With so many options to choose from, you may find it difficult to decide on a video recording software for your church. However, if you take the time to research all of the options available to you, you will be sure to find a software program that is specific to your needs. In this article, we will go over some of the basics of video recording software so that you are better informed when making this important decision.
Recording Video: Overview
Recording video of your sermons is the next logical step after recording audio. If you’re already comfortable with the audio recording process, it isn’t a huge leap to add video recording to your repertoire. By adding video recordings to your sermon library, you’ll be able to offer your viewers all the benefits of visual communication: increased clarity, nuance, and understanding.
And you don’t have to break the bank to do it.
Recording Video: Equipment
1. The Camera
The camera, of course, is the main piece of equipment you’ll need. In the past a high-quality camera was an expensive purchase. Thankfully, technology has advanced so far that an affordable camera of excellent quality is available to just about any church, no matter how small the budget.
When choosing a video camera there are many options, but only a few critical features that you need to be aware of.
Video-Out
If you’re going to be livestreaming you’ll need a camcorder that has live HDMI video out. You will connect the video camera to a transcoder, which will connect to your computer. If the video camera doesn’t have the ability to send live video out, you won’t be able to get the data you need to stream.
If you have no intention of ever livestreaming with this camera, then you don’t need to worry about this.
Zoom
If you’re going to put your camera in the back of the room you’ll have to zoom in quite a bit to get a good framing of your subject. What’s important when looking at a camera is optical zoom factor. Digital zoom factor is a useless number. Digital zoom is always a shoddy way to zoom by just blowing up the pixels in the image, rather than optical zoom that actually moves the lens elements like a telescope to get a better view of your subject. Most cameras today offer at least a 10x optical zoom. You’ll want at least 10x to have a good cushion available, more if you are in the back of a large room.
My Recommendation
There are loads of great cameras out there that will meet your needs. But if you just want a recommendation for a camera that will work great and has all the features you need, let me encourage you to buy the Canon Vixia HF R800. The R800 was $299 on Amazon at the time of writing. If you’re more a Sony person, you might want to try the Sony HDRCX675/B, which was $498 at the time of writing.
2. The Memory Card
To store the video in the camera, you’ll need a memory card. Memory cards are inexpensive, but you don’t want to skimp on this. Get a name-brand card (imitations tend to fail early or perform poorly), and get a card that’s at least class 10. Slower cards may have trouble keeping up with the recording. A good memory card right now is about $20-$30.
3. The Tripod
Typically your camera will be in the back of the room, and as a result you’ll need a tripod for mounting the camera.
If you’re looking for a Set-It-And-Forget-It style of setup, then you can go with a traditional style tripod, and you don’t need to spend much. The Ravelli APLT4 is $26 on Amazon, and should work great for you.
If you plan to have a camera operator who will be panning around the stage while your preacher moves, then you probably want to spend a bit more for a smoother action. One easy option is to get the Ravelli tripod and add a Fluid Drag Head to the top like this Pro YT-950 ($35). The fluid drag head goes right onto the tripod, then the camera attaches to the drag head. The fluid drag head will give you a nice, smooth, side-to-side panning effect.
4. Audio Feed
To get a clean audio feed for your video you have a couple of options:
- Sync Audio In Post In this scenario you record your audio just like you have been, and you use editing software to add in the high-quality audio track to your video after you’ve recorded.
- Provide a Feed Directly to the Camera For this option, you’ll provide a feed directly to your camera, just like you already do to your audio recorder. You’ll need an audio cable to go from your sound board to the camera, and most likely a Direct Box to prevent buzzing or humming in the recording.
Recording Video: Software And Services
Once you’ve recorded the video onto the camcorder you’ll need a way to get that video off your memory card and into a video hosting service. You might also want to add a small church logo or other introductory segment at the beginning or end of your video.
If You Just Want to Convert the File and Upload It Without Making Any Changes at All
If you have no desire to trim the video or edit it in any way, you can use Handbrake to convert your video to an MP4 format for uploading to a video hosting service. Here’s a great article about how to do this.
Video Editing Software
If you want to edit your video in any way, whether to adjust the audio, add an intro, outro, lower thirds, or any other type of enhancement, you’ll need extra software.
