 Okay, I'll come back everybody to the C314, our second lecture. Today we're just talking about various digital equipment, and just giving us a, you know, a high level idea about these things, so that when we lead as leaders, we have to make decisions in our churches, in our ministries, we have some information based on which we can make these decisions. So we've been talking about sound equipment, let's move forward, let's look a little bit more, information here on the sound equipment that we can really use. So, in terms of microphones, obviously microphones are very important to use, and we just need to keep in mind, there's a few things in mind, that there are actually different kinds of microphones, broadly speaking, we have what is, what we refer to as dynamic and condensed. So the dynamic are, you know what I'm going to say, the typical microphones that we use, they are rugged, geropol, they use on stage, and the condenser makes, they capture more subtle or sometimes high sound, high sound levels or fast transfer, so they're special purpose, you want to think of it, special purpose. So if your sound person says, we need to buy two condensers, what's he saying? He's saying we need to buy two special purpose microphones, then you ask him, you know, what do you want to use it for? Then he said, okay, I need it for the drum kit, to pick up that kind of a sound, I need it for, you know, if you have people playing cymbals or whatever. So when they say condenser mics, they're saying, you want some special mics, typical, you know, certain special sound. Dynamic mics are the regular mics that we use all over. And in dynamic mics, there are of course, what we have to do as a unidirectional, omnidirectional. So unidirectional means they pick up sound that's coming only from one direction, that's the example of speaking sound. Omidirectional is they're going to pick up sound from everywhere. So obviously for speaking, singing, you want to use unidirectional sound so that they only pick up the voice that's coming to the mic. You don't want the mic to pick up ambient sound. Omidirectional is maybe we need them to have a mic hanging where, you know, it's in front of a choir or in front of a, you know, two or three people singing, then we need an omnidirectional mic. Because you can pick up the sound of, you know, three people or the choir or whatever. So depending on the use, you would say, yeah, we need two unidirectional mics. We're putting it in front of a group of people singing with an omnidirectional mic. So that's something to keep in mind. And also there are the wired and wireless mics. So the challenge with wired mics would be, of course this cable is running all over the place. So if you have five, six mics on your stage, you'll have all those wired mics, wires running. So generally, if you want a cleaner stage and you'd like to go with wireless mics, less cable story about, but remember when you're using wireless systems, there could be interference with the transmission and reception of this wireless devices, could be interference with sound being picked up and so on. So there are the pros and cons and, but generally nowadays wireless mics are very clear. So there are a lot of moves towards wireless mics for its benefits. And there are of course other specialized mics, let me talk about these kinds of mics you could, other microphones are specialized for other kinds of instruments. So we haven't invested into any of these, but if your worship team or your band grows to such a stage where you want to invest in those specialized mics, that's fine. But generally we work with these, but it's fine. But just keep in mind, there are specialized microphones for different instruments that pick up and they're designed for those instruments, you can use them. So just to get an idea, generally the sound for the mic goes to the mixer, then goes through an equalizer. You can also apply some sound effects, the three are hot air or some kinds of software. You can apply some effects to the sound, goes through the equalizer, and then goes to the amplifier that boosts the loudness of the sound, and then goes out through the speakers. So your mixer, which is combining the sounds that come in from multiple microphones, the equalizer then controls various frequency levels, you can adjust to various frequency levels. And the amp is increasing, giving it a little bit more boost, higher levels. And then we talked about the monitor speakers and monitor speakers. So the monitor speakers are mainly for the people on the stage for them to hear what's happening. The main speakers are for the audience, for baking. So you can control these two things separately here. You're going to give it a lot of sound, so people can hear. The monitor speakers are more glad to have people to know, the people are singing, to be able to understand. This is how each one is singing, this is how each one is contributing to the overall sound. So that's kind of a general signal flow. So the equipment that you would need to buy, generally as you set up the congregate here, serve as you're deciding to come, you need to give them good sound, so they can hear your preaching, they can hear the worship. Generally this mixer, that's an important part that you would need to purchase. So again, there's so many options these days. Generally, you will go by the number of channels. How many channels can we take? So this one, let's put some pictures here. This one has 12 channels. And you have some things that are bigger. And also, a lot of the things are built in here on the device itself. So you could do the pre-amplifier, the pre-amplifier part. There's also built into this device here. So it's a mixer with pre-amplifier and so on. So you can get that. There's a lot of options available. And many of these come with equalizers built. So the equalizers can move up and down