Video
Summary
This first summary video here, I go over all of the things that happened in the first couple weeks since ministry launch. Even though we had a three-day weekend in here, I got really caught up in a forum conversation, and didn’t perhaps make as much forward progress as I had initially thought I might. I also spent a lot of time researching various things relating to technology to hopefully make future video content better for this ministry. But, nonetheless, I did get a number of things done, especially in terms of organizing the YouTube channel more.
Timestamps
00:0000:00 - Introduction
00:3500:35 - Outline
02:1702:17 - Emailing back people who responded to ministry launch email
03:4103:41 - A debate on the forum about matters concerning submitting to government authority, and what exactly that means
07:3707:37 - Discussion about forum structure moving forward
08:5708:57 - Helping my good friend start setting up a ministry website of his own
10:2910:29 - Researching/buying technology of various forms, things that will help future content
16:3316:33 - Doing everything to be able to resume the SR4 video series, when the time is right
17:4117:41 - Planning out BB6A content grouping
19:4719:47 - Organizing the YouTube channel better
21:5721:57 - Asking a nearby school about parking policy and grounds use after-hours
22:3022:30 - Upcoming work
25:3525:35 - Outro
Content
Emailing back people who responded to ministry launch email
Thanks to all who took the time to reach out after launch. I got to have a couple conversations with people I hadn’t talked to in a while, and it really made my day.
Even for everyone else who didn’t reach out but still subscribed to the YouTube channel and signed up for the mailing list and such – thanks for all your support too!
For anyone curious, from around ~75 people BCC’d on initial launch (many folks I’ve known from college and such), the ministry has gained about 5 YouTube subscribers, and about 6 people on the mailing list.
But hey, starting small is no big deal. I’m not doing it for fame or money, after all.
A debate on the forum about matters concerning submitting to government authority, and what exactly that means
The timing wasn’t the best considering I’d just launched, but a good friend and I had an extremely active debate going on on the forum for the span of a few days in this cycle. I spent a lot of my time outside of my 9-5 job there, including most of the three day weekend over labor day.
A brief outline:
- Initial WhatsApp conversation
- Compiling that into a PDF. (~50 pages)
- Compiling the conversation I’d had with my mentor about the same topics
- Starting related threads on the forum (referencing the above compilations)
- Lots of responding to the threads (both of them)
- Eventually, a voice chat to iron things out better, since there are some limitations to understanding tone and intent and such over text alone. Hurray for WhatsApp and VoIP. This helped more than much of the text we’d sent back-and-forth over the days.
At the end of it all, we had on the order of 70 responses across both threads, and well over 100 pages of conversation, I’m sure, were we to print it all out.
But it was good. A worthy use of time. (Although of course we’ve learned some things from the experience, and hope to communicate better in the future. At least I sure do).
Just another plug for anyone interested to sign up for the community (forum and WhatsApp group). The registration form is here on the site.
If the scope of that conversation I just went over sounds super-intimidating, don’t worry, that’s just me and my friend in the section set off for us to go chat things out whenever we start getting technical.
Most of the forum isn’t that over-the-top! I promise.
Discussion about forum structure moving forward
I won’t put everyone to sleep by spending much time here, but now that I formally launched, I had some necessary conversations with folks about exactly what that means for the forum I’ve been sysadmin-ing for several years, and what it will mean moving forward.
A couple of my close friends will probably get their own Bible teaching endeavors off the ground pretty soon too, and we needed to chat a bit to figure out what that means, regarding our community and how we interact there.
Specifically, we will all teach as we feel led by the Lord, and it is right and proper for us to be independent, but what happens when you put us all in the same place?
As I say, practical admin stuff.
Helping my good friend start setting up a ministry website of his own
He’d already converted all of his content into markdown, but we spent a couple hours getting the local webserver and template/theme set up on his computer, so he can see what everything looks like as a website.
I had to rework some of the templating for him since he is laying his content out differently from me. Before we do things for real (actually deploy his site), I’ll need to make my theme up on GitHub much more extensible (refactor to use SCSS variables for colors, for example), but that will come in time. Right now this was sort of the quick-and-dirty first pass, to get things scaffolded out for him in the meantime, so he can test everything.
Researching/buying technology of various forms, things that will help future content
First of all, I ordered a new desktop computer to help smooth everything out in the workflow by means of lots more power (it should be here in a few days). This has been a long time in coming, since the Surface Pro tablet I’ve been using since mid-college is getting pretty long-in-the-tooth at this point.
I’d already been meaning to get a more powerful desktop computer to help with the video processing, but the straw that broke the camel’s back here was realizing I’d need more computational power to optimally make use of voice recognition software in drafting video scripts, which is something I’ll get to in a sec.
Now, aside from juicing up my processing power in preparation for really ramping up the video production, I also spent a lot of time thinking about how to best create the video content itself.
While I thought I had a reasonably good idea of how I wanted to actually make the videos, the creation of the initial ministry overview video caused me to rethink some things.
Specifically, I decided:
- Being tethered with a wired lapel mic is not cool. I’d like wireless, even if it’s more expensive.
- Being unable to directly read scripts when making videos will inherently lead to lower quality than being able to directly (naturally) read them with a teleprompter. It’s a bigger deal than I’d realized.