The two major players in this market are Adobe Premier and Apple Final Cut Pro X. Both are great pieces of software and have equivalent features. Both can export your video for uploading to a hosting service. And both are complicated enough that their use is outside the scope of this article. Check YouTube or Linda.com for tutorials.
Video Hosting Service
Once you’ve finished doing any edits to your video file, you’re ready to upload that file to a video hosting service.
The video hosting service makes your video available on the Internet for anyone to view. They ensure the video can work on a variety of devices all across the globe.
The two major services in this market are Vimeo and YouTube. Each have equivalent features (like allowing you to embed the video on your own website). To use Vimeo you’ll likely need a Pro plan ($199/year). YouTube, on the other hand, is always free to upload.
Recording Video: Try It This Week
You can do this! Purchase a camera and the related equipment, point your camera at the stage, and press the record button.
Setup an account at YouTube and upload your first video.
You’ll get better with time, which is the secret to success: practice, practice, practice.
Livestreaming Audio
If you’d like to dip a toe in the water of livestreaming, but don’t want to jump all the way in yet, livestreaming just the audio of your sermons can be a great way to get started.
By streaming the audio, your congregation can following along at home or on the road, using any device they own.
And, streaming audio requires very little bandwidth compared to video. So if you’re a portable church with limited WiFi, or a rural church on DSL, audio is likely the solution for you.
We here at Sermons.io have a 1-Tap livestream solution for audio. You just download the app, tap Go Live, and you’re done!
There is no easier way to get started with livestreaming.
And once you have that down, you can feel more comfortable adding video…
Livestreaming Video: Overview
Livestreaming video is the culmination of all of your church’s technology teams working together. It required coordination between video equipment, video operators, computer operators, and sometimes network managers.
It’s a lot of work to setup, but the end product is absolutely worth it: the sick, the shut-ins, and the seekers will all be able to experience your service in a much deeper way. You’ll be able to minister to those who need it most, spreading the reach of the gospel farther than you’ve ever been able to before.
Figure: A typical livestream equipment diagram, as explained below.
Livestreaming: Equipment
To stream your video you’ll need all of the equipment for video recording, plus the following:
The Transcoder
The transcoder (or video converter, depending on your setup) accepts a digital video input and outputs an optimized data stream that your computer can handle. There is a ton of data in a video stream, and the transcoder essentially breaks that down for your computer into a manageable flow that it can swallow.
Currently, we recommend the Black Magic UltraStudio Thunderbolt.
First Note: Reports are that the HF R500 does not play well with the Black Magic Intensity models. However, if you’re using a different camera, things may work better for you. If you try out the HF R700 with an intensity and have good luck, please let us know.
Second Note: You must have USB3 or Thunderbolt for those devices to work. USB2 will not work. This means you might need a new computer, or a new card for your computer (see below).
Audio Adapter
If you’re not sending your audio feed directly to your camera, then you’ll need a way to get that audio feed into the computer that’s managing the stream.
Getting high-quality audio is vital to your stream. The best source of audio is going to be straight out of your soundboard.
If you are able, talk to your sound engineer and ask for an auxiliary output that contains only the channels of audio that you need for your stream. For example, if you’re only going to stream a sermon, ask that any instruments not be included in the feed.
Typically, your sound engineer can get you a feed via a balanced input, which will be in the form of TRS, or as most people think of it, a 1/4” audio plug.
From there, you can connect your audio feed directly into your computer (you might need an adapter).
For more control, and sometimes a cleaner signal, you might want to try a USB audio adapter like the StarTech USB Stereo Audio Adapter.
The Computer
In order to process HD video in real time and upload it to the internet you’re going to need a decent computer. Any mid-to-high range computer purchased since 2013 or so will probably be fine.
If you can’t decide what to purchase, my recommendation is to get a 13” Macbook Air. It’s a fantastic computer, extremely portable, and will get the job done for you.
You can certainly drop down to cheaper options (try NewEgg.com or Tiger Direct). If you get a Windows computer you’ll want something with at least an Intel Core 2 Duo near 2GHz or higher. There are just so many options in this space that you’ll do well to consult your local IT helper and get her advice on a purchase like this.
The Internet Connection
Streaming video in real time uses a lot of bandwidth. Most internet service providers love to advertise their super fast download speeds and then high in the fine print their much slower upload speeds. But, when streaming, all you care about is upload speed.