different frequencies so that the overall sound is holds. There are other effects that people do with the sound, have a compression delay, and so on. You don't have to worry about it. It's what the sound person does to work with the sound. And that's what the people do in the market. People do these things all the time. So generally, when you're thinking about buying a mixer, what I would suggest is to kind of think ahead. So for example, if you have a competition, let's say, of 100 people, then you say, OK, yeah. And maybe you have a worship team of three or four people. I have a nuclear format and some instruments coming in. So basically, I just need something. Six channels is enough for me. That's good enough for me. That is true. But it's good to prepare for the future. So OK, at some point, competition is going to grow. When there are more people, the worship team is going to grow. You're going to have more people, more instruments. Maybe you'll add more instruments. And so there will be more inputs coming in. So at that time, so with a buying a mixer, buy it for the future. Right now, your need may be just six inputs. Buy it for the channel. It's not a waste because the worship team is going to grow. The number of instruments you're going to use is going to grow. So always prepare for the future. That is my thought. And that's kind of the approach we've taken so that we're not investing over and over again in buying mixers and so on. And typically, when you buy a mixer, very important is to take proper care of it. So we buy a nice hard case. Keep it there inside the hard case that it's protected. And in our situation, we have to pack up every Sunday. In some places, in some places, everything is fixed. But in some places, we have to pack up and set up every weekend. Which means there's a lot of movement of these devices. And so it's good to always put them in hard cases and protect them. And then if you take good care of it, it can last you five, seven years before you have a need to replace it. But always think about the future, how the church is going to grow, your worshiping is going to grow, and buy something that you can grow with rather than just buying it for the immediate need. So that's just my thought and recommendation based on what you're trying. And a very important part, in addition to the mixer, you need all these cables. Just to give you an example, here are different kinds of connectors that are used. So this is what is known as a snake cable. I think I mentioned this before. I remember in early days, as we started having to invest in a bigger sound system, one day one of our setup people said, master, we need to buy a snake cable. I had no idea what a snake cable was like. What is this also talking about? So I haven't explained to me what are you saying, snake cable? Then he explained to me, this is basically this box that you can put all these connectors in. And then you have this cable that goes all the way to the mixer because the mics are all on the stage. Mixer is somewhere at the back of the hall. You need these things connected. So that's what the snake cable does. Oh, OK, then I understood. And then we taught this snake cable. And these cables are important. I think just maybe two weeks back, our sound person came and he said, we're having problems with two of our cables. They become old. So we are having problems with our live stream because the cable that goes from the mixer to our front of house console to our live stream console that has been damaged. So another one, so we have to buy another little expansion. But we have to buy it because we want to give sound to the people. And so we had to say, yeah, we've used it for long enough. There's wear and tear. OK, let's replace those cables. And we had to do it. So it's all part of having the service going well so that people can have good quality sound. But these cables are very important part of this whole thing. If the cables get damaged, the cables get bad. And obviously no matter what you do, you can have a great mixer. You can have great mics. If the cables are damaged, sounds can be bad. It's going to be destructive. So these cables are important. So let's keep this in mind. These are all small utility things. Now over here, I'm giving a sample set up. And I've put these costs to the Indian countries because that's what we have. But you can convert it to the cost in your currency. Or you can get similar quotes for the equipment from your currency. So if you want to have set up an audio equipment for the auditorium with about 100,000 people somewhere in this way, so let's say 1,000 people, what are the things you will need? So there's a front of house mixer. And these are all suggestions. I'm not saying you have to buy these. I'm just saying this is kind of the things that we use. And so I'm just sharing that information with you. You need a, this is a two-stage rack mixer. It's about some Indian peace here. And then we also need a broadcast mixer. Like I said, front of house mixer. And the broadcast mixer is the one for mixing sound for the live stream modules. Then we have a Mac that does the mix it, the life of the live stream. We use a Logic Pro. This, I think, is what's going to be one of these things that you can get at this moment. And I'm not telling you what this is used for. That's right. I think that's the software. That's the software for the mixer. That's fine. OK. Thank you. Thank you. It's one of the things that I need to talk to you about. So these are the other things that we're using. And I'm for out-of-the-world sound. And I'm going to do a little cost for this. I'm going to tell you some more details here. There are the mics. Now, we are using high-end mics here. So you don't need to use such high-quality mics. But we're using them now. Now, remember, we didn't start off with this. When we started in