With video cameras starting at under $150 and most cell phones able to record video, it is now much easy to record your events and share them. The internet is a good way for churches to share video with church members and people around the world. This does not just have to be for sermons but could be used for a range of different reasons such as:
to invite people to an evangelism course
for the pastor to share a weekly 2 minute message
weekly notices
show part of your Christmas service
show baptisms
many other reasons.
Video can add an extra dimension to your church website and with sites such as YouTube, it is relatively easy to add video. For every video, YouTube generates web code allowing the video to be embedded within another website such as your church website. By embedding the video in your church web page, the video will appear on your site whilst still retaining the useful tools of YouTube such as fast-forward and full screen. Video files tend to be very large but YouTube overcomes this by compressing the files to make them much smaller and so quicker to download and watch.
An example of a YouTube video
The video below shows how a YouTube video can be embedded within another website (ie this one)
Adding video using YouTube - a step by step guide
This guide does not cover video editing as there are many different software packages to do this, but rather it will show how to add a video to YouTube.
To add your video using YouTube you will first need to create a free YouTube account by going to YouTube and clicking on ‘Sign Up’ at the top right of the screen.
Enter your details to create your YouTube account
Once you have entered your information you should receive an email to confirm your account and email address. This will contain a link back to YouTube which you must click on to complete the process.
Your account has now been created so you can now add a video to YouTube. To do this click on the ‘Upload’ button at the top of the page.
You can either
upload a video you already have created
record straight from a web camera
Select the required option and then upload/record the video and then proceed to the next step.
In the Privacy settings you will need to select ‘Share your video with the world’.
Adding the video to your church web page
Now that your video has been added to YouTube you will be able to see it by going to ‘My Videos’ under your ‘Account’. Click the video that you want to add on your church website and you will see the normal YouTube page with the video player.
To the right of the video you will see two boxes called URL and EMBED
The Embed option contains the HTML code which is needed to place the video onto your church website.
If you want to customize the video such as the color scheme or the size of the player then click on the image to the right of the Embed box and make your changes.
Highlight the code in the Embed box and copy this and then place the code within your church web page.
Adding the code to a Church Edit website
If you use Church Edit as your church website provider then you should add the code to the Web Editor:
In the edit mode click on SOURCE (at the top left of the editor) and then paste the YouTube code here.