- Scripts for videos of any length are an awful lot longer than you might think – thousands of words. If I wish to improve the video quality with formal scripts, I’m going to need to step up my game in the text-input department, a lot. Otherwise it simply takes way too long to write full scripts.
So, in preparation to tackle these three areas, I did a bunch of research and settled on:
- A wireless GoPro-compatible mic from Rode
- A teleprompter setup that works with GoPros too
- Voice recognition software from a company called Nuance to start dictating transcripts at speeds hopefully exceeding 200 words per minute.
I haven’t purchased these things yet, but probably will soon, after the new computer comes and I get it it set up. We are probably still a few weeks out from scaled-up video production, but I am building out the framework right now to be able to have a high throughput in the long-term. At least that is my hope.
Doing everything to be able to resume the SR4 video series, when the time is right
I had a document mapping out all the remaining content in the section from the study I have yet to cover. But I couldn’t find it!
So I spent a looong time looking for it, and finally found it. Then I verified it was in the right state (the last things I’d removed from it were the slides for the last presentation video I did). So I can now resume that series again right from where I left off, whenever I decide I am ready to pick back up in video production.
Planning out BB6A content grouping
I watched all the way through what had been weeks 53, 54, and 55, where I had intentionally taught through all the points upfront before any discussion.
I also skimmed through the rest of the videos in the series. I decided that I wouldn’t be doing any editing of them to focus them more. Not worth it, time-wise.
All of these will be split out into a separate playlist from the earlier videos in our BB6A playlist, as these are much more organized and focused, and will probably be much more useful to people overall.
Organizing the YouTube channel better
SR4 series
- Organize already-existing full playlist for SR4 series
- Make no discussion video playlist for SR4 series
BB6A series
- Organize already-existing full playlist for BB6A series
- Make focused/organized playlist for BB6A series
Both
- Created custom thumbnails for each series, and added them to all the videos (around 115 videos total, at this point)
- Removed numbers from all the more-focused videos, to leave just video subjects in the titles, which is more natural.
Asking a nearby school about parking policy and grounds use after-hours
Just as it sounds. Will be relevant for potentially improving the parking situation for the in-person side of Bible studies, eventually. Still no response, unfortunately.
Upcoming work
One immediate focus will be finishing off the initial organization of already-existing content on the YouTube channel (the ~115 videos or so that are already there, about 60 of which are more organized and focused). In that vein, I’m planning on making a few more initial videos:
- Introduction videos for all the playlists
- A second channel intro video that is much, much shorter, with timestamped links to the full treatment. Since 45 minutes for an intro video is much longer than I’d initially wanted.
I will also start filling in all of the things for the existing content (timestamps, summaries, the content on the study webpages on the website itself), as I still have a lot of catching up to do.
Finally, I’m planning to keep researching all that I need to do to finish preparing for the video creation workflow. There’s still lots to be done here (at least to get it up to my ever-increasing standards), but I am very hopeful the wait will be worth it, in terms of the quality the preparation should eventually yield.
Video/audio transcript
0:00 - hey guys so right now i’m going to be
0:02 - making the ministry progress summary
0:03 - video here up through the things
0:06 - completed by september 11 2022. so we
0:10 - have quite a list here um this was the
0:12 - very first period since i launched a
0:14 - couple weeks back and so i’m going to be
0:16 - going over all of the things that i’ve
0:17 - gotten done on the ministry front uh
0:20 - kind of between then and now and so
0:21 - you’ll see like i said uh maybe in
0:24 - coming periods we won’t have quite as
0:26 - much as it’s in this one because my
0:28 - focus was torn across many different
0:30 - areas here but we’ll go through the
0:32 - tasks
0:33 - one by one here going over all of the
0:35 - progress that was made here in the last
0:36 - couple weeks all right so starting out
0:38 - here we’re just going to go through the
0:40 - outline real quick so these are going to
0:42 - be the points that i’m talking about
0:43 - here so uh these are all of the kind of
0:46 - the topics that that i got done here and
0:48 - so i’m gonna of course have a little bit
0:50 - more explanation for each of these but
0:51 - i’ll just go ahead and run through the
0:53 - list here up front so i emailed back
0:55 - people who responded to the ministry
0:57 - watch email
0:58 - i had a debate on the forum so we had a
1:01 - couple threads about matters concerning
1:02 - submitting to government authority and
1:04 - what exactly that means for us as
1:05 - christians and then we also had
1:08 - discussion about the forum structure
1:09 - moving forward given that i’ve launched
1:11 - now and i have a couple friends about to
1:14 - also start their teaching ministries i
1:16 - helped a good friend start setting up a
1:17 - ministry website of his own i researched
1:20 - uh and actually bought uh some
1:22 - technology of various forms things that
1:24 - will help future content so maybe that’s
1:26 - a little bit mysterious now but we’ll
1:28 - get into it more things related to uh
1:30 - video recordings and making video
