
Moving Above LTO - How Cloud Storage Helps One Texas Church Deliver a Modern Digital Ministry
Brie Clayton September 29, 2023
0 Comments
First Baptist Dallas is a large, multi-generational church community dating back to 1890. Their mission is to transform the world with God's word, one life at a time. Across their local, national, and international ministries, First Baptist Dallas uses four key strategies to empower their congregation: worship, equip, serve, and influence. From worship services and Sunday school programs to discipleship, fellowship, and mission opportunities, the church conducts programs both in-person and through streaming and broadcast media to keep their community connected and engaged, no matter where they reside.
Migrating Years of Church Footage to the Cloud First Baptist Dallas has been ahead of the media curve since they issued their first radio broadcast in 1921. Over the past 100+ years, the church has expanded from a consistent radio presence into satellite, broadcast, and streaming audio and video ministries that reach a global audience. First Baptist Dallas' broadcast ministry, Pathway to Victory, recently became the most watched program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world's largest religious television network.
The church has always felt that media is an important part of the things we do, says Steve Reed, First Baptist Dallas' Minister of Worship Production. When he joined the team in 2018, Reed found that he had inherited a huge on-premises content archive crammed into a single server room on the church's physical campus. Much of it was stored on physical media, from 1940s era reel-to-reel tapes to Betacam cassettes.
One of the things that used to keep us up at night was that if anything happened in that room, we would have lost everything, Reed says. When he explained that dire situation to the First Baptist Dallas executive and administrative teams, everyone was on board with finding a better solution. It was time to move to the cloud.
Two Sunday Worship Services Means More Than 1.4TB of Footage Each Week First Baptist Dallas runs a complex camera setup. Until about 2013, worship events held in the church's historic sanctuary were recorded using five SD cameras shooting 480p. On Easter of 2013, the church moved into a brand new worship center and upgraded to seven HD cameras shooting at 720p. That more than quadrupled the size of each Sunday's capture files, says Dean Hemmeline, First Baptist Dallas' Video Asset Manager. The video team went from capturing about 300GB of footage to as much as 1.4TB in a single Sunday.
James Johnson, First Baptist Dallas' Chief Video Engineer, manages that vast content archive. In addition to overseeing backups and retrievals, Johnson has to ensure that the church's team of video editors have read and write access to the files they need with minimal downtime. To balance accessibility concerns with cost efficiency and the nightmare of disaster striking their physical storage, the church considered two options: either expand their on-premises storage space with redundancy rooms and a whole slate of new hardware, or migrate to cloud storage.
CineSys, the church's technology vendor, recommended Backblaze right off the bat. The fact that Backblaze had worked for other houses of worship helped First Baptist Dallas finalize their decision: We wanted something that other organizations had already had success with, says Johnson. CineSys recommended Backblaze with confidence, saying Once you do this, you're going to be happy.'
After some internal evaluation, the church determined that there was no advantage to sinking even more investment into an expanded on-premises storage system. Not only was cloud storage a more affordable option, but it would also save the church from the long term expense of having to install, maintain, and replace a whole new set of servers with a limited lifespan. We saw great value in having Backblaze as our cloud storage, Reed says. We knew all our footage was safe, even if something happened here on campus. It was a natural call for us at that point. Then you get the bonus of security, adds Johnson.
A Ten-Channel Workflow Takes Sermons From the Sanctuary to the Cloud Since implementing Backblaze, First Baptist Dallas has backed up recordings from all new sermons directly into their Backblaze B2 bucket. The production team captures a dirty feed from the live stream of each service, which includes lower thirds, captions, call-outs, and a mix of all cameras. In addition they also capture clean isolated feeds from each of eight cameras (ISOs). Ingesting all those channels allows the church's video editors to condense each sermon while respecting its intentions, using smooth transitions instead of jarring jump cuts.
