Mister Nifty

Several months ago, I wrote a post about TruthCasting.com and their streaming service for churches.  Several readers started using this great service.  The only inhibitor for some was the new equipment purchase of a Mac Mini for the cost of $700.00.   In reality, $700.00 for a one-time setup was extremely inexpensive compared to the monthly fees of other services.  Included in the signup was unlimited and archived streaming of sermon video and audio.   Now, the TC techs have put their heads together to get your message out on the web with no cost to you.

Let me give a quick refresher.  Basically how TC works is as follows:

1. Record your sermon (no singing) on a DVD.
2. Insert the DVD into your “TruthCasting Media Slingshot” AKA “Your Computer”
3. Their awesome software rips the video and the audio and then uploads it to the TC servers.
4. Within a couple of hours, your sermon is ready to view on your internet channel!

Once you’ve completed your upload, you can embed your sermon on your website.  You don’t have to purchase a new Mac Mini  all you need are the following system requirements for the free download.

• Mac OSX 10.5 – Intel or PPC
• Windows XP/Vista – Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz or Athlon XP 2500+
• 512 MB of RAM (1 GB recommended)
• 40 MB for Application and 6 GB for video transfer

Go to TruthCasting.com and sign up for a channel.  It’s the easiest way I know of to get your content on the web and get your message to the world!  Don’t you love free?

TruthCasting.com

I’ve had several people ask me how to transfer sermon DVD’s to the web and more frequently to mobile devices.  For smaller churches it’s not a reality to stream your services live, let alone archive them on a computer.  It takes expensive equipment, streaming server bandwidth and trained volunteer staff that most churches just cannot afford.  However, a lot of churches record their services to DVD instead.  The problem with DVD is that it is not easily transferred or manipulated for viewing on the web, video podcasting sermons, or downloading to mobile devices.

Enter Handbrake.  This intense free software allows you to easily RIP your DVD’s to iPod and iTouch formats.  You can also create a file worthy of uploading to a streaming site to embed on your site. (Vimeo is one of my favorites).  Handbrake is a one stop shop to RIP any unprotected DVD to a format that will fit your needs.

Once you’re done encoding your new iPhone/iPod sermon, upload it to a site like FileFactory which allows you to upload 300MB files and gives you 100GB of storage space.  Instead of hosting these files on your server, grab some free bandwidth on a file sharing server.

If you do have media files that you want to convert to iPod or iPhone format, download the ever cool, but sometimes slow Videora iPod converter.  It produces a nice quality mp4 file that looks great!  For those wishing for some reason to rip a protected DVD (this is illegal for the most part) you can use the DVD Decrypter and then convert the VOB file it outputs in Videora.  Use this instruction guide to help you through the process.

Everyone has a mobile device now.  Are you creating media that will migrate across all device types?  You can do it for free.  Why not start now?  It won’t cost you a dime!