the beginning, many years ago, we used very simple, very ordinary mics. But now, we'll be able to offer quality mics and be invested in that. Because the sound quality was good. It's great to serve the public with it. So this is kind of the general piece. Now, I don't know the exact number of each mic that we have. But this is the cost per unit of the mic that we have. Similarly, these India monitors, there's a cost per unit. And again, this is probably a five or six. So I don't want to do that. That was India monitors in years. But we have different units of this. And different amplifiers. We have different amplifiers for unit, to be turned, ESC, and so on. So this is general, give you a general sense of it is expensive to invest in it. It's a good thing to do overall, so that you can serve people like this. So this is a representative thing. Let's, you can look at it, modify it for your units in your church. And again, I'm just saying that we never started with this. And it's after almost 18 years that we've invested in these things. We start on very basic things. And then eventually, we'll do this. All right. Changing a little bit to podcasting, podcasting is, again, another useful way of serving people. Now, we have not started podcasts in the sense of what we typically hear of people having a conversation over some topic. And so we haven't done that. What we are doing is, of course, we take the audio of our sermons or of our daily devotions. And we release them through podcast platforms. So that's kind of what we're doing. We're not actually recording separate programs for podcasting, which, if people have the time, that's a good thing to do. But we are not doing that. Instead, we're just using some of our existing content and releasing them as podcasts. But generally, if you, in case you wanted to do a podcast, what would you need? So good microphones. Like I said, I've just given you references to where you could look up these things. I would need good headphones. So generally, you'll have two or three people sitting and having a conversation on the topic. And all of that is being recorded. So you have three people sitting and having a conversation. They have good microphones to pick up and what they're saying, headphones. And they can hear each other. Then you need a recording software. Again, you can use open source. You can use licensed software for recording this. You do an audio interface and a mixer. And if you're also recording video, you need a camera. We'll talk more about this shortly. But you need a camera to record with your restaurant. So with this setup, you could have a good system for recording your podcast. Generally, it's two or three people having a conversation on a particular topic or maybe even sharing the good thoughts and so on. This has become an interesting way of ministering. There are some podcasts that have hundreds of thousands. Sometimes, I guess, there are even more than millions of listeners, subscribers. Christian from the Christian podcast, which is very interesting, which means that people are interested in this form of digital content. They like to hear conversations, which are, of course, live and spontaneous. And at the same time, it is communicating useful information on a particular subject. And two or three people are expressing their sharing and their understanding on the subject. So this has become a very widely used, widely accepted digital format in communication these days. And so it's something if you have the time and the interest to explore content. I have participated in other people's podcast, but we don't have our own podcast. But it just takes a lot of time and effort to do that. If you haven't stepped into it, that's something you feel you'd like to do. And here's what you need to get started. All right, now we're going to change our subject a little bit to talk about video production. I'll just maybe introduce this, and then we can continue this next week. So video production, of course, is something that's a very useful thing of ministering certain people. I remember we started our video programs back in 2001 or 2002. In those days, we just had a single camera, and we should go. We actually borrowed or rented, not rented, but borrowed somebody's church building. And they would have one camera, and I would stand behind the pulpit, and there'd be one camera pointing at me. There'd be two little lights shining. And we would record short, short messages. And then we would, again, it was the person from that particular church who did the editing of the video. And then we would send it to the local cable TV, and they would put it on their TV-TV channel. So that's how we started back in 2002, I think it was. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of effort to do those things in those days. And we were actually depending on another church, we were using their venue, and their equipment, and their bus. And of course, we paid for it, and that's how we started. But it gave us a little understanding of what goes into doing a little video production, very simple video production. And it gave us the opportunity to serve people through TV programs produced. Produced a video, put it on cable TV, you can reach people in the city. So it is very simple. So we did that for a few years. And then in 2012, we got TV. So then satellite TV became kind of a big thing in those years. We had different satellite television stations up and down, and got TV, which was from UK. They opened up for TV Asia, which means they were targeting the Asia region, Africa and Asia. And so got TV called us actually in 2012. And they said, can you produce programs to be aired on TV? And it was like it was a big thing for us, because, oh, got TV was something very big. And they gave us their document that said, it has to follow all these criteria. It was like too much. How are we going