To stream HD video you’ll need at least a 5Mbps Internet connection on the upload side. Contact your ISP if you’re not sure what your speeds are. To get an estimate you can always try SpeedTest.net.
A Note on Wifi
If you have the option, always use a wired ethernet connection instead of WiFi for your livestream broadcast. WiFi is going to be subject to congestion and interference that a wired connection will never face, and even on the best day WiFi has to deal with problems a wired connection will never have.
WiFi certainly can work, and at my church that’s our only option in our facility, so that’s what we use. But we face periodic connection and bandwidth issues that we’d never face if we were able to connect via ethernet.
Livestreaming Video: Software & Services
Streaming Platform Service
When I first wrote this article LiveStream.com was about the only game in town. They had a great service, but the ads were a bit tiresome.
Since then, YouTube has broadened the availability of their live stream platform to the point where now anyone can get access to it.
If you decide to go with YouTube you should checkout their introduction video as well as the help section on live events. The service is extensive, and I could write an entire article just on using the platform (and perhaps I will at some point).
Use whichever livestream service seems to work best for you, but I recommend YouTube for live streaming.
Streaming Software
You’ll need to run Streaming Software on your computer. The Streaming Software communicates with the Service to send your video in real time.
YouTube has struck a deal with Telestream to create a special version of their WireCast product just for YouTube. It’s called WireCast Play for YouTube and it’s free. If you need more features you can pay to upgrade.
If you’re sticking with livestream.com you will use LiveStream Studio, which is also free.
Livestreaming Video: Putting It All Together
Now that you have all the components it’s time to tie it all together. Here’s the diagram once again of how all these pieces fit together. The Video and Audio plug into their adapters (if necessary), which plug into the computer, which is running WireCast or LiveStream Studio, which will stream you video up to the web.
Once you have the hardware connected, you’ll need to setup you live event in YouTube and then direct your viewers either to your YouTube channel or to your website (where you’ll need to embed the video via the embed html that YouTube provides).
If you’re using LiveStream.com then you can do the same thing, directing people to your channel or embedding the video right on your site (depending on your account level).
Finally, let you congregation know about the new service!
Miscellaneous Tips
Use your livestream in the Cry Room
Don’t miss the opportunity to serve the congregation that’s present on campus on Sunday. The Cry Room is a great place to stream your service so parents can view the service (if you have an overflow room that’s another obvious use-case).
A great way to get started with streaming across the church is to buy an inexpensive Chromebook like this one from ASUS. Drop that in the Cry Room and set the default homepage in Chrome to your streaming site and you’re good to go. The Chromebook will wake up in about 1 second (seriously), and if you’re a portable church like we are, it’s easy to store during the week. The built-in speakers are sufficient to listen in any small to medium sized room, so you shouldn’t need any extra hardware to get started.
Memory Cards
Get big ones. You’ll never regret having extra storage space.
Dealing With WiFi
If you’re having trouble with your wifi connection you might try a dedicated directional high-gain WAP just for the livestream. Something like the ENH500 can make a big difference.
One more tip: never share the same WAP between the congregation and the livestream.
Cables
Please, please, do not buy expensive cables. There are plenty of manufacturers out there who would like you to think that their wires are somehow “special”, but at the end of the day they’re all just filaments of copper. Here are some links to commonly needed cables, all at reasonable prices:
Recording Church Services and Sermons – a How To guide
Written by Frank Edwardsin RecordingLast Updated August 12, 2021
Many churches have been making recordings of sermons, live events and worship services for a long time. Back in the day, you may have recorded onto cassette tape or onto CD, to be made available to people perhaps aren’t able to get out to church. Now in the age of digital recording, a whole host of opportunities have been opened up, such as being able to download an mp3 file from a church website, or subscribe to a worship podcast
If you are thinking of making church audio recordings of the sermon and/or whole worship service for the first time, or you are planning to upgrade from analogue or direct CD recording, then I hope this post will be helpful to you.
I’m going to split this up into two parts, first looking at live sound recording with a handheld recorder, first the sermon audio only and then the whole service, and secondly how to record from a mixing desk. I also cover how to use some free recording and editing software to get your recording reading for podcasting or transfer to CD.
