Recently in Tech Category

This is not a political story.  Rather, this is a look at how the candidates and media outlets are finally moving into the new media realms to reach their viewers.  NBC news reports that more people have watched Tina Fay parodies of Sarah Palin on Saturday Nigh Live than have actually watched the broadcast of the program.  Checking the SNL website reports 2.4 million views.  Various youtube posts and reposts of the same videos easily take the total over 5 million views of the same content and it only aired two days ago!  The internet is quickly becoming a place to go to view things.

In my own life when discussing tv shows or movies with friends the question is no longer:  did you see that show?  the question is:  have you seen it yet?  because there are so many ways to get content now.  With a few exceptions, or if I just happen to be in front of the TV I hardly watch the TV in a traditional way.  I get all my news from podcasts, most of the big networks and CNN.  I watch and listen to content from podcast networks like Revision3 and TWiT and I have a cable company supplied DVR (which is less reliable than anything else).

The campaigns as well have been using the internet to get the word out, Obama's use of twitter to announce his VP nomination and both candidates websites have been destinations for supporters, media and the rare undecided voter.

But what does all this have to do with the church?  Well, what it says more than anything is that the people who make up our churches are using digital media and the internet more and more in their daily lives.  They're skipping commercials on their tivo's, they're staying connected to friends and family in more ways than ever and faster than ever.  The idea that it's only the young people is no longer true.  Every age, race, gender and political affiliation is using the internet and everyone on the internet has seen a dancing cat on youtube by now.  The challenge for churches is to use those tools as well, and allow your congeration to shape that.

So, what is your church doing?  Are you on twitter? facebook? myspace? are you podcasting?  is your website a destination for information and community?  Let us know in the comments and feel free to send us email feedback as well.  If you like or don't like this sort of thing from us we want to hear from you. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, LifeWay is beginning to offer some of our downloadable videos in standard definition.  There are a number of things that go into the decision on how to encode these things, but the biggest question is always what we should offer in terms of resolution, bit rate, and file size.  With standard definition, the resolution should be pretty well set: 640x480.  Of course, we shoot with DV cam, so that resolution actually gets bumped up above standard def, to 720x480.  And there's  one project I'm working on  that was shot in 16:9, so the resolution will be even higher (but not hi-def).So today I'm working with some hour-long sessions of a study we've previously released in low-res from Beth Moore.

Since we're making it standard def (720x480), I have to really tweak the bit rate to make sure that the quality is worth the extra money that we will be charging for the video.  However, I have to make the file size small enough that a normal computer and internet connection can handle the download.  LifeWay does not yet have a download manager... so I can't go over the top with file size.

The balance I'm at, for these files, is working at a 2000kbps variable bit rate.  While this is less than I'd like it to be... it's just about the highest quality I can go and still make a feasible product.  Why?  At 2000kbps, the file sizes are hitting 1000MB.  That's a big file to download.  Real big.  When I worked in the technology division, I had customers complain about 100MB files.

The source files I'm working with are averaging 75GB.  So, being able to compress down to 1GB is actually an amazing feat (and one that is averaging 6 HOURS per encode... 12 files x 6 hours = 3 days.  Thank you, Mr. Weekend).

So here's to an experiment in file sizes; is the quality of going from 360x240 at around 800kbps and 100MB worth 1000MB at 720x480 at 2000kbps?