http://youtu.be/Biqz8p6812M

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 ProPresenter

In this post we will talk about a great app that I use in my church to run a service. It's called the ProPresenter. It's great for a person that wants all the control he/she could possibly muster, that's what it is. It's also great for people that don't have a staff to help them run a church service. Like me for example, on a Wednesday night, I usually don't have anybody to run the computer for me, so I do my sermon notes, I run the computer, and everything else upstairs. Also, sometimes I don't want to be stucked up in my office upstairs and I want to be with the kids downstairs on a Children's night so what I do is walk down there with my iPhone and I'm running the service with it, people don't even know what I'm doing.

iPad or iPhone

Another great thing about the ProPresenter app is that you can run it from an iPad or an iPhone. It looks the same and it looks just as good. Now, a lot of people have the iPhone and many people have a Mac running their church service. Also, running a service with Propresenter is easy breezy, I mean you can do it even if you have your eyes closed as long as your stuff is already set up. 

Pros and Cons

When I got to my church originally they had a Mac and they were running just Powerpoint for their sermons and I got their and I said "Okay, If you want me to kind of head up the media production side of this too then we need to get ProPresenter. Yes. it does cost a little bit of money but it's definitely worth the money to be able to do your moving backgrounds, your videos and everything all in one place and not have switch between products. ProPresenter does it all and it will read all your different documents, your Powerpoint, your videos, and different things like that.

Conclusion

Overall, it's very user friendly. I mean this does a moving backgrounds and your can control a moving background from the remote. If your music minister likes to pick a different song on the fly, your library can be set up to where you can go through the songs and pick any song that are in your complete song library and you can pull it up on the spot with ease. Well now that's what I use on Wednesday nights, you can use it on Sunday too. The thing that I would encourage you to do is to make sure you're getting ProPresenter 5 and the latest update with ProPresenter remote.

To your education,

Chad And Sean

HowChurchMediaWorks.com

Getting more people to listen to your message!

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http://youtu.be/MPgVL0W-Sds

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Importance of Church Media

In this article, we want to talk to you about church media and how we can use it to outreach and how we can use it to better our church. You know, I'm often reminded that this is big sea of internet. You know, we wonder why even put our messages online and the whole goal of our ministry at HowChurchMediaWorks is to get more people looking at your message. When we say "more", how many percent do we mean? Well for some of your churches, you know it could be a 25% increase but remember that percentage wise, getting more means you're reaching more people for Christ and our main goal is that 100% of America and 100% of the world would be reached for Christ. Now we can't go out there and do that necessarily but what we can do is encourage churches like you to come along and start streaming your messages. If we encourage let's say a 10o churches to start doing this and they impact 10 people per church, we're talking about a thousand people impacted of the name of Christ and for the cause of Christ. That's our goal today. We just want to talk about that and how could that happen if you decided to get into church media with your church and stuff.

 

How The World Wide Web Works

With that being said, the first aspect that needs to be understood is the randomness of the internet. Well let me tell you that the internet is not that all random because Google controls it. With my experience in this area, you should know that you used to be able to manipulate Google rankings but Google kind of shut that down since April of 2012. There are ways to manipulate those rankings still but it's not as easy as it used to be. So there is randomness because somebody besides you is deciding who sees your content. So just to kind of clarify what I'm talking about, if you put out a video, the first question you're gonna ask is who's gonna see it and the answer that we have is we don't know. But that's the great thing about it because if you remember, God honors that in scripture. I don't know if this is popular or not but it seems like through all scripture, anytime we put something to random, to chance and I'm not talking about gambling, I'm talking about the work of the Lord. For example, when they picked the apostles, they put it to chance if you remember that. God honors that and pick the apostles through that.

Speaking From Experience

Let me share what happened to our church website, in the past two months we had our church website blow up. Meaning a number of people that it's bigger than the amount of people that go to our church on a regular basis in our Sunday morning service were driven to our church website. How's that possible? and what's that mean to us? Well that means we got more people than that walked through our doors in our community. Of course we don't see names or anything who walked into our website but we can see that beyond the reach of the lawns of our church, we were reaching people with our message. We did a special month and we used that month to drive traffic to our website. We had people handing out wristbands wit our church's website on it and driving them to our website o they can see what's going on that month and see the special videos that we were putting up. Not only did it drive them to our website to see those special videos but now they get to find more about our church, our church staff, they get to see my pastor's sermons online, There's a sermon tab that they could click and begin to listen to sermons if they missed the service or if they haven't been to a service. We just brought in a lot of people that haven't ever stepped on the doors of our church possibly into knowing possibly and finding about Christ in a new way so church media is a BIG thing. It is a very productive and meaningful thing and something's that worth putting in your time into.

 

To your education,

Chad And Sean

http://youtu.be/EAx_xidPaCg

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iPhone Pictures

In this post, lets talk about a little app on the iPhone that let’s me look good in a short amount of time.

Have you ever been out on an event and you want to post some pictures but you don’t want the pictures to look like you shot them with an iPhone? Don’t get me wrong because iPhones shoot great pictures and they look really good but sometimes you just want a little bit more.