Now how you approach this will depend on your setup and perhaps budget and technical expertise too.
The simplest way to do this for the best results, I think is to use a portable handheld digital recorder.
Audio equipment – using a handheld digital recorder
There are a number of different manufacturers that produce these such as Marantz and Tascam, but I personally use the Zoom H2N which has a builtin mic and the sound quality is excellent and is very easy to use. I’m actually on my second one, and have the recently upgraded version. It’s definitely worth thinking about if you are looking for just voice recording equipment and don’t need to record music from your service.
Most of these low cost portable digital recorders are stereo only, although the one I use is a 4 channel quadrophonic recorder i.e. it records sound across 360 degrees. They also typically come with some form of removable storage, usually a SmartMedia card, which allows recordings to be read from a USB card reader and transferred to a computer. These devices are great for recording sermon audio or a whole church service, including worship team.
Some also have micro USB connectors so that you can connect to a PC or laptop direct.
Suitable external microphones
Another option if using a portable recorder is that on most models, you can plug in an external microphone. One model that is popular among churches is the CA14 cardioid microphone. Another is the Shure MVL which is a high quality lavalier mic. There are of course many other mics and some that are perhaps better if you are also recording video, such as the Shure MV88 microphone.
Church sermon recording gear and setup
To record church service audio, position the recording device just below face height of the preacher if possible up to 2 feet away. Check that the recording level is not too high for the “hell, fire and brimstone” parts and not to quiet for a more conversational style. You can, of course, do something about volume levels in post-processing, but if you can get the recording level right up front, it will help reduce noise and just result in better all round sermon recordings.
For recording speech, a fairly low bit rate is ok for sound quality, as the spoken human voice has a lower frequency range than music typically. A male voice has a frequency range for speech from about 80Hz-300Hz and for a female, 150-400Hz. Of course the human voice is also rich harmonically, so to get a high quality sermon recording you do need a wider bandwidth than 400Hz! As a comparison, a telephone has an 8KHz bandwidth and CD quality music has a 44KHz bandwidth. [1]
As far as bitrate is concerned I would tend to record at 44KHz bandwidth, 64kbps for mono speech and for stereo to maintain the same quality, 129kbps. If you want a higher quality mono recording of your pastor, then you can also do that at 128kbps for excellent results. It just so happens that these are also the bitrates recommended by the BBC for podcasting, and I think they know a thing or two about voice recording. For sermon podcasting, these settings should give good results, assuming you are using a quality microphone and good recording device.
Most recorders use MP3 file format as standard, but you may also be able to select different file formats such as WAV and WMA.
A handheld recorder like this works really well for recording sermons, and of course, you also have the advantage that as it is portable, it can be used for recording midweek meetings or events that take place out with your main worship area. And it is also ideal for people who don’t have a permanent church building and you are setting up and tearing down all your sound gear for every Sunday service.
If you want to get the church services in their entirety, rather than just recording church sermons with one of these handheld recorders, then you need to think carefully about where you place the portable recorder. If your audio recorder has 4-channel recording from front and back microphones, then it is a bit easier. If you want to pick up the singing in the church service, instruments as well as the preaching, then you probably want to place the recorder about half way between the pulpit and the congregation.
This will take a bit of trial and error as you can either end up with the preacher singing really loudly, or the front row of the congregation singing loudly, but you then can’t hear the preaching. If want to record live church music with the organ or piano too, it might be better to record using a separate microphone or recorder as these instruments may be a lot louder than the congregation. Also if you want to record the church choir, you can do it with a multidirectional recorder such as the Zoom H2n or use more than one microphone to get the best sound coverage.
Record to a computer from mixing desk
https://e9b09f0b228d962352f78dcf08104cd1.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlOk, another way that you could record the sermon would be to use a laptop or desktop PC to record from a mixer. If you already have a PA sound system setup with a sound board and a laptop, you have most of the recording equipment you will need to make a quality recording. You can take an output from the desk to the line in on the laptop, but this won’t really give the best results, as built-in laptop audio circuits tend not to be great quality. It will work, but you would be much better investing in a USB audio interface which has 1/4″ jack and XLR inputs, which you will be able to use in other scenarios too.