to produce video programs that will meet their standard, our long list of things? They wanted that only if it meets their quality until they aired it, put it on the TV. But they said, they reached out to us, and they want you to come on that. Now, of course, they're not giving it for free. 30 minutes or 28 minute program is costing us so much and all of that. But then we took it up. We took up the challenge. And that's OK. God is giving us an opportunity. And we have done a little, like I said, we were doing small little things. Not to go up to this level of got TV was a big step for us. But we took it up. And I remember those years as we tried to kind of learn how to produce video programs for got TV. It was good because it challenged us. It made us, it forced us to lift our video production to a higher level. And so in those days, we rented everything. We didn't have any of our own cameras. Nothing. We didn't have anything wrong. So we rented everything from companies that vendors who had all the equipment. And we tried different things. So in a video production, you need a set. You need something nice, background, all of that. So initially, we had some people who would come up with the idea of a set for this particular sermon series. The set has to look like this. And the lighting has to come like this. And the cameras have to be in these positions. All those things that are being looked at to understand all that, who will help you do it. So we had to plan. We had to plan so it's going to happen. This is going to be the cost because we're going to use so many cameras, all those things. But we got started. Everything was rented. We got started. And we weren't got TV for seven years from 2012 to 2019. So we went through all of this. And I share this video. I'm just giving you an idea of our own journey. And then in 2019, we realized that there was a big move away from television through online consumption. That means people are not sitting. I mean, they're still doing it. They're sitting in front of TV and watching. But people are watching on demand. That means it's no longer, when you're on TV, our programs are coming on Monday evenings, 9 p.m. to 9.30 soon. That means people have to be sitting in front of the television Monday evenings, 9 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. Only then they can sleep a little bit. But by 2019, people are moving away from that to on demand consumption, which was happening through online channels, streaming channels. And so we went off-guard TV. And we said, OK, we are now going to do video production for a streaming platform for a streaming audience. So that's when we started moving towards a live stream. So again, we started very small. In those days, we had only one camera pointing to the live church service. And that service would be streamed live on YouTube. Very simple setup. One camera pointing to stream live. And maybe we had 50 people watching. So not even 50 people, maybe 20, 25 people. And then something we watched afterwards. But we made that decision to move away from television to online streaming because we saw that that's the way the world's people were moving. And our video production was very simple. One camera, and I'll talk to you about the setup, stream, go to YouTube, live. And then, of course, that was in 2019. End of 2019, then early 2020, COVID happens, pandemic happens. Then we had to, everything was online. So people moved. People moved online for a lot of content. They were consuming. And so here we are in 2024. And we know that globally, people are consuming video content primarily through online platforms. People go on demand. They can go to YouTube, they search for what they want. And they see what they want or they consume what they want. Television is there. But sometimes, even many of our televisions are connected to streaming platforms so that you can stream. And you choose what you want to watch. We've got lots of streaming channels. You can switch and you choose what you want to watch and you listen to and so on. So the way people are consuming video content has changed a lot. So as a church, as a ministry, we need to think about ways in which we can create video content, whether it's the live streaming of our Sunday service, whether it's producing even a short video announcement about your own ministry, about an upcoming event, or whether it's producing short films. Say you're going to produce a film. That's five minutes or something. But through that film, you can actually impact people. So we've got lots of options these days. So what you can do with video content, you can live stream your service. You can create documentaries. You can create short films. Lots of things you can do through video content. Release it on platforms, online platforms, and reach people. So with that in mind, we are going to just get a little understanding of what's involved. So generally, I'm not saying for everything, generally, the video production has these three stages. There's a pre-production. So you need to plan. What are we going to do? What's the strategy? To ask the script, who are going to be the actors and who will do the audio, video recording? You kind of plan this. Sometimes it's a very simple thing. For example, if you're creating a short video, a one-minute video announcing an Easter program. Let's say Easter's coming up. You want to create a short video inviting people to your Easter program. You plan. OK, this is what in that 30 seconds or 60 seconds, in that 60-second video, this is what we're going to do. It's what it's going to look like. It's going to have the script. These are the people who are going to do it. So there's a planning. We call that the pre-production stage. Then there's a production, which is the actual shooting of that. So the shooting of the video. Sometimes it may have a single scene. Sometimes there