Video is something I have just started doing at our church. Even though it is new to us as a way to communicate, we are already seeing some awesome results. We started out doing all of our youth updates as a video and have had some fun with that.

To start off with though, all the videos have been kind of funny and light. That changed this past week when our pastor wanted me to video the testimony of one of our members. When doing the funny, light videos it was good to hear what was being said, but with background music and other elements in the video sound quality could be compromised a bit. With the testimony, however, I knew that we had to get the best sound possible.

First you should know we are using two Everio Hard Disk cameras, set up in two locations with different angles. Its a good consumer level camera with a decent microphone. We have not invested in higher quality equipment, extra microphones or any thing else up to this point because we are just getting started and want to build slowly. But I did need to find a way to capture good audio. When telling a testimony, we really need to hear the story.

This is when I got the idea to just use the church sound system. We used the wireless lapel mic as our input. I then captured the audio three different ways. First it was captured by one of the two cameras I had set up;  Second it was captured by sending it from the board, to a wireless earphone pack, to the second camera’s microphone input; and third it was captured by a CD recorder running on the sound board. We recorded the interview and I used my computer later to sync up the video, and audio from the different sources.

The best thing would be to purchase a good microphone for the video camera, and I hope that is in our future. However, this way gave great results and did not cost us anything.

Do you use video in your church? If so how? Is it effective? What is your setup?

Related posts:

1. Using Video- Incorporating Scripture in New Ways
2. Using Video-Christmas Dinner in Fast Forward
3. So You’re Leading Worship for Church Camp?- My Packing List

For about a year the most searched for and viewed posts on my blog had to do with worship backgrounds. That was until I posted a list of my most useful iphone applications for musicians, along with a link to a friend’s post on iphone audio applications.

Since I wrote the apps for musicians post I know that many more applications have come out for the iphone, and you may have different favorites than me. I also know that there are a lot of you out there who use Blackberrys and use apps for them in your ministry.

So here is my question. What applications, for Blackberry and Iphone, do you use in your worship ministry and would recommend to others? List the name of the app and what platform it’s for in the comments below. If you have a link that would be great too.

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Post of So Far- Free Backgrounds and Iphone Apps
2. Iphone Audio Applications
3. Iphone Apps for Musicians: Part 1