Some USB audio interfaces that have a good reputation are the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2(which comes with ProTools recording software), or the Tascam US 2×2(I believe this one come s with Ableton Live lite) and the M-AudioM-Track 2×2 interface(comes with Cubase LE software). All of these are pretty good and not too expensive. Just be aware that some of these units might require a USB 3.0 interface, so that’s something you should check first. Some older units might have a firewire option, but firewire is pretty much obsolete now.I have an in depth article about this subject over here if you would like to read more.
Next thing is to get your software installed. There are some good audio editing software tools out there such as ProTools, Cubase and Ableton, which all have great features, but can have a steep learning curve and have far more functions than we really need. These tools are commonly called a DAW or digital audio workstation. You may receive some software with your audio interface or soundboard, but there are simpler alternatives worth considering. For simply recording the sermon or even if you are recording the whole service, there is a program called Audacity which is more than able to do the job. Audacity is definitely among the easiest to use recording software for church services that I have used.
Audacity is open source editing software, so it is free and comes with a whole host of post-processing functions. You can edit and crop unwanted parts of a recording, add some bass, normalize volume levels and then save the files in any number of formats including MP3 and WAV and saves to your computer hard drive. You can also make your own multitrack recordings with Audacity if needed and do and audio mix of the tracks. Audacity is also great for easily removing background noise from sermon recordings.https://e9b09f0b228d962352f78dcf08104cd1.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
It is available for Windows 7/Windows 10, Apple iOS and Linux and you can download it here -> https://www.audacityteam.org
Test out your software with the audio interface and just a microphone before running it through the mixing desk. If there is a problem later on, you want to eliminate other possible issues first before plugging it into the sound desk.
Once you have that working and you are able to record and save a sound file, then go on to use with the mixer board. Take an auxiliary output from the desk and plug into the audio interface(probably going to be a 1/4″ jack to jack cable you will need).
It’s worth doing a test run with the recording interface setup. If you have someone who can speak into the microphone while you are working on the desk and laptop, that would be ideal. Something to check is that you want your levels to be adequate, but with clipping. Get your ‘stand-in’ preacher on the mic to try and project their voice into the microphone and if the recording level indicator in audacity is red, then you are clipping.
You can either turn down the recording level inside Audacity or use the level control on your USB audio interface. Ideally, you want your highest peaks to be no more than -3dB. If you have a recording that is too quiet, there always something you can do about that, but if you have a recording that is distorted, no amount of post-processing is going to fix it.
Once you have finished recording you may want to play around with some of the post-processing and filters, but once you are happy then export to MP3 or whatever format you like. Make sure you save it at a decent bitrate. You may want to have two versions, one WAV version as the raw audio and then an MP3 version. The advantage of this is that if something goes wrong with post-processing or editing, then you still have a copy of the original WAV recording on your computer which will have much better quality audio than the mp3.
If you want to record the whole service, if all your music is coming through the desk too, then you just follow the same process for recording the sermon. Now, what kind of results you get from this will be determined by your mic set up and sound system, which is too big a subject to cover in this post. However, if your piano/keyboard, instruments and singers are going through the desk anyway, it should be fairly straightforward.
Something else that is worth considering if your laptop or PC doesn’t already have one, is a USB SmartMedia computer interface. This is very useful if you have other folks on your worship tech team that can take the raw audio file and do editing for you. Also for those who might be doing your church website or uploading MP3 for podcasting. Another way of doing this is to set up a Dropbox folder to share all your audio files with your church ministry team.
It is also possible to record direct to CD using a CD recorder, by taking an output from your mixing console, and much of the general principle I have already outlined are still applicable to this method. These recording equipment units aren’t as popular as they once were, due to computer recording, but they are still a good solution for live sound recording. Also, if you aren’t planning on doing much editing or post-processing, it could be more convenient for distribution or making copies. The rewritable discs are also very inexpensive which is a bonus.
This is probably the most low cost method of all, and the simplest too. Most people these days have access to a phone that can record pretty decent audio. You can use the built in mic or use a lavalier microphone which is probably the better option as it will be much nearer to the person speaking and you can cut out more background noise for better audio clarity.
Conclusion
If you are looking for video recording software for church, the problem is you have too many solutions to choose from. It can be overwhelming, even to the seasoned church tech minister like myself. Considering how critical video recordings are in todays society, making the right choice is vital.