I'm not above it (guilt)

Each year our Church sets aside money to provide scholarships for kids who want to go to camp but can't afford it. Each year it seems tougher to provide this assistance. Our member's have been generous enough to help out. I created what was intended to be a funny-sad video to bring the point home. I think it ended up being a little more sad then funny. At time it may just be sad enough to be funny again. Take a look and let me know what you think.

http://media.altamesa.org/iwannagotocamp.wmv

Cheap Video for Worship

Below are links to website that offer downloadable videos. The videos are mostly sermon illustrations. There area few that target children. They are low cost (usually under $20) and immediately available for download. I have used SermonSpice quit a bit for our Church. They also offer a free video each month. I almost always get the free video just in case.

If you have another source let me know.

http://www.kidology.org
http://www.sermonspice.com/
http://www.bluefishtv.com/
http://www.imagevine.com/index.htm
http://www.meatloafmedia.com/
http://video4worship.com/
http://www.worshiphousemedia.com/

My Laptop

Last year, as our summer camp was approaching, my wife, the CM, informed me that I was going to be doing the video for our camp. I had done videos for her in the past using our home computer. The thought of carrying that thing to camp was not appealing. I figured this was the ideal time for me to get a laptop for home use.

I decided on a Toshiba Satellite. It has a 1.5 GHz processor, 1GB of Ram, 80GB hard drive. Now what I really need was a firewire port to connect a camera and a USB port to connect an external hard drive. The icing on the cake was an S-Video output. My Toshiba has all of this plus an SD card slot for my digital camera memory card.

I'll side step here to explain why I wanted to use an external hard drive. Most laptop hard drives work at approximately 4,500 or 5,400 RPM. From previous video work I've done, I found that having a drive running at 7,200 RPM has fewer, if any, frames dropped. This has to do with how fast the video can be moved to the hard drive. Most video people will suggest a second hard drive for capture of video.

I had no problem using the laptop to fully produce the 40 minute camp video. In fact I even used its DVD burner to make the 100+ DVDs. I don't recommend burning 100 copies of a DVD from your laptop. Find someone or some place with a duplicator and let them do it. I was budget strapped. It took about 20 minutes per copy.

Since making the video, I have used the laptop to make other videos. I also use it to show PowerPoint shows to the kids at Church. Remember I said it had a S-Video output? I actually use it to connect to TVs. I have used the laptop to record and mix audio for our annual VBS production.

I realize that laptops aren't really 'cheap'. A laptop is such a versatile piece of hardware, due to its portability, its worth considering. You can store all of you music there and play it on demand. The same goes for videos. At camp we used one to show PowerPoint of the song lyrics we sang. You really can do most things CM's do on their office computer, on a laptop. If you get the choice of one or the other, pick a laptop.