Nostalgio on the iPhone

So what I use to post pictures on my Facebook Page and other places during an event is the iPhone app called Nostalgio. The very first thing that you would get from this app is a random assortment of templates that would make your photos a little bit better.

 

One example is creating a collage of pictures from an event so you only have to post once. All you have to do is select the collage template and insert the images from your camera roll one by one. I once posted a collage of my family in a church event. I put the picture of my wife and kids in there and I got better responses to that particular post than let’s say photos of my wife and kids posted individually.

 

 

 

Sending Out Pictures Created With Nostalgio

The great thing about Nostalgio is that it can be done very quickly. You know, you can shoot three to four pictures, insert them in the collage template and you could go save. The next thing to do is sending the picture out to your Facebook, to your Twitter, Tumbler, Flicker, or whatever you use.

 

Also, you can even be E-mailing it to somebody and send it out just like that. Now. what I normally do is save it to my album and what it does is it also saves it to your camera roll and from there you can send it out to your social media pages very quickly.

 

 

 

Conclusion

Nostalgio is a great iPhone app for posting photos to your social media pages. Firstly, it is very easy to get done.  I personally use it especially for creating collages. There are other things out there like Instagram that also do a great job if you want effects but I like to put multiple pictures into one and send it out. We seemed to get better responses that way.

To your education,

Chad And Sean

HowChurchMediaWorks.com

Getting more people to listen to your message!

Follow us on:

Podcast - Facebook - Twitter - E-mail - Google+ - Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SQtIIvAyB0&feature=youtu.be

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Using Facebook Groups To Reach More People For Christ!!

In this post, we are discussing how Facebook Groups will help get your message to more people. We are gonna talk about the benefits of having a Facebook Group for your church and what that would bring to your church. Now of course, our main goal is to get more people, more eyeballs, more ears listening, looking, and participating with your message. One way to achieve that goal is having a Facebook Group. We are not going to go into details of how to set it up but we’re just gonna talk about it and present you reasons to enjoy the benefits of a Facebook Group.

Facebook Group for Discipleship

So at our church, we used Facebook Group to get time sensitive announcements out. So if we have unexpected things to come up, we put it in our Facebook Group. The great thing about Facebook Group is that it’s guaranteed to notify everybody on the group. What it does is it sends out a little notification so it doesn’t matter whether you are on a computer or on your mobile, the bottomline is everybody on the group gets notified a 100% guaranteed to see your message.

Facebook Group for Ministry and Fellowship

You can also use Facebook Groups for prayer ministry. At our church, we get out prayer requests from all those people who had gotten ill. It’s one great way to get that across really quickly to all members. It is also a great tool to grow your group, your church family together. Facebook Groups also work great in developing fellowship among group members. I mean members can talk about different things and they can get to know each other.

Facebook Group for Worship

You’re maybe thinking how would a Facebook Group help enhance worship in your church. Well we are here to tell you that USTREAM could integrated with Facebook. So you could use Facebook to stream your services live to your congregation, to people that are sick at home and also to those younger adults who are looking for church in places to plug in, if they come across your Facebook Page, they can see that you’re streaming your church service. Now that’s another way to engage people who are not engaging in church. Now, just for more clarification, Facebook Groups are not able to stream directly to  group members but what you can do is go into your group and announce that you are going to stream your church service in your Facebook Page and it’s a guarantee that everybody on the group will get the announcement.

Conclusion

Facebook Groups have lots of benefits and each and every one of it is a reason why you should be using a Facebook Group for your church ministry. Every church’s goal is to reach more people and with Facebook Groups, achieving that goal will just be a few clicks away.

To your education,

Chad And Sean

HowChurchMediaWorks.com

Getting more people to listen to your message!

Follow us on:

Podcast - Facebook - Twitter - E-mail - Google+ - Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtMgaSlpH-g&feature=youtu.be

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http://youtu.be/g8evHrRy9Ck

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Video Editing with your iPhone

Now that we have talked about what app and accessories you can add to your iPhone to shoot better videos in our previous posts, we are now going to move forward to the next step of the video-making procedure, post production or simply editing.

Edit your Videos "On the go"

For us church media ministers, it's just normal to be always "on the go", so the best app that we recommend for editing your videos on your iPhones is called iMovie. It is an Apple product and we are very proud of our Apple products. While using the iMovie, you are going to have options, you can either start a new project or a new trailer. Now if you're working on just a short clip, the new trailers can be very cool for you. On the other hand, if you are gonna work on a much longer and better video, doing a new project is what we recommend.

Pros

Editing with iMovies are super easy and quick. Also, it's very user friendly so even if it's your first time trying it, you won't encounter any trouble that you can't work out. You can also add music and photos to your clip. The iMovie editing app also automatically zooms pictures in and out, something that you can't do while shooting with the Filmic Pro app.

Cons

The only disadvantage that we can think of while editing your videos on your iPhones with iMovie is that your selection of video and audio effects wouldn't as be as broad while you are editing in a computer. But apart from it, we could not think of anything else.

