Church Video DVD Recorder

If you are starting a church video ministry for the purpose of recording your church services on to DVD for home bound congregation members as well as for sale in your bookshop, then once you have acquired your church cameras, video mixer, you will be looking for a DVD recorder to capture the mixed video output from your cameras to a DVD master that can then either be duplicated or if you only require a few copies, then make some more discs with your recorder.



Since we are looking for affordable devices to suit our limited startup budget, the most appropriate devices to use will be consumer electronics DVD recorders.

The Phillips DVDR3576H is an example of a USA home DVD recorder that you could use as a starting point for producing church service DVDs.

As with selecting cameras, you need to buy a recorder that supports the video system in use in your respective countries (PAL, NTSC, SECAM).

You will notice that this DVD recorder has a 160GB HDD, it is important that whatever recording device you choose, the facility to record onto hard drive is available, as you should first record your church video services directly to the hard disk, and from there you can copy it DVD removing any unwanted portions using the inbuilt simple editing facilities. This allows you to start recording at anytime during the service and not miss the beginning of the Pastor's sermon. Note that DVDs have a limit of 4.7GB, so if you were recording a church concert or worship service directly unto DVD, you might run out of space, or if your DVD disk was faulty, you could miss the whole event, which is why all church video recordings should be to HDD and then you can make your final DVDs later (in the broadcast or professional circles, there are multiple backup tapes and camera ISO recordings to safeguard important events).

If your budget allows, you can look for professional grade DVD recorders which should also have the same facilities and more, but are more sophisticated and might have things like XLR connections, BNC, HDMI and SDI connections etc.

When recording your video, use the best available quality settings on the recorder, you can always change the setting when copying to DVD if you need to fit a very long concert or service unto a single DVD.

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Church Video Camera

Please note that since writing this article, our church now uses Sony EX1 HD camcorders.

I'm going to suggest 2 types of cameras that you could use as a starting point for your church video ministry's new department. The first one will be a consumer grade camcorder placed at the lower end of your budget, while the second one will be a Prosumer digital camera for those seeking a higher quality church videos. I'm baised towards Sony products, so you will only find camcorders from this manufacturer suggested, but please note that Panasonic and JVC do produce some excellent products, particularly in the Prosumer range.



When buying a church video camera online, make sure you choose the correct system for your country, NTSC for USA, PAL for UK, etc

Low priced church video camera

The Sony HDR-SR12 is High Definition Camcorder that records to Hard Drive, possesses a 12x Optical lens and would be suitable for a church that is mainly interested in recording to Dvd or producing Podcasts and have a very tight budget.
Personally I wouldn't use a consumer camera for Church Video production, because you miss out on basic things like a manual focus ring, white balance, iris control, but if there is not enough money in your budget for a prosumer church camera, then this sony consumer camcorder can fulfil the task of recording videos for DVD duplication or providing overflow coverage or even streaming live church services on the internet.

The X12 optical lens on the Sony HDR-SR12 should be adequate enough for a hall that is about 30m long, but you would need some good lighting to give the small camera CCDs a chance of producing good quality video pictures. Output formats available include composite, S-Video, DV and HDV.
Because this is a last option camera, I wouldn't go into detail of using it as a church video recording device, but it will work perfectly with an affordable video mixer.

Prosumer camera for church video production

One of my favorite cameras that I used to recommend to churches as an affordable starting point was the Sony PD170 DV camcorder, this camera was very popular in the broadcast industry for producing good quality fly on the wall documentaries, had a huge following in both wedding video circles as well as corporate production, but is no longer available new, though you could find used ones on Amazon, Ebay, etc, I don't like buying church video cameras second hand since you might not have the full history of the device.

The replacement for the Sony PD170 video camera is the Sony HRV1U, this is a low cost HDV professional camera well suited for a church video department, very portable, has 3 CCDs, a X20 optical zoom, manual controls for focus, zoom, iris, white balancing, every thing a video professional requires including XLR audio connections for sound hookup.
Having used the PD170 camera for many years, and hired the Sony HRV1U a couple of ocassions, I can say that you will not be disappointed in the capabilities of these Sony prosumer camcorders for both church service recordings and field video production (documentaries, etc), and you will be able to afford these reliable Sony products with a modest budget.