The First Baptist Dallas production team uses Softron, a multi-channel video ingest solution, to feed two channels to each of the five Mac computers connected via fiber to the church's main server. The team chooses which of the two Sunday services they want to broadcast, and then they upload the raw capture from a local QNAP NAS server into Backblaze using Axle.ai as their media asset management system. They use Rclone to interface Backblaze B2 and Axle.ai, so they just have to click add to archive in the Axle.ai interface to complete the upload to Backblaze.
The process of digitizing that packed server room was already underway before they started moving to the cloud, so First Baptist Dallas' migration of their older footage has also been seamless. Hemmeline handpicks clean footage and ISO files to back up based on their relevance to the Pathway to Victory program, which regularly re-airs older sermons. He has been working backward chronologically to upload th
North America Stories
09/05/2025
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Studio Technologies said the Harvard University athletics department has integrated Dante-enabled equipment from the vendor into its broadcast ...
09/05/2025
NEW YORK ITN, a provider of a local linear supply side platform, and Magnite, a independent sell-side advertising company, have announced that they working toge...
09/05/2025
LEEDS, U.K. Nugen Audio has launched a new speech intelligibility plug-in, DialogCheck and offered up quotes from technologists working at places like Netflix p...
09/05/2025
AJA I/O Gear: The Heart of Broadcast Solutions' VEGO Mobile Editing Solution
Brie Clayton May 8, 2025
0 Comments
When working remotely on broadcas...
09/05/2025
What do they teach in an Advanced Adobe After Effects Course?
Roland Kahlenberg May 8, 2025
0 Comments
There aren't many advanced After Effects co...
09/05/2025
Larry Jordan Sits with Trevor Morgan of OpenDrives at NAB 2025
Brie Clayton May 8, 2025
0 Comments
Trevor Morgan, COO of OpenDrives, shares how the co...
09/05/2025
Berklee Popular Music Institute Announces UK Festival Debut and Tour Dates For the first time, BPMI will bring Berklee-affiliated artists and students to the ...
08/05/2025
A sinister fairy infiltrates a desperate family in Kenneth Dagatan's In My Mother's Skin, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Photo co...
08/05/2025
For skyward-bound operators, training focuses on the unique aspects of flying ISR missions, including the management of onboard surveillance equipment and the e...
08/05/2025
The cable industry has told the Federal Communications Commission it supports the National Association of Broadcasters' proposal to allow broadcasters to us...
08/05/2025
WASHINGTON The Consumer Technology Association has continued its opposition to mandates requiring that NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 tuners be included in new TV sets, sa...
08/05/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real time visualization, has named Paul Maroni as Vice Pres...
08/05/2025
This year's UK Pavilion in hall 5, once again managed by Tradefair, will provide visitors with the unique opportunity to discuss and be involved in cutting ...
08/05/2025
Rohde & Schwarz will showcase its latest energy-efficient transmitters and 5G Broadcast technologies, designed to support network operators and content provider...
08/05/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group has tapped Bill Nardi as vice president of station operations, responsible for overseeing the day-to-day broadcast operations ...
08/05/2025
SEATTLE LumaTouch is partnering with CNN Academy to improve mobile storytelling techniques and support training across all of CNN Academy's training simulat...
08/05/2025
WASHINGTON The Society of Broadcast Engineers has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission that support a proposal by the National Association ...
08/05/2025
Senior adviser to the United States Agency for Global Media Kari Lake has announced that One America News Network (OAN) will provide newsfeed services for fre...
08/05/2025
EdMon Expands as AI-Driven Post Production Workflows Gains Traction in Sweden an...
08/05/2025
Using Luma Mattes in Adobe Premiere Pro
Graham Quince May 7, 2025
0 Comments
This very quick tutorial shows you how to take an RGB clip and apply its ...
08/05/2025
OpenDrives Unveils Free Your Data' Initiative with New Astraeus Cloud-Nativ...