Conclusion

So iMovie is what we recommend for editing videos on the go. That's what we use to do some amazing videos for our church. You can shoot, edit, right on the iPhone. Plus, it only costs $4.99!

To your education,

Chad And Sean

HowChurchMediaWorks.com

Getting more people to listen to your message!

If you would prefer to watch:

http://youtu.be/uOI554-6Alk

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Getting Great Audio With This Tiny Shotgun Mic and Tripod Mount for your iPhone today!

 

The information we are about to share with you is literally a lifesaver. In our previous post “Filming a Masterpiece With Your iPhone” we showed you what the best app to use in shooting videos with your iPhones is and that is the Filmic Pro app. Having said that, the two things we are going to talk about in this post will do the exact same thing that the Filmic Pro app does, and that is making your videos instant masterpieces.

Go for Better Quality Audio

First thing we are talking about is the Belkin Shotgun Mic. (Amazon Link)

You read that right, yes they make shotgun mics for your iPhone. You can get this shotgun mic for $39 on Amazon.com and I guarantee you that nobody is going to come along and say "You're using a really bad mic" or something like "the video is nice but the audio is messed up" because it really sounds good. Once you get that Belkin shotgun mic, you will just simply plug it to the headphone jack and you can record.

Cons

The Belkin Shotgun Mic has three settings

1. OFF,

2. 90 degree pickup and

3. “Narrow” pickup range or “long” rang pickup.While setting 2 works really well, setting 3 makes the human voice sound like its coming through on a cell phone. Thin and unpleasant. So we don't recommend using number 3 setting as your shotgun mic will sound like a cheap mic.

Don't Settle for the "Shaky Cam"

 

The other thing we want to share with you is a tripod mount for your iPhone. What this mount does is it allows you to mount your iPhone to your tripod.  It will hold your iPhone very securely, allowing you to shoot with a steady hand. The cost of this tripod mount is $9, you can get that on Amazon.com.

Conclusion

The great thing about shooting your videos with your iPhones is that the accessories are really inexpensive. Again the shotgun mic is $39 for a big difference in audio quality as oppose to using the onboard mic. And the tripod mount is $9 which will allow you to shoot any video using a tripod.

 

Chad And Sean

HowChurchMediaWorks.com

The BIG Church Media Look, For The SMALL Church Budget.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsN9Br5HW5Y&feature=youtu.be

I Shoot All My Church Videos With My Iphone!

Let me share something with you that is simply amazing. I shoot all my videos for my church with my iPhone. In fact, I just got done shooting two videos over the weekend. I'm excited to share that the videos looked GREAT.

I shot these videos with a little shotgun mic to achieve better audio and an app that I really enjoy which is called Filmic Pro.

Why is Filmic Pro better than the stock App?

 

Now Filmic Pro is so much better than a normal app and let me explain that a little bit. There are a few things that makes Filmic Pro a lot better than the app that already comes with your iPhone, in this case, the “camera app”. You might ask what could be the difference as it's using the same camera. Well, the Filmic Pro app has a couple of different buttons which also do different things to make videos better. There are a total of four buttons to be more specific.

Using The LED Light On Your iPhone.

First off, a button that looks like a light allows you to turn a flashlight on and off. If your shooting inside, often your shot will look better when you have the light on.

NOTE:Be careful if you use a cover for your iPhone, sometimes the edges reflect the light giving a hazy look to your video.

 White Balance Your Video.

Another button that you're going to see is your white balance. Now for those of you that don't know what white balance is, it is a setting that allows the camera to look for something white in the scene and uses it to adjust so the colors look correct. If you don't do that, there is a possibility that you will have a yellow scene or a blue scene. So, the bottomline is, white balance tries to bring white into white. If you are having a hard time setting your white balance, the best thing that I suggest to do is grab a white piece of paper and put your shot there to get it in focus.

Setting The Brightness Of The Shot.

Another thing that you are going to see on the monitor of your camera is a circle that controls brightness of the picture. So as you move the circle around a subject, it lightens up the darker spots and when you come over to a lighter spot, you will notice that it doesn't do much for the picture. But with the kind of videos that I shoot, nine times out of ten, I'm just putting it on the face of the subject so that the face looks good as it is kind of the central point for most of my shots.

Focus Your Shot.

The last button is the focus button. When you move the camera around, it kind of takes in and out of focus. This feature is going to help keep what we want in focus "in focus".  It would also allow to hold you lighting conditions pretty well even if you move the camera around.

Cons

The only thing that you're not gonna get, feature-wise with the Filmic Pro app and with your iPhone or your iPod Touch is the ability to zoom your pictures in and out. But overall, Filmic Pro is a great app, and by far better than your normal app.

Conclusions.

Alright, I'm not going to go over every detail so I suggest  that you play around with those settings once you get the Filmic Pro app. Well, one thing I can tell you for sure is this app is what I use to record every week so this is not a theory. This is actually what I use to record every week and we've replaced our cameras at the church with this.

 Chad And Sean

HowChurchMediaWorks.com

The BIG Church Media Look, For The SMALL Church Budget.

Episode 1 - Filmic App Review - Film a masterpiece with just your iPhone

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