will need 20-30 GB of free hard drive space and it needs to be somewhat speedy. It helps to have a spare hard drive in your system dedicated to video editing, separate from your main hard drive.The first step is to copy the DVD files to your hard drive, converting the VOB files to a single MPEG-2 file in the process. To copy the videos to the computer, I use a free program called VOB2MPG. It is available at www.videohelp.com in the tools section. This program will convert the DVD files to an MPEG-2 file that can easily be edited.
After the files are captured from the DVD recording, I edit the recording using MPEG2VCR, available for $35.00 from www.womble.com. It is a very handy and efficient video editor. There are guides on how to use the software at www.womble.com and at www.videohelp.com. Once the videos are edited, it is time to create a DVD. We normally create a DVD with 3 services on it. I use Ulead DVD MovieFactory to create the DVD – it allows you to add chapters, menus, music, etc. for a nice looking DVD. The file size of the finished DVD is too large to record onto a regular disk. I normally have the Ulead software record the DVD files to my hard disk (usually about 6-8 GB in size) and then I use a free program called DVDSHRINK (see www.videohelp.com) to compress the DVD files so that they will fit on a recordable DVD disc.
* * Uploading your Sermons to the Web * *
To upload the sermons to the web, I signed up for a free account with www.tangle.com. They require all video uploads to be less than 100 MB and less than 30 min in length, so I usually upload only the sermons each week. Before I upload, I use MPEG2VCR to save a copy of just the sermon. I then use a free video converter caller SUPER (find it at www.videohelp.com) to convert the sermon to Flash video (a .flv file). Here are the settings for Super I usually use:
Video bit rate: 384 Kbps
Audio bit rate: 64 Kbps, 44100 Khz
Video resized to 320X240
I hope this tutorial has been helpful to you; if I can be of any help to you, leave me a comment!
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