1:32 - recordings better on the content side
1:34 - here
1:35 - and then doing everything to be able to
1:37 - resume the sr4 video series so that is
1:40 - one of the original video series here on
1:41 - the ministry going through part four the
1:43 - satanic rebellion series on ichthys i
1:45 - basically found the
1:47 - uh the planning document that i had
1:49 - lost track of for that series i planned
1:52 - out a bunch of the bible basics 6a
1:55 - content grouping on the youtube channel
1:57 - so that is the bible study that we had
2:00 - in a shared group sense we have about 90
2:02 - somewhat videos up in that series and i
2:04 - kind of figured out how to organize it i
2:06 - organized a whole bunch of stuff on the
2:07 - youtube channel better i sent a question
2:10 - to a nearby school about parking and
2:12 - this is hopefully in line with the
2:13 - in-person bible study that we’ll pick up
2:15 - here eventually and then i’m going to go
2:17 - over the upcoming work that i have here
2:19 - so picking up the initial point here
2:21 - emailing back to people who responded to
2:23 - the ministry launch email so i do want
2:26 - to give a shout out to those people who
2:28 - did take the time to reach out after i
2:29 - launched i got to have a couple
2:31 - conversations with people who i hadn’t
2:33 - talked to in quite a while and it really
2:34 - made my day you know very good to
2:36 - hear from people who haven’t
2:38 - talked to or seen in a couple years and
2:40 - you know we got to share some of what’s
2:42 - going on in each other’s lives and
2:44 - what’s changed since the last time we
2:46 - spoke so shout out to those people and
2:48 - even for everyone else who didn’t reach
2:50 - out but still subscribe to the youtube
2:51 - channel and signed up for the mailing
2:52 - list uh thank you for your support as
2:55 - well so for anyone who’s curious out of
2:57 - about 75 people bcc’d uh many of these
3:00 - people were friends from college or
3:02 - people who had been in bible studies
3:03 - with in churches and things like that
3:05 - well out of about the 75 people i bcced
3:08 - on the launch email we got about five
3:10 - new youtube subscribers and about six
3:11 - people signed up for the mailing list so
3:14 - not tons and tons but you know hey um
3:16 - and as i say here you know starting
3:19 - small is no big deal because i’m not in
3:21 - this for fame or money right i really do
3:23 - hope that some of the resources offered
3:25 - here will be useful for others but we’re
3:28 - not in this to make a big name for
3:30 - ourselves or anything like that so uh i
3:32 - was kind of hoping for i confess for a
3:34 - little bit bigger response but you know
3:36 - if people find it useful that’s good
3:38 - enough for me and so at least some
3:40 - people did and so that at least makes me
3:42 - feel somewhat validated all right so now
3:44 - we’re going to talk about the debate on
3:46 - the forum about matters concerning
3:47 - submitting to government authority and
3:49 - what exactly that means for us as
3:50 - christians so the timing wasn’t really
3:52 - the best here considering i basically
3:54 - just launched when we got really into
3:55 - this so a very good friend of mine and i
3:58 - had an extremely active debate going on
4:01 - the forum
4:02 - probably for the span of probably five
4:04 - days or so uh five or six days in the
4:06 - midst of this two-week cycle here and i
4:08 - spent a lot of my time outside of my uh
4:11 - my normal nine-to-five job i kind of on
4:13 - the forum on these threads um including
4:15 - most of the three day weekend over labor
4:17 - day so we had a monday off but i was
4:20 - pretty heavily enmeshed in this
4:21 - conversation here so i didn’t end up
4:23 - getting a lot done on the ministry front
4:25 - there uh well but of course this is
4:27 - ministry in its own way so we were
4:28 - having a very long conversation about
4:30 - the nature of this and the
4:32 - interpretation of the verses involved
4:33 - and things like that and so here’s just
4:35 - a brief outline of what ended up
4:37 - happening we had an initial whatsapp
4:39 - conversation that’s kind of what sparked
4:40 - this i compiled that into a pdf so that
4:42 - took some time cleaning up the whatsapp
4:44 - transcript so it’s about 50 pages just
4:46 - up front before we really even got into
4:48 - the technical side of things here and
4:50 - then i compiled a conversation i had
4:52 - with a mentor about some of the same
4:53 - topics uh in this conversation you might
4:55 - ask them some questions based on the
4:57 - conversation we were having i started
4:59 - the threads on the forum referencing
5:01 - these compilations then there was lots
5:03 - of back and forth uh kind of each of us
5:05 - representing our own points of view and
5:07 - of course towards the end here uh i had
5:10 - us have a voice chat so i called my
5:12 - friend on whatsapp and uh
5:14 - you know it ended up kind of working out
5:16 - better talking over voice maybe we ought
5:18 - to have done that sooner just because
5:19 - there’s some limitations to
5:21 - understanding tone and intent and such
5:23 - over text alone and you can kind of
5:25 - better pick that up when you have a
5:26 - conversation and so this helped kind of
5:28 - iron things out a little bit better and
5:29 - as i say maybe i’ll learn the lesson
5:31 - here maybe we try to do that a little
5:33 - bit sooner next time but um you know
5:35 - nonetheless uh this was a debate about
5:37 - certain matters of interpretation here
5:38 - so it was a very a
5:40 - good process of iron sharpening iron and
5:43 - us trying to get to the bottom of this
5:45 - matter of the truth here so at the end
5:47 - of it all we had probably on the order
5:48 - of 70 responses on the forum threading
