Church Video is not cheap

An important thing that anyone thinking of starting a video ministry should always consider is that church video production hardware is not cheap even if you are buying secondhand or used broadcasting equipment for church usage.



There are two types of equipment that you might consider for your church video production needs whether this be recording for TV or cable broadcasting or just producing DVDs or podcasts for internet streaming, and these are prosumer hardware or broadcasting grade equipment.

If you are just starting a media ministry, you are most unlikely to be able to afford broadcast grade cameras and video switchers (HD or SD) not just because of budget reasons but you probably won't have the necessary expertise in house to use these high specification hardware anyway and therefore you should be considering prosumer church video system configurations for your santuary use.
While prosumer video production hardware is not as expensive as their Sony or Panasonic broadcast equivalent, they are still not cheap, and you should expect to spend thousand of dollars on cameras, tripods, video mixers, lights, preview monitors, talkback intercomm systems and editing computers/software.
Personally I don't recommend buying second hand prosumer equipment especially cameras unless I know the full history, but obviously it is an option available to get the video department up and running and undergo training to become camera operators, video directors

You should not be considering cheap consumer cameras if your aim is to broadcast your recorded church services on TV or the internet via podcasting or live video streaming. If that is all your budget can afford, it is best you potspone the department and save up till you can afford prosumer video production equipment.

The church ministry that might be considering broadcast grade equipment is most likely to already have an established media department which is currently either only producing in house use DVDs, running an online TV internet streaming service or wanting to upgrade the facilities used for their weekly cable or PBS programmes.
They are looking to upgrade from the cheaper prosumer video production suite of exquipment currently in use to maybe high definition or SD beta quality programming knowing the increased budget this will require.

Whatever your individual case maybe, make sure your Pastor/Bishop has a full idea of the costs not only in money, but time and that there is no cheap way to church video production.

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What church video camera should I get for our ministry?

Mobile Live Church Video Production

I'm currently researching new equipment to upgrade our 5 year old church video recording hardware, and because we currently don't have our own permanent house of worship building, there is a need for a compact mobile church video production unit that we can use for recording our sunday morning church live in High Definition.

So far the options I have looked at include Sony's Anycast solutions, NewTek's tricaster 'broadcast truck in a rucksack' PC based live production unit, but the one that seems to have fitted the scope the most is Datavideo's HS-1000 Mobile recording Studio.

The HS 1000 is a very portable live HD video production unit based around a 6 channel HD/SD video switcher, which can be made operational within minutes of unpacking it (you still need to run the cables that will connect the cameras to mixer unit), ideal for churches that don't have their own permanent buildings. In addition to the mixer, it has 6 preview video monitors, a 17 inch program screen, 6 channel full duplex talkback intercom system with camera tally lights for video director to camera crew communications, full cable loom and connections, all fitted into a secure flight case that can be wheeled about by a single individual.
With the option of a HDV/DV data recorder that can be added this looks like an idea solution for our church needs, and would enable us to produce high quality HD programming with the post production time no cut down because I would not have to wait 1-2 hours to capture the recorded service unto our Apple Mac for editing in Final Cut.



I'm just going to check a few other HD live mobile recording setups, review some suitable cameras, and then put a proposal together, and hopefully we can get the budget approval for the new video equipment for our department.

More Reading
Datavideo HS-2000 HD review
New cheap HD video switcher/mixer.
My church's portable HD video production setup