by John Chevalier

Let’s start with a quick definition of “Video on Demand”. Video on demand (VOD) is a system that allows users to select and watch video content when they choose to, rather than having to watch at a specific broadcast time. This can be available to people on some TV’s, computers, tablets and mobile phones.

Deciding what video you want to make available largely depends upon your intended audience. This series is not going to address this in detail; however, let me put a few things out there for you to consider. Possible video on demand for your church could include; complete services, partial services, such as a worship & music video or the pastor’s message only. Because people tend to not watch long programming online, you might want to create a service highlight video that has a link to the complete service. Other options are special videos highlighting any number of things, such as special services, information on specific ministries within the church or even short vignettes that communicate a certain message. The options are really endless.

For the purpose of this article we are going to talk about production and editing, storage and delivery for the weekend church service.

Production and Editing
How you approach your editing workflow will depend on how the service is recorded. There are three basic ways to record your service. First is with a single camera. This is not the best, unless you plan on having just one wide shot of the entire platform, there tends to a lot of zooming and panning, which can be really distracting to the viewer. Second is to record with multiple individual cameras. This improves production quality and gives you many editing options, however it’s certainly the most time and skill intensive when it comes to the editing process. Then finally there is using a multi-camera video switcher, either manual or software based, that allows you make your cuts live as you go. This is the easiest to edit, however, you’ll have to either live with any mistakes that are made in the switching process or do some extra editing.

Storage and Delivery
Once you create video content there’s the question of storage and delivery. How is the best way to store your video? Will you store them in house, or on a server? What are the best delivery tools in getting videos to your audience? Are you going to have a YouTube Channel? Do you want to create a podcast on iTunes? Do you want videos available on your website? (Oh yeah… now we need a website… That’s another article!). These are all things that you will want to think through, and that we will be addressing in this series. The good news is that, once your video is created, you have a number of options and you are not locked into any one of them. You can start small and make changes as the demand for your video content grows.

So, what I’d like you to do is spend this month thinking about your goals for video content creation and delivery and we’ll meet back here next month to specifically talk about video editing and the post-production workflow. Then we will address storage and delivery the following month. As we move forward, I’d like to make these articles real practical! So, if you have questions, thoughts or problems that you need to solve please drop me an email at jc@johnchevalier.com.