5:50 - and that’s after the 50 pages of
5:52 - whatsapp conversation we had and so i
5:54 - would say at the end of this
5:55 - conversation well over 100 pages of
5:58 - uh responses here and so it was good as
6:00 - i say a worthy use of time and with that
6:03 - being said of course we did learn some
6:05 - things from this at least me especially
6:07 - you know in terms of how i communicated
6:08 - and uh basically not assuming things in
6:10 - the other person’s position and
6:12 - communication styles and learning how to
6:14 - present disagreements in a way that is
6:16 - less likely to be inflammatory things
6:18 - along those lines and of course we can
6:20 - always do better in communication so uh
6:22 - trying to learn um so hopefully in the
6:24 - future we can have even more productive
6:26 - discussions um you know and kind of you
6:28 - know have less misunderstanding before
6:30 - we finally get through to each other
6:31 - that sort of thing so a very good
6:33 - learning experience and of course lots
6:35 - of good interesting discussion on the
6:37 - particular matters here so having
6:39 - mentioned the forum here this is just
6:40 - another plug for anyone who’s interested
6:42 - there is a forum on the website i did go
6:44 - over this in the launch video although
6:45 - that was of course very long itself so
6:47 - this registration page here on the
6:49 - sidebar you get here by going to the
6:51 - community section clicking overview and
6:53 - then from the overview it’s actually the
6:54 - very last thing the table of contents uh
6:56 - this form down here and so the form here
6:59 - is where you can fill out your email
7:01 - address and your phone number if you
7:02 - want to join the forum and the whatsapp
7:03 - group um now i do want to stress that uh
7:06 - most of the conversations on the forum
7:08 - are not entirely like the one that i’m
7:10 - talking about here my friend and i um
7:12 - have kind of a separate part of the
7:14 - forum where we get really technical into
7:16 - stuff if we need to chat through
7:18 - something and uh most of the forum isn’t
7:20 - quite so over the top as us i promise
7:22 - now we are not the most concise of
7:23 - people but there are plenty of other
7:26 - people on the forum
7:27 - who have more normal length
7:29 - conversations than the hundred pages
7:30 - about really complex theological debate
7:32 - but if you’re interested in that well we
7:34 - have that too um so this was the forum
7:36 - debate as i say took up a good bit of my
7:38 - time this particular cycle
7:41 - now we also kind of coming out of this
7:43 - had a bit of just a
7:45 - bit of discussion talking about the
7:47 - forum structure moving forward so i
7:49 - won’t really put everyone to sleep by
7:50 - spending too much time here but now that
7:52 - i formally launched you know a couple
7:54 - weeks back here i had some necessary
7:56 - conversations with folks about exactly
7:58 - what that means for the forum so i’ve
7:59 - been the sysadmin of this forum for
8:01 - about three years now and now that i’ve
8:03 - launched my own ministry it’s kind of
8:05 - being put under the umbrella of the
8:07 - ministry which it wasn’t before um and
8:09 - just a few changes related to that also
8:12 - a couple of my close friends here in
8:14 - this community will probably get their
8:16 - own bible teaching endeavors off the
8:17 - ground pretty soon as well so i just
8:19 - launched here but they’re not going to
8:20 - be too far behind me and so given that
8:22 - we just needed to chat a bit to figure
8:24 - out what that means kind of regarding
8:26 - the community and how we interact there
8:29 - so specifically we’re all going to be
8:30 - teaching as we feel led by the lord
8:32 - right so we may not agree on absolutely
8:34 - all matters but you know we’ll teach as
8:36 - we feel led and it is right and proper
8:38 - for us to be independent right we are
8:40 - not a monolith nor
8:42 - were we ever trying to force each other
8:43 - to be and so given this what happens
8:45 - when you put us all together in the same
8:47 - place we spent a little bit of time
8:48 - addressing this as it will soon be kind
8:50 - of a very relevant matter for us so kind
8:52 - of practical admin stuff not going to
8:54 - spend too much time here but this is the
8:55 - behind the scenes conversations to make
8:57 - sure everything functions smoothly on
8:59 - the community so after this one of those
9:01 - friends that i just mentioned i was
9:03 - helping him
9:04 - start setting up a ministry website of
9:05 - his own so i deploy my website using a
9:08 - static site generator called hugo and uh
9:10 - because i’m helping him set up his site
9:12 - he’s gonna be doing the same because
9:13 - that’s what i know how to do um and so
9:15 - he had already converted all of his
9:16 - content into markdown but we spent a
9:18 - couple hours getting the local web
9:20 - server and the template and theme setup
9:21 - on his computer so he can see what
9:22 - everything looks like as a website so
9:24 - previously he just been editing the
9:26 - markdown files but now everything will
9:27 - come together on a local web server and
9:29 - he can see what it all looks like
9:31 - laid out in terms of a website and so i
9:33 - had to rework some of the templating for
9:35 - him since his content is laid out a bit
9:37 - differently than mine is mine’s actually
9:39 - a little bit more complicated more like
9:40 - levels of nesting and stuff but uh
9:42 - before we do things for real for real so
9:44 - like before we deploy his website push
9:46 - it out on the internet um i will
9:48 - probably want to clean up my theme on
9:49 - github so that i can actually use it as
9:51 - a sub module proper i kind of just
9:53 - overrode some changes kind of quick and
9:56 - dirty here this was the first pass to