08/05/2025
Student Spotlight: Grigori Balasanyan The Armenian composer, who was named Boston Conservatory at Berklees 2025 student commencement speaker, talks about his ...
08/05/2025
May 8th, 2025 Press Materials Available Here
Tribeca Festival 2025 Unveils New Premieres Spanning Film and Music
Slick Rick's Victory with Idris Elba a...
08/05/2025
May 8th, 2025 Press Materials Available Here
Tribeca Festival 2025 Announces Lineup for Inaugural Storytelling Summit
11-Day Industry Event Launches with Tal...
08/05/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Vizrt's Nicholas Jameson on AI in Workflows, Pushing Boundarie...
08/05/2025
Creating Alternative Brand Experiences: Live Sports in the Age of Fortnite, Meta...
08/05/2025
PGA TOUR's David Piccolo: Advanced Graphics and Virtual Production Tools are...
08/05/2025
Tech Focus: Advancing Immersion in Sports Broadcasting with AR and Virtual Produ...
08/05/2025
Back to All News
Now in Production: Comedy Action Film Husbands in Action'...
08/05/2025
Artificial intelligence is helping identify and treat diseases faster with better results for humankind. Natural disasters like wildfires are next.
Fires in th...
08/05/2025
Calling all wiseguys - 2K's acclaimed Mafia franchise is available to stream...
08/05/2025
As AI use cases continue to expand - from document summarization to custom software agents - developers and enthusiasts are seeking faster, more flexible ways t...
07/05/2025
Warsaw, Poland - April 28, 2025 - Nielsen, a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, has released its latest March All Screens Video Landscap...
07/05/2025
LONDON Movie fans hoping to save money by waiting until their favorite new films appear on streaming services will have to wait a bit longer now, according to a...
07/05/2025
MECCA, Saudi Arabia Saudi Broadcasting Authority (SBA) has selected Grass Valley to provide a major technology upgrade of its broadcast facility here....
07/05/2025
Sony and Nevion provide guidance on IP network architecture options for live pro...
07/05/2025
Media Pioneer Publishing AG Expands Editorial Capacity
Brie Clayton May 7, 2025
0 Comments
Pioneer 2 boat production environment powered by Blackmagic...
07/05/2025
LONDON Movie fans hoping to save money by waiting until their favorite new films appear on streaming services will have to wait a bit longer now, according to a...
07/05/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau is seeking public comment on a Petition for Rulemaking from HC2 Broadcasting Holdings asking...
07/05/2025
WASHINGTON Following a decision by U.S. Department of Education to terminate its 2020-2025 Ready To Learn to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, CPB has in...
07/05/2025
NEW YORK Fox's ad-supported streaming Tubi made a series of product and partnership announcements during IAB NewFronts in New York, including the launch of ...
07/05/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Google Fiber (GFiber) has announced a redesigned app that the company said will simplify how customers set up service, manage devices, and...
07/05/2025
WASHINGTON NASAs on-demand streaming service, NASA+, has launched a FAST (Free Ad-Supported Television) channel on Prime Video....
07/05/2025
NEW YORK The WNET Group, parent company of the PBS station Thirteen, has announced the appointment of Randall T. Decker to senior director, technology, effectiv...
07/05/2025
Atomos announced an executive leadership transition as the Company continues to evolve and expand its strategic focus.
Peter Barber, currently serving as Chie...
07/05/2025
Steve Wagner, Jerry Holway and Robert Orf at the 2024 Scientific and Technical Awards at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.
The ...
07/05/2025
nxtedition, the Swedish company behind the leading integrated platform for news and program production, and TASCAM, the iconic Japanese manufacturer of professi...
07/05/2025
Signiant is bringing its Camera-Raw-to-Any-Cloud workflow to the UK for the first time at the Media Production & Technology Show 2025 (Booth# M69) with a live d...
07/05/2025
MNC Software Inc., a global leader in software and network solutions tailored to the broadcast and media industry, has appointed Gencom Technology as an officia...