Church and Slate: How Houses of Worship Can Become Media Companies

In the first three pages of this article (and the portion presented in print in the September issue of Streaming Media), I covered different methods that you could use to up your game in production and live streaming. The next stages in the media production cycle would consist of managing content, distributing and streaming content through worship-centric online video platforms, engaging your audience through social media, and evaluating the effectiveness of your campaigns with social media management tools.

Media Asset Management

You’ve created the content. Now What?

It’s critical to start logging your content in the early stages since it will play an important role in repurposing and re-editing your videos in the future. This will help you create new content that can be used for multiple purposes such as promo videos, highlight reels, or a compendium of sermons. You need to build an archive and use it as a foundation for your media library.

Once you start producing content consistently, you will have the dire need to manage it since it can become a growing challenge to organize your files in the future as your library increases in size. Properly labeled content can save countless hours locating it especially when it is immediately needed.

First you’ll need software to organize and manage the content due to the volume of media in various formats that you’ll be ingesting, ranging from audio to video, photos, graphics, illustrations, documents, and presentations. In addition to having the live streams archived in the cloud through your streaming video platform, you should always save the ISOs (isolated recordings from each camera) and Program/line cut recordings locally as well, in an easy-to-edit format for use in editing software such as Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, or Avid Media Composer. ProRes files are generally recommended since they are visually lossless in quality, and easy to manage and edit with, but you should use whatever high-quality codecs you may have already established in your workflow. Before you start managing your files, you should categorize them by using Digital Asset Management software to incorporate the metadata.

What is Metadata?

Metadata is data that describes or provides information associated with other data whether it’s text, images, audio, or video. Metadata is descriptive and provides information such as title, author/creator/speaker/pastor, date created, or pertinent keywords. Metadata is created in an XML Metadata file which sorts the content by custom fields that you specify and help you find files internally. Externally, it is a valuable tool for search engine optimization was well as for other channels since it helps in the discoverability of your video for web searches.

Metadata is extremely valuable in your production workflow since it allows users to manage assets more efficiently and completely automates processes around those media assets. It allows people from different departments such as production, IT, marketing, and management to contribute, collaborate, and improve discoverability through a centralized searchable repository.

Here is an example of metadata fields for a video file that was streamed and recorded:

filename: sunday_sermon_24.mov
document_type: Video
date_modified: 9/6/2015, 9:00:05 AM
file Size: 1.2 GB
duration: 56m 45s 545ms
framerate: 29.97
width: 1920
height: 1080
folder: /capture/video/sunday_sermon_24.mov
speaker: Reverend Thomas
created_by: Stream Engineer Dave
title: Why God Matters in our Daily Life

Media Asset Management Software

A Media Asset Management (MAM) system allows users to comment on, catalog, store, and share all assets with other users. MAM systems and come in different flavors: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud-based, or on-premise. I will be covering on-premise software since it is a good place to start for churches delving into asset management.

On-premise MAM software is purchased and installed on your hardware which you provide the computers/ servers and hard disk storage to run the application and is usually managed on-site.

There are several MAM systems that can help organize the media of your church and they can be quite costly. Two of them are relatively inexpensive solutions that can immediately get you started in managing your files. One of them is called CatDV and the other is called Axle Video. While both are quite robust, offering advanced logging and organization, automated workflows, user scalability, and integration into various storage and hardware partners, each has its unique approach in asset management.

Axle Video

Axle is easy to use software for managing your media files through a standard web browser. It runs on a single computer such as a mac mini that connects to any existing storage on the network. After you install it, the software automatically indexes all the connected drives on the LAN.

Its price is quite reasonable and its simple interface makes things to easy to use even for novices. Once installed, the system can be accessed on any computer including Windows and Mac laptops, Linux systems, and mobile devices.

It costs $1990 for a 5-user license and works with Final Cut Pro 7, Final Cut Pro X, and Adobe Premiere Pro and additional licenses are sold in 5 user blocks.

CatDV

CatDV has a more comprehensive interface and has an even more advanced media management toolset. It also handles a wide array of video formats. It also integrates with a variety of other products, platforms, hardware, and software. It’s not as simple to use as Axle Video, but it offers extensive control. It scales according to workgroup size and is available in different versions for both Mac and Windows. A standalone version starts at $450-$1,000 depending on the features and workgroup versions are available and pricing depends on how many seats are needed.

Streaming and Online Video Platforms

Houses of worship have unique needs, especially when it comes to streaming. There are several online video platforms (OVPs) that provide specialized features that aren’t available on other mainstream platforms such as Bible notes, bookmarks, a single player for multiple events or services, auto scheduler/ playlists, prayer requests, countdown timers, Roku channel creation, and online tithing/donations.

Another reason to utilize worship-specific OVPs is that certain churches may not want their streams public and these OVPs offer something that makes content accessible without diluting your message with ads, or other possibly objectionable content.

Although there are many online services that cater to the religious markets that make the overall process of streaming less painful, here are some standouts.