9:58 - get things scaffolded for him in the
9:59 - meantime so he can kind of test
10:00 - everything locally but
10:02 - you know one example changes i’ll
10:03 - probably
10:04 - uh switch to using scss rather than css
10:07 - that compiled form that lets you use
10:08 - variables for things uh so that it’s
10:10 - really easy to change the colors across
10:12 - the theme so for example for the sidebar
10:14 - menu you know like sidebar menu or the
10:16 - table of contents here if you want to
10:17 - change the background color for that you
10:19 - can do that with a variable so that you
10:21 - don’t have to go hard-coding css
10:22 - everywhere so i’ll need to think a
10:24 - little bit more it’s my first time
10:26 - actually making a website theme of
10:27 - course and i would like to use it across
10:28 - all my sites as well but that’s it to do
10:30 - to come later now another thing that got
10:33 - done during this period is i made a lot
10:35 - of research and uh i actually bought a
10:38 - couple things relating to technology of
10:40 - various forms things that will help
10:42 - future content so specifically future
10:44 - video content here so i actually ordered
10:46 - a new desktop computer here
10:48 - and this is to help smooth everything
10:49 - out in the workflow
10:51 - and it will do that by just having a lot
10:53 - more processing power so more cpu power
10:56 - a lot more ram um i only had eight
10:57 - gigabytes here i’ve been running with a
11:00 - surface pro tablet i’ve had for gosh
11:02 - probably five or six years now maybe
11:03 - even longer since mid-college it’s
11:05 - getting pretty long in the tooth here so
11:07 - it’s actually served me quite well i
11:08 - don’t have any complaints with it it’s
11:09 - just now that i’m getting into some
11:11 - other things i do believe i need more
11:13 - power so that’s one of the reasons why i
11:14 - got a desktop computer here but it will
11:16 - help with the video processing but
11:18 - actually the straw that broke the
11:19 - camel’s back here uh was realizing that
11:21 - i need more computational power to
11:24 - optimally make use of voice recognition
11:26 - software um and so specifically i’m
11:28 - going to be using that in drafting video
11:29 - scripts which is something i’ll get to
11:31 - in a second but voice recognition
11:33 - software kind of heavy on the processing
11:34 - power as the computer tries to guess
11:37 - what it is you’re saying convert that
11:38 - into text and so i just knew that my
11:40 - tablet was not going to be able to keep
11:42 - up if i had that and a text editor and a
11:44 - browser and maybe a music player and
11:46 - everything else all up at the same time
11:48 - i just didn’t have a powerful enough
11:49 - computer for it and so i probably went a
11:52 - bit far the other way bought a very
11:53 - powerful computer now but hopefully
11:55 - it’ll leave me future proof for a good
11:56 - long time here and help me on the
11:58 - content generation front so that i can
12:00 - edit videos as well and have plenty of
12:02 - power for all of the content generation
12:04 - things that are coming in the pipeline
12:06 - here all right so not going to hopefully
12:08 - get too bogged down here but i also
12:11 - spent time aside from just researching
12:14 - you know that particular facet of this i
12:16 - spent a lot of time thinking about how
12:18 - to best create the video content itself
12:20 - so i thought i’d had a pretty good idea
12:22 - of how i wanted to actually make the
12:24 - videos
12:24 - but then i made the ministry overview
12:26 - video which i had written a pretty long
12:28 - script for but i did not have a
12:30 - teleprompter or anything and i maybe
12:32 - rethink some things and so specifically
12:34 - three areas i
12:35 - made decisions in things that i’d spent
12:37 - time thinking on i decided that being
12:39 - tethered with a wired lapel mic is not
12:41 - cool so i’m still recording the videos
12:43 - like that now i haven’t actually
12:44 - purchased any replacements but it keeps
12:46 - me really tied to the webcam i can’t
12:49 - really move around that much
12:50 - and so i just decided that i’d like
12:52 - wireless even if it’s more expensive i
12:54 - think it will be better experience for
12:56 - me and uh kind of lead to more natural
12:58 - content i
13:00 - am have decided as well that being
13:03 - unable to directly read scripts when
13:04 - making videos oh just will inherently
13:06 - lead to lower content quality so i
13:09 - consider myself a much better writer
13:10 - than i am a speaker and so if i’m able
13:13 - to directly kind of naturally read the
13:15 - scripts with a teleprompter so that i
13:16 - can look at the camera while i’m reading
13:18 - i just think that it will make the
13:20 - content a lot better than it would
13:21 - otherwise be and it’s a much bigger deal
13:23 - than i thought it might be um and then
13:25 - in writing a script for the ministry
13:28 - introduction video that i mentioned just
13:30 - now i realized that scripts for videos
13:32 - of any length are actually an awful lot
13:34 - longer than you’d think so thousands and
13:35 - thousands of words if i wish to improve
13:37 - the video quality with formal scripts
13:39 - like i just mentioned i’m going to need
13:41 - to step up my game in the text input
13:42 - department a lot otherwise it just
13:44 - simply takes way too long to write full
13:46 - scripts for everything
13:48 - and so specifically to solve these
13:50 - problems here’s the ideas that i did
13:52 - research and came up with here there is
13:55 - a wireless
13:56 - gopro compatible mic from a company
13:58 - called road here i think they’re a
14:00 - company from europe not entirely sure
14:02 - but they have
14:03 - kind of an action camera mic here you
