By Michael Mahoney, EditShare
The health emergency has spotlighted the role that a modern media management technology can play in maintaining and growing online audiences beyond the pandemic.
Churches are natural producers of content. And like most audiences, congregants expect polished production values and easy to digest program segments. Producing effective and engaging programming for online viewing is similar to creating broadcast programming. It requires scripting, cameras, sets, etc. While those elements are the most visible parts of production, it’s the media foundation that facilitates post-production, editing, and packaging of the final programming that makes church content shareable online and across social channels.
Great Production Value Requires a Media Infrastructure
Producing programs for your online congregation will involve planning everything from capturing full services to shorter and even byte-sized segments. Your audience will want programs to look good. This means paying attention to lighting, sound, camera angles (and how many cameras are needed), stagecraft, editing, and a media infrastructure to support this level of production.
If increased production values seem a challenge, remember that once it’s possible to record programs and edit them efficiently, it is much easier to “finish” programs to look good. Live broadcasts are always stressful. Post-production tied to tight deadlines can be tough as well, but with the right media management platform, much of the heavy lifting gets done automatically, leaving only creative decisions to producers and directors. For example: once ingested, there’s no need to copy your material or transport it to another location: it’s just there, on the system, ready to go.
Productions are Complex—A Strong Media Management Platform Simplifies the Workflow
While cameras, lighting, video switchers and audio mixing desks might be the most visible parts of a TV production, the “back end,” or a media management platform with storage management, is what makes it all work together. The media management platform is a highly optimized set of parts that includes computers (servers) and storage. All parts are connected with a high speed network that is easily capable of moving very large files around quickly. All of this takes the place of tapes (of course!), external hard drives, “sneakernet” (where people carry data from one place to another) and recording devices.
How it All Works and How it Benefits You
All storage appears as a single volumea single storage space, even though it’s composed of potentially dozens of drives. Management software allows parts of the space to be allocated to individual users or groups. Security is built in.
But it’s much more than just hardware. Clever management software turns the installation into an integrated media management platform for video production. It keeps track of your files, always with frame accuracy. It can generate “proxies”—small versions of the original files that are still high quality but easy to move over even a broadband connection; this is essential for remote working. It can convert files into multiple formats for distribution. And it allows multiple people to work on either the same or different projects at the same time, keeping track of permissions so that one editor doesn’t overwrite another editor’s work.
Most of all it keeps complexity away from the users, and when technical administration is needed, it is highly optimized and easy to learn.
All storage appears as a single volume—a single storage space—even though it’s composed of potentially dozens of drives. Management software allows parts of the space to be allocated to individual users or groups. Security is built in.
It’s incredibly reliable. With so much storage, some of it is used to provide resilience against disk drive failure. In the unlikely event of a drive failing, the overall system won’t even slow down while it is removed and replaced. It certainly won’t lose any material.
To learn more about how a media management platform can help your church production, please visit https://editshare.live/get-started.