If you are thinking of buying the Sony HRV1U camera for church video use, you might want to have a look at the training DVD produced by Douglas Spotted Eagle called 'inside the HVR1' which gives an indept look at the camera and provides tips and instructions on getting the best out of this professional video camcorder.


The church video below was produced using the Sony PD170 DV camera. We had a Paglight portable light pack which helped get better pictures from the low light filming conditions.


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Beginning a Church Video Department

Starting a church video ministry

There are a few reasons for starting a church video ministry, it could be you want to make video recordings of the service available to the church congregation, want to boost your ministry's web presence by offering video podcasts or you are considering starting a TV broadcast outreach program, whatever the reason, I hope you find the information here of use not only in selecting the right equipment, but also training advice for members of your new video media department.


When starting a church video recording department, there are a few things you need to take into consideration before you decide on the equipment that you should buy even if you don't have a budget limit. Your video media department is a technical ministry, and therefore you can't just buy equipment and hope that members of your congregation will be able to use cameras or a video mixer properly without training especially if that is not what they do for a job. While many people will say they know how to use a camera because they have a camcorder at home and have 'recorded' a family members wedding, producing professional looking video that you as a church will be proud of requires some training.

So as a church leader or someone charged with creating a new church video ministry, part of the pre-requites should be thinking about some basic training for the potential members of the department when you buy your video equipment. To be able to select the right equipment, you need to know what the primary function of the department is going to be, and what your budget is that you are willing to commit.

While your church video equipment is not going to be cheap, you don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on cameras, mixers, tripods, lights and grip equipment if all the video ministry is going to be doing is producing DVDs for congregation members and posting a video podcast on the church's website!

Starting a small church video ministry

Let's say that you want the new video department to only produce dvds for members of the church, and that there might be a possibility of podcasts being posted on the internet in the next 6 months, there are no plans for going on to broadcast TV in the next 4 years, but you might need to have a TV in an overflow room during special events such as christmas.

We know what the requirements are, and lets say we have a budget of £10,000 maximun to play with including training, what type of video recording equipment can we get to meet our goal?

You are going to need at least 2 cameras (don't even think about starting a video department with a single camera, while it can be done, the resultant videos will look un-professional, and what is worth doing at all, is worth doing well), tripods, a churh video mixer, DVD recorder and some video monitors.

Here is an example of the type of church video clips you could be producing with not too expensive video equipment, training, patience and time, don't settle for less, invest in the best your church can afford, video production should be as affordable as you want it to be.

Church Video Production

There are 2 things you need to enable you to carry out church video production:

Video Production Equipment and Skilled media personnel or operators.

Church Video Equipment

The hardware that you buy will largely depend on the tasks you require to be performed, and the ministry's available budget. As always the more money you spend on church cameras, video mixers or DVD Recorders, the better the quality of the end video product that can come out in the right hands.
If all you need is a video overflow facility for a small mother's and baby room for example, you might be able to get away with a consumer grade camcorder mounted on a cheap tripod feeding a 32' LCD monitor. On the other hand that camera will not be adequate to provide IMAG (image magnification) features in a 1000 capacity hall where the people at the back are over 100m from the stage!

Skilled Camera operators, Video Directors and Editors

Having good and expensive church video equipment is good, but without skilled volunteers or personnel to operate them, your church video ministry will not be able to function properly and to its full potential.
Many people will say they know how to operate a church camera, but do they know how to perform a white balance on a Sony HRV1U Camera? or what is the difference between the Iris control and gain on a camera?
Supposing you have just spent $5,000 on a church video mixer, but due to santuary restrictions have to setup and break down your video equipment, will your video director be able to do this each week and maintain a consistent video recording of the service with faithful picture reproduction and a professional TV quality look.

As you can see having the money for equipment and freely available people is not the only key to a successful video media department, but training which takes time, so a pastor or church leader should not expect excellent results immediately a church video deparment is setup, unless you are prepared to pay professional to operate the equipment, and even that is not always a good option (a subject I will address in a separate article).

I will always sacrifice equipment for skill anyday, as it is always possible to produce good quality church video with cheap cameras in the right hands that have the appropriate knowledge, but not with expensive video mixer with a director just pushing buttons randomly, not knowing the rule of thirds, shot composition or how to direct camera talent.