14:05 - can plug it into the 3.5 millimeter jack
14:08 - and it’s got um kind of a you know
14:10 - wireless receiver here you can plug a
14:12 - lapel mic into so that’s going to be the
14:14 - microphone solution here there’s a
14:16 - teleprompter set up this is actually a
14:18 - link to a youtube video that i found
14:19 - about a guy who explains how to use a
14:21 - teleprompter setup now he actually uses
14:24 - like a custom cage for his gopro here
14:27 - like this one this aluminum cage i’m
14:30 - probably just going to use a single ring
14:31 - you need some adapter for the 52
14:34 - millimeter like lens adapter so that you
14:35 - can stick uh the teleprompter on the
14:38 - front of it and so uh here is the
14:40 - specific teleprompter that i’m looking
14:42 - at it’s from a company called the
14:43 - padcaster pair it’s really not that
14:45 - expensive and it’s pretty neat you use
14:47 - your phone here as the teleprompter and
14:49 - then you can stick the gopro behind it
14:50 - so this is what i’m looking at here
14:53 - and so that’s the teleprompter hopefully
14:55 - that would help me read content in a
14:57 - more natural way and then as to making
14:59 - the transcripts in a time efficient way
15:01 - i was started looking very seriously
15:02 - into voice recognition software so i’d
15:05 - done a lot of research instead into
15:06 - stenography a few years back i was very
15:08 - interested in it conceptually but voice
15:10 - recognition software doesn’t have nearly
15:12 - as big a learning curve and so there’s a
15:13 - company called nuance here that makes a
15:15 - product called dragon
15:17 - dragon naturally speaking or dragon
15:19 - dictation it’s a voice recognition
15:21 - software and i’m hoping that once i get
15:23 - the hang of it and i need to set some
15:24 - things up of course and it has a
15:26 - learning curve of its own but that once
15:28 - i get the hang of it i’ll be able to
15:29 - start dictating transcripts for videos
15:31 - to the tune of 200 words or more per
15:34 - minute and so that will help of course
15:35 - because even when i touch type on my own
15:38 - keyboard layout i’m only about 75 maybe
15:40 - which is certainly not bad but you know
15:43 - 200 is certainly a lot faster than 75
15:46 - and so these transcripts that are just
15:48 - not transcripts these scripts that i
15:49 - read don’t have to be super polished uh
15:51 - you know of course they need to be
15:52 - grammatically correct so that if i’m
15:54 - reading them i don’t make grammatical
15:55 - errors but i just need to make a lot
15:57 - more content than i thought i would
15:59 - initially and so this became a much
16:01 - higher priority than it was at the
16:02 - beginning so all of this stuff kind of
16:04 - wasn’t on my radar initially but i think
16:06 - all of this will help make the video
16:08 - content
16:09 - that much better and so i haven’t
16:10 - purchased these things yet but i
16:12 - probably will soon after the new
16:13 - computer that i mentioned earlier comes
16:15 - and i get it set up so we’re probably
16:17 - still a few weeks out at this point i
16:18 - don’t want to make any promises because
16:20 - you know i i don’t have everything set
16:22 - up yet i’m still kind of hashing out the
16:24 - specifics of how i want to enhance video
16:26 - content as much as i can but i’m hoping
16:28 - that building out the framework right
16:30 - now will let me have high throughput
16:32 - with high quality videos in the long
16:34 - term so that’s at least the goal here
16:36 - now
16:37 - on the actual ministry side a lot of
16:39 - what i’ve been going over here as you
16:40 - see is kind of
16:42 - meta related it’s kind of things
16:43 - relating to the ministry itself the
16:45 - structure
16:46 - planning for the future stuff you know
16:48 - maybe it’s not very interesting but
16:50 - very necessary steps here
16:52 - so on the actual content side i uh went
16:55 - and found the planning document i had
16:57 - for the sr4 video series that i have up
17:00 - and so i had a document mapping out all
17:01 - the remaining content in the section
17:03 - from the study i’ve yet to cover but i
17:05 - actually couldn’t find it so i had to
17:07 - spend like oh it was more than an hour i
17:09 - checked across all the google docs i
17:10 - have and all the markdown files on my
17:12 - computer and i even used a full text
17:13 - search application i just couldn’t find
17:15 - it and eventually i did find it it
17:16 - wasn’t a google doc
17:18 - but i spent a long time looking for this
17:20 - and i finally found it and after that i
17:22 - verified that it was in kind of like the
17:23 - right state and that is like the last
17:25 - things i’d removed from it were the
17:26 - slides from the last presentation video
17:28 - i did so that means that i can kind of
17:30 - resume that series again right from
17:32 - where i left off right there won’t be a
17:33 - break i won’t be missing anything
17:35 - because i know right where i am and so
17:37 - that maps out the upcoming content for
17:39 - that video series once i decide that i’m
17:41 - ready to pick back up in video
17:42 - production so after this then i turned
17:45 - my attentions to the youtube channel i
17:46 - started kind of cleaning things up there
17:48 - this is where i wanted to start i
17:49 - already have quite a few videos up here
17:52 - and so one of the first things i did was
17:53 - i was kind of cleaning up the videos
17:55 - from the bible study series we had going
17:57 - through bible basic 6a which is
17:59 - parapatiology the study of the christian
18:01 - walk so this is the uh first bible study
18:04 - recording that we had up uh so we have
18:06 - about over 90 videos in this series over
18:09 - the course of the entire thing and uh
18:11 - about halfway through so right around