Sermon.net

Sermon.net is an all in one internet-based SaaS media delivery platform designed specifically for Bible-based ministries. Sermon.net is a non-profit organization that considers everybody as a partner and offers dedicated support for small to large organizations. It simplifies the streaming process and puts everything under one umbrella and acts as more of a portal. It even offers churches access and visibility in the iOS App Store, Google Play, and Roku.

StreamSpot

Based on Wowza's technology, StreamSpot is a solid platform in the faith market. Their service has allowed one customer to deliver live streams to 44,000 concurrent users during Rosh Hashanah 2014, and another customer to reach 1 million views in a single day without disruption.

StreamSpot was built on the requests of faith-based organizations and perfect for churches and synagogues with embeddable players, integrated chat, online donations, broadcast notifications, and detailed analytics. The company offers 24/7 phone support that monitors each broadcast through the StreamSpot platform and will notify their clients if they see any issues from their servers even on the trial version.

100% automation with no human intervention is possible with their automation workflow. Its Streamspot Sync allows users to set their broadcast schedule for single event, or repeating multiple events. It can start and stop streams on its own without an operator having to be on site. This feature is great for Orthodox Jewish synagogues since it enables them to deliver streams without directly using technologies or devices that violate the Sabbath, acting as a sort of technological eruv.

Kaltura

Kaltura has an extensive user base in the enterprise, entertainment, and the educational sector and is used by major media companies such HBO, Warner Bros, Disney, and Paramount. The company has addressed the needs of faith-based organizations with various features, such as a donation-based video player, chapterization (cue points in the video that highlight the metadata), and captioning, which provides searchable, automatic transcription.

Kaltura can act as a centralized media repository, unified digital asset management system that will facilitate inter-department communication, collaboration, content management, and distribution to almost all platforms including OTT.

Kaltura can serve as an all-encompassing, fully functional, integrated, easy-to-use system that can be used by an organization, or used independently by all departments to meet their individual needs. It contains a universal media management console (KMC) so all department administrators can gain shared access to your church’s digital assets.

Kaltura is one of the most comprehensive end-to-end enterprise media platforms for content creation, management, and delivery. It provides an array of features that go beyond what most churches would need, thus allowing for the opportunity to grow with your organization as needed.

This is the “Holy Grail” of OVPs for house-of-worship use since it packs a lot of features that other OVPs may not offer but at a cost above well above the other platforms. It would be considered more of an enterprise solution since it starts at approximately $1,800 per month.

This system can facilitate the growing needs of your church. In addition, its consumer-facing video site, Mediaspace, can provide easy access of materials to clergy, students, and prospective members. Mediaspace is a turnkey authenticated video portal which resembles YouTube for your own content.

Kaltura is highly recommended since it can perform most of the functions your church will need well, which will serve as a fully developed and instant bridge between each department. The primary functionality of this system would be to automate and integrate all processes including the following features helps ingesting the metadata, transcode video, and deliver to various platforms.

Social Media

We are dealing with a new generation that is more engaged than ever. In addition, houses of worship are looking for new ways to reach people. When it comes to sharing your churches information and creating a conversation, utilizing social media will increase awareness as well as introduce new people to your congregation. Social media is also a great tool for inreach to promote fellowship as well as for outreach for spreading the message. It’s best to use popular social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube for greater reach and discoverability.

First, find out where your members are most active in social media and find ways you can contribute to the conversation they are having online. Social media is great for making announcements and providing information for upcoming events but you must go beyond that by having your online conversations be much more inclusive and not exclusive since you now have to address your audience’s needs. I also encourage more interaction and sharing with your audience to get them excited about your messages.

You should tailor content specific for YouTube which is both powerful and effective for reaching online viewers. YouTube is great for discovery since it allows you to reach a wide audience. You should consistently produce engaging shortform videos that will appeal to new viewers that want to know what you’re about. You could highlight the key aspects of your congregation and show people what makes your church unique. YouTube can help your search engine optimization as well since it is connected to Google and gets priority in search rankings.

Social Media Analytics/Social Media Management Tools

After you’ve established your social media channels and strategies, you can use several resources to view social media analytics. Social Media Management Tools (SMMTs) allow you to manage multiple social networks from a single web interface or dashboard. These tools can help you make decisions in increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns and provide real time analytics, automated posting, and other insights.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most prevalent SMMTs and is focused on small business to large enterprise. It displays your social media in multiple streams and has comprehensive tools to help you manage and automate your social media activity.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is the head-to-head competitor to Hootsuite. Its main differentiator is that it displays your stream in a single-column view and the management has a certain philosophy as to why it was to presents your information in that manner. It is designed for a more unified and uncluttered experience with a smart inbox.

Conclusion

There are many tools and resources that will help you create your broadcast network from both the content creation to content management to final delivery to the end user. Although the production cycle can be daunting at times since there are many moving parts and many things to consider, I hope I have provided you with some information about the basic tools and workflows, and that it can serve as a good foundation in helping you spread your message across to as many places as possible and help you overcome any technical hurdles well.