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
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
20/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
20/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
20/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
20/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
20/08/2026
IPC Expands Brazilian Presence with New Channel Partner CCATech
Industry veterans Carlos Abrah o and Bruno Lopes strengthen local support and expand IPCs prese...
20/08/2026
Zixi Enters Mauritius Market Through Strategic Deployment with MTC Jockey Club
Worlds Oldest Horse Racing Club in the Southern Hemisphere Selects Zixis Softwar...
20/08/2026
LA JOLLA, CA-Scripps Research assistant professor Tiantian Liu has received a five-year NIAID DP2 award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Di...
20/08/2026
Audiences reveal appetite for multicultural Australia on-screen 20 August 2026
Dr Georgie McClean, Dr Rebecca Huntley (L-R)
By Dr Georgie McClean and Dr Rebec...
20/08/2026
How Mavis Studio Is Expanding Live Production Teaching at Sussex
Brie Clayton August 19, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image displays a student about to mix be...
20/08/2026
Vertical Unscripted Series Legal Queens Captured with Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton August 19, 2026
0 Comments
Reality TV veteran Eric Gardner create...
19/08/2026
As the cost of IP nears price parity with traditional SDI, Reynolds argues that ...
19/08/2026
A private 5G bubble was chosen instead of traditional broadcast RF for the race ...
19/08/2026
(L-R) Rafael Manuel and Isabel Sicat attend the Filipi ana premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Ray Theatre on January 23, 2026, in Park Cit...
19/08/2026
Studio owners invited to have their say on rates cuts
The Music Producers Guild (MPG) are inviting UK-based studios to take part in an in-depth survey that ...
19/08/2026
Vintage-inspired desktop interface revealed
Harrison's latest hardware offering sees them head into the world of audio interfaces, delivering a 10-in/12...
19/08/2026
Granular effect remains locked to scale and tempo
Described as your dream granular effect , Minimal Audio's latest creation is capable of turning any s...
19/08/2026
First polyphonic SWAM instrument incoming
Audio Modeling's latest physical-modelling orchestral instrument is just around the corner, and is now availab...
19/08/2026
World Cup Games Generate 84 Billion Minutes Across FOX, Fox Sports 1 and NBCU...
19/08/2026
July brought typical peak-holiday drops in viewership, driven primarily by viewers stepping away from screens and a visible decline in reach across both traditi...
19/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/08/2026
Henry joins BCE as the company accelerates its commercial strategy and expands its international presence across the media, broadcast and technology markets. He...
19/08/2026
iWedia, a leading provider of software solutions for connected TV devices, today announced a major milestone in Android platform optimization with the successfu...
19/08/2026
NTP Technology announces that ST 2110-30 audio-over-IP connectivity with AES67 and RAVENNA capabilities is now available for the brand's world-class audio i...
19/08/2026
Net Insight has been selected to provide its Nimbra platform by the service provider Big Blue Marble, formerly ORS Group, as the core media transport solution f...
19/08/2026
LiveU has supported Coventry City FC and several other top-flight UK football clubs through one of their most demanding live production challenges of the year, ...
19/08/2026
Nature Seekers Documentary Shot with Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF
Brie Clayton August 18, 2026
0 Comments
Filming endangered turtles required camera...
19/08/2026
Neyrinck Brings D-Control Consoles Back to Life on Apple Silicon with D-Control ...
19/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
19/08/2026
Riedel Communications today announced that Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Perth, Australia, implemented a comprehensive communications infrastructure that brin...
19/08/2026
QuickLink, a leading provider of award-winning video production and remote guest contribution solutions, will spotlight a major leap forward in remote guest con...
19/08/2026
Integrated platform melds media asset management, playout automation and newsroom workflows
EMAM, PlayBox Neo and SNEWS have officially launched Nuvex, a conne...
19/08/2026
Screen Australia releases the Private Investment Toolkit to strengthen screen in...
19/08/2026
Do Aussies truly value local content? Unpacking Screen Currency 2026 with Deirdr...
19/08/2026
There's an early Christmas gift for Bookish fans, as UKTV confirms the re-commission of the hit U&alibi drama, created by and starring Mark Gatiss. Viewers ...
19/08/2026
Wednesday 19 August 2026
Sky gives sports fans the chance to watch multiple liv...
19/08/2026
On Saturday September 5 Katie Taylor will step into the ring for the fight of her life against Flora Pili in front of 80,000 fans in Croke Park. A legendary fig...
18/08/2026
SportStream 2026, a free three-day virtual event, will take place September 15-17. One registration provides access to all three days of live programming and on...
18/08/2026
BeckTV will introduce BeckFlow to the European market at IBC2026, demonstrated on the Providius stand (10.F53).
BeckFlow is a web-based schematic documentation...
18/08/2026
Boland Communications will introduce a SMPTE ST 2110 input option for its 4K monitors at IBC2026, along with a new 55-inch super-narrow bezel display for video ...
18/08/2026
Dolby Laboratories and the Seattle Seahawks have announced a partnership integrating Dolby OptiView into the Seahawks' live streaming coverage, making the S...
18/08/2026
For BMG Executive Producer of Sports Production, Graham Taylor, producing live s...
18/08/2026
TMRW Sports has appointed Rufus Hack as President of Golf, a newly created role in which he will lead the company's golf businesses including TGL presented ...
Moving Above LTO - How Cloud Storage Helps One Texas Church Deliver a Modern Digital Ministry 
