where to start

[tech-boi]

hi there,i need help, i come from a small church of about 800-1000, dvd's are in high demand and i just know a few basics, my church's media department is a mess soo i had to step up and make it work, iv had no train what-soo-ever i need help with non-linear editing, in terms of:
what software to use (im currently using ulead),
what format to digitise the tapes to ?
what format to use when done and how i can produce a high quality dvd without spending alot of money.

please help............

[petereit]

Just a thought -- instead of pouring all of your effort into producing DVDs, why not publish them to Vimeo?

Our church is the same size as yours, VERY media-driven and we've never produced DVDs. All our services are published on Vimeo within a day or two and they receive hundreds of views each week (we place Facebook Share and Like buttons on the video pages.) You can check out our video page here.

We don't need to spend money on a DVD burner or blank DVDs, we don't need to staff a media counter to sell/distribute them, our members don't stand in line waiting for them or spend any money buying them, they can play the video on their computers, game consoles, smart phones and iPads and send them around the world instantly which really comes in handy for our services members stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan and our missionaries in Africa, South America and Russia.

BTW, please ignore the poor audio quality from the latest couple of videos. We had a perfect storm of someone cutting the clean feed from our audio board, a new camera operator not noticing the audio meters not moving and a new editor not knowing what was going on. So this week I get to teach our new editor how to pull audio from our digital archives and remix the videos. But that actually demonstrates another benefit of not cutting DVDs -- we can fix mistakes later, repost the video and everyone's "copy" is instantly updated.

[tech-boi]

thanks mark..
our only problem is that some of our members don't have access to the internet soo they want a hard copy (DVD) of the sermon, putting sermons on the web is actually good and will help the distribution of our vision

[petereit]

It'd be interesting if you could follow up on those DVDs to find out how many actually make it into a DVD player, and of those, how many get played more than once. I can't tell you how many CDs and DVDs I have from various ministries that have never escaped their envelopes.

[[Admin] osborn4]

That's one reason it's good to charge a little, to make peopel think before taking them. But have a policy of giving them out, for those that truly can't afford.

But if you put some price on it, then it inherits some value from that. If you give it away, it doesn't.

[KeckCreative]

i come from a small church of about 800-1000

That's not a small church. How many DVDs are you producing each week? Are you charging a fee? Why is there such a high demand for DVDs? Do you have a church library system where people check out books? Perhaps only produce a few copies and make them available for checkout via the church library.

As far as non-linear software, that always such a personal preference. I personally use Adobe suite of products (After Effects, Premiere, Encore, Photoshop etc.) because of the nice integration among the different programs. The key is picking a NLE that you like and then really learning inside and out. Another choice on the PC is Sony Vegas and of course on a Mac its going to be Final Cut.