are multiple scenes. And then for each scene, you may use the same set or you may use different sets. So all of that is planned. And then the production happens. You shoot the video scene by scene. And the post-production is basically producing the video where you're merging the video recording, the audio. And then you're editing it. You're making it look the way you want it to look. You may add music. You may add special effects. All of that is done by the person doing the video editing. So basically, you're going through these three stages. And then, of course, you need, in addition to the video cameras, you will need the right devices. So some of this, maybe you could do it on users. You can record a video using your smartphone. Or you can use specialized cameras, like our Go Pro, so PSLRs, use those cameras, and also the formats in which these videos are recorded there. They have different formats these days for high-resolution video recording. And so really, these things, you can leave it to the people to get a recording. Let them figure it out. But mainly, you need to have things through the pre-production production. So here's what I do. Here's what we do here at C. For a video shoot, I tell our media team, you plan and you send the budget. What is the cost? So our media team will plan this. So even, for example, a simple thing like our daily devotion. So on one particular day, so how do we record our daily devotion videos? So we will book a studio, or we'll book a venue where we're going to do the recording. And then they will plan. And of course, our daily devotion means we have to shoot seven episodes for one week, five minutes, seven five-minute episodes, or actually four-minute episodes, because 30 seconds before and after will be the internal year too. So they will plan. We need to record. We're going to record. If we're going to record four weeks of content, we will need totally 28 episodes, seven, seven, seven, seven, four weeks episodes. So they plan it out. This is the background. This is the person who's going to be doing the devotional. We need these slides. We need all these things. And therefore, then they'll work out the budget. It's in the budget. And I'll just approach it. It's OK. This is the venue. This is the past. And by now, because we've been doing this over and over again, the daily devotional, it's kind of more or less fixed. Because we're doing more or less the same thing. There are small variations, but generally it's fixed. Then the production happens. On that particular day, the pastor who's going to be recording those three or four weeks of devotional, we'll go to the studio. And they'll have everything set up. The background, everything is set. And then the person comes and he records each devotional in it. So they record the audio of the video. So the pastor's work is over. The pastor goes. But then post-production has to happen. That is where they will, the person doing the video to take real much, the audio, the video, put the scripture tags, things of that nature. Sometimes there may be some special backgrounds they have to put, all of that. And they'll release every devotional week by week. They'll release it. So that's the post-production. So this is a simple thing that goes into producing daily devotional. These are just five minute videos. But there is a pre-production. There's a planning stage, the budgetary. There's the action production. And there's a post-production run, which has to happen. So even though it's a small little thing, there is a lot of work that actually happens in producing this. And the videos have to be ready. It is sent out. And somebody transcribes it. And then it is released in time. And then it goes out on various platforms. So that's how it happens. It's a small thing. Now you think about bigger productions. If you want to create a short film or you want to do live streaming, we'll talk about live streaming as well, how that happens. So we'll pause here. What we're going to do is we're going to get into the video equipment. What is the equipment you need? And what are the different ways you can do the shoots? We'll talk about that. And again, I'm giving this more as a high level. So you understand this is what actually goes into video production. And you will obviously have a team of people doing this for you. But you need to talk to them. You need to engage with them. You need to tell them this is what I need, and so on. And I'll share some of the practical things that we are doing for our live streaming. I shared with you what we're doing for our very devotional. And I will share that you will be doing for our short films. So we are getting ready to produce short films. And I'll share with you how we are doing about that. So we'll talk about our live streaming, what goes into live streaming. We'll talk about what goes into these short films. And so basically, we are producing video content that will then be a blessing to people. OK? Now let me pause here. Any questions or any thoughts or doubts that you have? As many questions? There are no questions. We will close in prayer. Next week, we'll continue. We will go through the video for a minute. And I'll share with you about the live streaming and the short films. Just for you to get an idea of how these are done in the video production. Could somebody please close in? Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time of learning. We thank you for all the information that we are learning about. And we pray to God that we would be able to use this in our ministry and help us to make right choices and help us to invest in the right things to expand your kingdom. We thank you for the wisdom. We thank you for the learning that all of us are receiving. We give you praise in Jesus' name, we pray. Thank you, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day. See you all tomorrow. Bye.