18:13 - week 53 or so um in the study we started
18:16 - getting a lot more organized so i
18:17 - started organizing things more we kept
18:19 - the videos more focused um so i actually
18:22 - watched all the way through uh the first
18:24 - videos when i had kind of made that
18:25 - switch and we were trying to organize
18:27 - things a little more so i had
18:28 - intentionally kind of like taught
18:29 - through all the points up front before
18:30 - we had any discussion so we had this
18:32 - nice unbroken 35 or 40 minutes of
18:34 - teaching in those videos and i actually
18:36 - at the time had edited them into
18:37 - separate videos and so that’s useful i
18:39 - also skimmed through the rest of the
18:41 - videos coming after that in the series
18:42 - and i thought that i might be kind of
18:44 - doing some editing um some editing out
18:46 - of discussion to kind of just try to get
18:48 - them focused on the teaching and maybe
18:49 - i’d like have uh two versions of all the
18:51 - videos one that was like the more
18:53 - focused version and one that was like
18:54 - the long version but
18:56 - i honestly we’ve done a reasonably good
18:58 - job of keeping things more focused uh
19:00 - after this point um and so i just
19:02 - decided that it wasn’t worth the time
19:03 - you know they’re pretty good quite
19:05 - focused you know most of them are under
19:06 - 30 minutes
19:08 - most i mean many of them are you know
19:10 - more that ballpark versus some of the
19:12 - earlier uh discussion videos in the
19:13 - series for like an hour or even two
19:15 - hours so um i just decided it wasn’t
19:17 - worth it time-wise so i’ll keep going in
19:19 - the focus series there and then i got
19:22 - all of the more organized focused videos
19:25 - from the later time in our bible study
19:27 - discussion once we decided to be more
19:28 - organized split out in a separate
19:30 - playlist from the earlier videos and so
19:33 - uh the
19:34 - this new playlist will kind of have the
19:36 - more organized and focused videos which
19:37 - are probably the ones that most people
19:39 - be more interested in
19:40 - just because it’s more useful they’re
19:42 - more easy to reference and kind of get
19:43 - through you don’t have to wait through
19:44 - so much discussion um just because we
19:47 - didn’t get so organized in our study up
19:49 - until this point
19:50 - so i just organized the youtube channel
19:52 - and better uh better generally during
19:55 - this time as well so for the sr4 series
19:58 - which was my own so that wasn’t like a
20:00 - group discussion series that was just me
20:02 - um i organized the already existing full
20:04 - playlist for it i also made another
20:05 - playlist uh that was just gonna be for
20:07 - the lesson video so i had two kinds of
20:09 - videos in this series which i’ll make uh
20:11 - you know videos on in the introductory
20:13 - part of that playlist for the series
20:16 - explaining the differences there but um
20:18 - one of the playlists here doesn’t have
20:20 - kind of the more tangential discussion
20:22 - videos where i go over points that
20:24 - aren’t really in the study but things
20:25 - that are just additional information to
20:27 - keep in mind and the other playlist has
20:29 - those so one playlist is longer one
20:30 - plays to shorter the shorter playlist is
20:32 - like just the focus study videos the
20:34 - longer playlist has all the discussion
20:36 - as well so it gives you a little bit
20:37 - more of a full picture but you know more
20:38 - videos as well so the bible basic 6a
20:41 - kind of has the same split but because
20:43 - that was that group discussion we don’t
20:44 - really have the concept of discussion
20:46 - videos there so i just split this into
20:49 - uh these the smaller playlist will just
20:51 - have the focus and organized videos from
20:53 - later on in our bible study whereas the
20:55 - full thing will have well it’ll have all
20:57 - the videos up and tell those and then
20:59 - those as well um so some of the videos
21:01 - are kind of double counted in these
21:03 - playlists as well but uh the first like
21:05 - 55 weeks or so of the study we had uh
21:08 - were just quite a bit longer and less
21:10 - organized less focused and so
21:13 - that’s the full series then we have the
21:14 - more focused playlist like i just talked
21:15 - about on the last slide and then for
21:17 - both series i actually created custom
21:19 - thumbnails for each one i mean they’re
21:20 - nothing fancy they’re just uh colored
21:22 - backgrounds with the title of the
21:23 - studies it looks a little bit more
21:24 - professional here at least i think so
21:26 - and then added those to all the videos
21:28 - which actually took forever because
21:29 - there were like 115 videos or so up on
21:31 - the channel already um so uh you know
21:34 - you know that took a while you know
21:35 - video by video i didn’t find out a very
21:37 - good way to do it in bulk um i did try
21:39 - but i i couldn’t figure it out so i had
21:41 - to do it video by video and that took a
21:42 - long time i also removed the numbers
21:44 - from all the titles here um and that
21:46 - just leaves the video subjects in the
21:47 - titles which just looks more natural
21:49 - than having like week 72 of the study or
21:52 - something it just just describes the
21:53 - topics that it goes over makes it easier
21:55 - to reference kind of in a more natural
21:57 - way so that was the organization on the
21:59 - youtube channel here
22:01 - this is very interesting i live really
22:03 - close to a school
22:05 - and so i was kind of wondering on off
22:06 - hours if i have bible studies on friday
22:08 - and saturday nights could people park in
22:09 - the school parking lot walk across the
22:11 - street to my house so that we wouldn’t
