Theater Theology > Reel Conversions

Reel Conversion

video content unlimited

Once you begin to realize that you can delve into movies, TV episodes and other video content to work with when you design your sermon experience, you may not be able to contain your excitement.  That's a good thing!

But after you make the committment to download and use the video clips, the practical, logistical issues arise very quickly if you're not a tech guru.

One major suggestion I give is NOT to play the video clip right in the web browser if you're projecting it to the screen during worship service.  Not only are you subject to the enigmas of internet connections (speed drops, connection outages, etc), but it just doesn't look professional to pull up www.youtube.com in an browser window on the screen and the click play...just think about how that transition could be jarring for the congregation -- and more importantly, how they just lost you and started to focus on the technical aspects that you're fumbling through to get to the story.

The better route is to download the video to and play it within whatever application you are using for worship presentation - PowerPoint, MediaShout, EasyWorship, etc.  But first, you have to get the video off the Internet and onto your hard drive -- at which point you'll immediately you'll be innundated by issues of video file formats like: QuickTime, Windows Media, DivX, xVid, AVI, MOV, Flash, etc.

It's not as hard as it seems.  Just try it out once or twice and you'll become a pro, teaching others around you to do the same!

Here's some suggestions on the two first basic steps involved:  1) Download the video you've found  and  2) Make sure it's in a playable format (usually the flash files used on the web are not usable within desktop PC programs) -- if not, convert it.

Become A Downloading Dynamo


If you're subscribed to a paid-content site such as wingclips.com, screenvue.com, or  worshiphousemedia.com, you'll be able to download video clips easily at the click of a button.

But if you're trying to download video from one of the numerous video sharing sites where online video streaming is the intended method of viewing the video content -- such as YouTube, then you may need some assistance.  Here's a list of 3rd party resources that will allow you to download a copy of the online video to your hard drives:


Here's a video tutorial that walks you through one of the example download sites above:



Reel Conversion


Once you get the video files onto your hard drive locally in your PC, you'll need to make sure that the file is in a playable format.  For example, Microsoft Powerpoint doesn't play QuickTime Movie format out of the box.

So sometimes, conversion applications will help "re-encode" the video file into another format that is useable for your specific program.  Some programs will give you real flexibility to produce files in a wide variety of formats like:  AVI, MP4, Realmedia, Windows media, 3GP, 3GP2, MPEG, MJPEG2, Flash video, ASF, MJPEG, DV Format, Raw Stream.

(xtra vid tip: You can use these utlities to convert your video sermons and make them playable on iPods!)

Here are some resources for your "reel conversions":


  • SUPER - free downloadable application that converts back and forth between various file formats

  • MediaCoder opensource - popular free downloadable application

  • Online video conversion sites - some of the earlier list above just as Zamzar and Media-Convert allow you to upload files and then have them converted with ease.  There are more of these types of free (and paid) services if you Google search for more.