AUMC AV Blog

I am getting four videos ready for the next two Sundays.

This coming Sunday we will show a 1.5 minute promo for an Ester study series (produced by someone else), and a short Prayer Partner video that we are working on.

Next Sunday we will show a shorter promo for the Ester series (still produced by someone else), and a video that we are thinking about doing for our new Giving Kiosk. The Kiosk video is going to be a lot of fun, I just have to figure out how we are going to pull it off.

Matthew

Yes, I know that I haven't posted much recently, but I am on Christmas vacation, so I have a good excuse.

But I did want to post about our Christmas Eve services. We had it at Argyle High School because our current sanctuary isn't big enough (and because or new building isn't ready yet... still...). Both services went amazing!

Shh, don't tell anyone, but I had some tears in my eyes at Silent Night (my favorite Christmas song).

Pictures!

Before service:


During the second service:




More photos: Gallery

Matthew

The projector for the new church will be set to display at 1024X576 (widescreen), so I set up a preset for exporting videos at that resolution. Now, when I make a video (or download a video) and I want it to be the right resolution, I just run it through this preset. And of course I want the best quality video possible, so I turned every setting to "Best" in every possible way, I turned de-interlacing on, I turned on every possible thing to make it the best quality video...

Exporting a 2 minute video takes 8 hours.

Yes, I will make a preset that isn't set to "Best" in every possible way for those times when I don't have overnight to render a video...

Matthew

I have uploaded the latest photos to the photo album above. I have also posted them for easy viewing here: link

Matthew

For those that read this, I will give an update. We have been working hard at finalizing everything in the sound booth. Lots of finishing touches are getting made. For example, today we labeled everything... the sound board, the switcher, cables, the racks... lots of little sticky paper was coming out of that label maker.

Outside of that there isn't much to report. We are having problems with our aspect ratio with the projector and switcher. But that is all.

Matthew

Due to a job that had me working until 6 AM (plus an hour drive home), I wasn't able to get to the new church site this morning, but Thursday and Friday are clear for me, I hope to get lots of work done then!

Matthew

I just wanted to throw out a quick update. Due to Thanksgiving, not much progress has been made in the past week. However, there are a few things that have happened.

As you can see from my last post, the large front screen has been hung and the projector has been aligned to it. I haven't seen it in action, so I am looking forward to that.

Also, the new computer for the booth has been ordered (on Black Friday for extra savings). It should be in in a few days, and I look forward to playing with that new toy... err, umm, that new pice of equipment. Ya.

Overall, things are coming together. The computer is the last large pice of equipment that we will have to install, so from here on out it is the small things we have to worry about.

Right now, lots of thoughts are going through my head; about how I am excited that this process is drawing to a close; about how I am looking forward to our first Sunday; about how I am looking forward to leading a team of volunteers. So far, my involvement in the new building has been helping James install things and making decisions about where equipment will go. Soon, though, I will be busy training volunteers, testing the system, practicing with the band, and soon running services in our new building. I can't wait to praise God in our new sanctuary.

Matthew

Just thought I would post some quick pics of the screen in the new sanctuary:



From the sound booth:



Matthew

I hear that the big screen has been hung, but I haven't had the chance to make it out there to take some pictures... maybe on my way out of town tomorrow I can swing by for some quick pics for ye old blog.

Matthew

I have been thinking about our CD ministry. We currently mail out about 5 CDs a week to shut-ins, and every once in a while we will burn a CD for someone who asks. This process is tedious, because we have to get the audio files to people that will be burning the CD, then we have to make labels, mail out CDs... it is time consuming for several volunteers.

So how can we make this process better and easier? Well, for starters, we will have a CD recorder in the booth, so we won't have to record on the computer, then burn that to CD. (However, we are still planning on recording on the computer for internet/archive use.) From there, we will need a quick way to duplicate them. While there is no CD duplicator in the budget, one might have to be bought to speed along this process. Using the duplicator, it is easy to make lots of copies fast (It can duplicate a CD in three minutes. That means if you have a duplicator with three burners, you can burn one CD per minute.)

But what about labeling the CDs? I plan on buying bulk pre-printed CDs. This keeps the cost down while making the presentation very professional. The one not-so-professional aspect is that if we use pre-printed CDs we will have to include blanks for Date, Sermon Title, etc., and someone will have to hand-write those in. I hope we can find a tech guy with pretty (handsome?) handwriting...

As to how people will order the CDs, I have several thoughts. The main thought is to have a table somewhere (probably in front of the sound booth). On the table would be "ordering envelopes". These envelopes would be the same type of envelope that we use for tithing/giving, but it would be printed for purchasing CDs. It would have blanks for them so that people can fill out what they want, IE: date, sermon title, full service or just sermon, etc. The CD would be a "suggested donation" of three dollars (which they would put into the envelope). This covers our costs, but doesn't make it a hinderance if someone doesn't want to pay for it. We might even want to put out pre-printed manila envelopes that are big enough to mail a CD in. If someone wants us to mail it to them, they just fill out the manila envelope so that all we have to do is drop the burned CD in.

Another random idea: have a sign saying that peope could "sponsor a shut-in". For $200 they could pay for a year of mailing CDs to a shut-in. This would help cover the cost of this ministry.

Anywho, this goes under "some random thing that Matthew is thinking about way too much," but oh well. What do you think? Are these good ideas or bad ideas? How does your church do it?

Matthew