To illustrate this point, the video below was produced with 2 consumer grade cameras, the first was a Sony Camcorder that cost $450 no longer in production and the second a small $299 portable palm digital camcorder. While the 3 minute documentary is not an award winning product, the story and quality was good enough to be broadcast and aired on US National TV via Current TV.



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Affordable Church Video Mixer

Cheap 2 Channel Video Mixer

Update: This popular Cheap mixer is now available to buy for around $500, from BH Photo order today as they tend to go very quickly.

As you know TV equipment is not cheap, and you do need a large sum of money for broadcasting hardware, so here is a budget video mixer that would be ideal for a new startup church video department wanting to produce service DVDs for congregation members.

At around $500, it has reasonable features, and while not suitable for broadcast TV purposes, it will act as a spring board for training members of your video media department in live TV switching or video directing, and fufill the goal of simple mixing facilities for recording a church's service on DVD. In fact our church used this mixer for over 4 years to reliably record our services and produce a weekly video podcast before upgrading to a HD production studio.


The CMX07 is a 2 channel video mixer aimed at the consumer market, but can accept upto 4 camera inputs (2 SVideo and 2 Composite), but can only switch between 2 sources at a time.

The CMX7 (sold under Sima brand in the US) mixer was the first that we used at our church, and after some searching on the internet was chosen out of a short list of 2 products, the Edirol V4 VJ mixer and the CMX-07 video mixer. The main reason for choosing it was its simple interface and that for my video/TV ministry training application I needed to be able to simultaneously preview all my input sources, and the Edirol did not provide this.

The CMX-07 while having a Audio Mixer built in, you should not be using this, as all audio should be supplied from the churches Audio mixing desk (I presume any church starting a video department will already have a working sound unit).

In addition to this church video mixer, you will need a number of TV monitors corresponding to the number of cameras you will be using (probably 2 for a new department), plus an additional large one for monitoring the mixer video output being sent to your DVD recorder.

Video Mixer Design and Layout




The CMX07 has a cheap look, a plastic case and delicate controls, the unit however is very light and compact, which means that it can easily be carried and setup if you don't have a permanent place of worship.

Included with the mixer is the Power Adaptor, a S-Video cable and a stereo phono cable.

Setup and Operation of this church mixer
Setting up the CMX07 video mixer is quite easy, and just involves connecting the various Video sources to the mixer, connecting the preview outputs to the respective monitors and mixed Video output to the DVD recording device and large TV program monitor. The manual is simple, but explains all the required steps and anyone with some technical knowledge should be able to complete this.

Once everything is connected and you switch on the CMX07 church video mixer, it will go to its default settings. Even though the mixer has 4 video sources, you can only switch 2 at a time, so you need to configure both A and B buses with the required sources for switching. It should be noted that the mixer does not save any settings, so you need to configure the sources each time you switch the unit on. Switching between your 2 cameras is done by moving the "T" bar to either A or B bus and simply pressing the Video 1 or Video 2 button as required, and only requires a little bit of practise.

A few basic video transitions (dissolve, wipe and PIP) are provided, and using the "T" bar on A bus, select Video 1, choose the transition, on B bus select Video 2, move the "T" bar from bus A to B and you have your transition. An auto take button is also provided with adjustable speed if you prefer doing it that way.

If you have no previous TV or Video production experience, it is advisable to get someone in to training the church video department in basic switching operations and camera handling, as just pressing buttons will not give good looking visuals on the recorded DVDs.

Church Video Produvtion



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Value your Church Video Team

As a Pastor or a department head, it is important that you value your church video department members because the secret to having a sucessful video ministry is in the strength of the indivduals that put their time into the various tasks that are required for a good church video production. Video Editing, Field Electronic News Gathering (ENG), Camera operators, runners all have their part to play, and while it is possible for one person to do a lot of the work to bring a video to the church for a presentation, delegating and diversifing is the way to build the foundation of your church video ministry.



One thing you need to know about running a church video department, is that it takes a lot of time to produce good video DVDs, reports or presentations, the other thing is that being very technical, losing a media department resource will take a long time to replace, as training a replacement could cost your church time and money, so value your present video directors, editors, church camera operators and producers.