22:12 - like plug up you know the roads around
22:14 - my neighbor’s houses and stuff that’d be
22:16 - nice if it were possible but i sent off
22:18 - an email and asked and i haven’t gotten
22:20 - a response yet but i’m fingers crossed
22:21 - you know i see no reason why not and uh
22:23 - i think it would be you know kind to my
22:25 - neighbors and it would make it parking
22:26 - easier for bible studies that we have at
22:28 - the physical house but we’ll see on this
22:30 - but i i got the ball rolling there at
22:31 - least hopefully and then uh now i’m just
22:34 - going to go over real briefly i know
22:36 - this video has gotten longer than i
22:37 - wanted for it to be but we’re going to
22:39 - real briefly go over some of the
22:40 - upcoming work here so
22:42 - my immediate focus or at least one of
22:45 - them will be finishing off the initial
22:47 - organization of the already existing
22:49 - content on the youtube channel so i
22:51 - mentioned we have about 115 videos
22:53 - already up there which is a lot but only
22:56 - about 60 of those are kind of organized
22:58 - and focused so like the first as i say
23:00 - about the first 50 or so in the bible
23:03 - basic 6a series which was our group
23:05 - bible study i was kind of just putting
23:07 - up the recordings because it was really
23:08 - easy for me to record it but i hadn’t
23:10 - taken the pains to really
23:12 - get it organized or focused so it just
23:14 - may not be as interesting for reference
23:16 - for many people um but about 60 videos
23:18 - are pretty good i think and so in that
23:21 - vein i’m gonna try to um organize all of
23:24 - those things before i i kind of focus on
23:27 - other things i want to make sure that
23:29 - everything i have already is kind of up
23:31 - to my standards before i turn my focus
23:33 - elsewhere so
23:34 - in doing that i’m planning on making a
23:36 - few more initial videos related to these
23:38 - i’m gonna make introductory videos for
23:40 - all the playlists that i just mentioned
23:42 - so i mentioned that i split a couple of
23:43 - the playlist here right one for the sr4
23:45 - series another one for the uh bb6a
23:48 - series keeping uh kind of explaining
23:50 - what the difference between the
23:51 - playlists are just to make that more
23:52 - intuitive i’m gonna try to actually make
23:54 - a second channel introductory video so i
23:56 - mentioned the first one ended up like 45
23:58 - minutes which was a lot longer than i
24:00 - wanted it to be and so i’m going to try
24:02 - to actually make one that’s shorter and
24:03 - then just time stamp link it to the
24:05 - longer one for people who want a more
24:07 - thorough explanation
24:08 - because i was very happy with how that
24:10 - video turned out i think it’s very
24:11 - informative but it might just be a
24:13 - little bit too long is all um so
24:16 - that is another plan here a second
24:18 - channel intro video i’m gonna try to
24:19 - keep that one like actually 10 or 15
24:20 - minutes um you know much more rapid fire
24:23 - about uh the main points of the ministry
24:25 - it might serve as a more gentle
24:26 - introduction for people who aren’t ready
24:28 - to go watch 45 minutes of explanation um
24:31 - so finally um
24:33 - i want to start filling out all of the
24:35 - things for the existing content so the
24:37 - timestamps the summaries the content on
24:39 - the study web pages you know this is
24:40 - what i was talking about before i’m
24:42 - making sure that i i do everything that
24:43 - i need to for the things that already
24:45 - exist before i turn my attention to
24:47 - other things and then i’m also planning
24:49 - to keep researching all that i need to
24:50 - do to finish preparing for the video
24:52 - creation workflow so i talked about some
24:54 - of the technology relating to that uh
24:56 - the new computer the wireless
24:59 - receiver for the lapel mic that i can
25:00 - plug into the gopro the teleprompter and
25:03 - then the uh the voice recognition
25:06 - software to help me hopefully make
25:08 - transcripts that much faster so that i
25:10 - can actually
25:11 - speak off of scripts for all my videos i
25:13 - think that will help improve the quality
25:14 - of all of those factors that might go
25:16 - into making higher quality videos i
25:18 - still need to kind of figure all this
25:19 - out so there’s still lots to be done
25:21 - here um at least to meet my ever
25:23 - increasing standards here i keep
25:24 - thinking of ways to do this better
25:27 - ways in which i would like to hopefully
25:28 - enhance the content here but i’m also
25:31 - very hopeful that the weight will be
25:32 - worth it in terms of the quality that
25:34 - this preparation should hopefully yield
25:35 - in the long term so lots of information
25:38 - here um i as i say i kind of hope in the
25:41 - future these maybe won’t be so long um
25:43 - just lots of different focuses here in
25:45 - this first period after launch my
25:47 - attention is getting pulled a lot of
25:48 - ways hopefully eventually things will
25:50 - kind of stabilize a little bit so it’ll
25:52 - be a little bit more like well here’s
25:53 - the study i’m working on right now and
25:55 - you know maybe like three slides rather
25:56 - than 15
25:58 - but at any rate this should hopefully
25:59 - give you a pretty good idea of where my
26:01 - attention has been the last couple weeks
26:03 - and uh with this we will pick back up in
26:05 - uh you know approximately two weeks give
26:07 - or take
26:08 - with the next update going over the
26:10 - things that have gotten done in the next
26:11 - period so i hope you’ve found this
26:13 - helpful um
26:15 - and uh with that you know we’ll close
26:17 - out here and
26:18 - hope to see you all again in the next
26:20 - video