Sundays

The word “copyright” can scare those of us who aren’t attorneys. Copyright law can be downright confusing. Sometimes, it feels easier to bury our heads in the sand than make sure we are 100% legal. But, the truth is it’s not all that confusing.

MediaShout recently released a major update to their worship presentation software giving MediaShout 6 a cleaner and more tightly integrated user-interface. They’ve streamlined the process of editing the slides users create speeding up the process of importing lyrics and working with other slide show elements like Bible passages. They also Liturgies, a new kind of Cue that creates what many churches call a responsive reading, where the leader and congregation read scripture together out loud.

It is often said that half of great video is great audio. It is certainly true that bad audio can kill good video. But it's not always easy to get great audio into your camera every single time. While it can be tricky, the dividends will pay off when the audio is high quality and is synced perfectly to the video. Whether you're producing a delayed livestream, captured video church service for YouTube, or some other video church production, spending time on the quality of the audio is important.

There is perhaps no better parameter for adjusting the quality of your sound than the equalizer. And it doesn’t have to be a complicated affair. Mastering your use of the EQ for live sound will take some practice though. And it is imperative that you train your ears what to listen for. (See the helpful chart and tips at the end of this post.) Why EQ? What’s the big deal about EQ, anyway?

When it comes to video production equipment, it seems the technology has a short shelf life and is constantly being updated. It can be daunting to decide what camera to purchase knowing that whatever you sink a large chunk of change into today could very well be an oversized paper weight tomorrow. I guess that could be a bit extreme, however, there is one piece of equipment that if you get right, can hold its value better than gold.

Feedback! Yeah, it can be a problem. Even for a seasoned sound tech. So, how do we stop it? And how can we prevent it from happening in the first place? First, let’s define exactly what it is we’re talking about. What is Feedback? Feedback is the result of sound looping between an audio input and an audio output.

When I launched the first video-based satellite campus of Willow Creek in 2001 the primary question was, “Can this work?” Hundreds of multisite churches later, the question has shifted to, “Should my church go multisite?” What started out as a “Band-Aid” for space and zoning problems of megachurches has developed into a viable option for every local church regardless of size. Multisite is no longer a question of feasibility for a church, but more of a question of strategy, “Is it right for my church?”

I love DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) cameras and have used many of them for many different projects. But, there are some major limitations because they were not ultimately designed to handle the wide applications of video production. Here are a few reasons I believe DSLR cameras are ill-suited for recording your church service.