Rocky Railway VBS Free Helps & Tools

If your church does not already have a trusted streaming service, there are a variety of options that will work, including Facebook LIVE, YouTube LIVE, Vimeo LIVE, or third party streaming service such as Zoom, OBS, or other certified social-network partners.

All of the options mentioned above will allow viewers to interact with the host online. Keep in mind, these interactions will vary depending on the platform’s capabilities and whether or not you choose to stream a LIVE video or upload a pre-recorded version of your VBS.

For example, Facebook Live allows viewers to post comments live during a presentation. Zoom allows live chats during a presentation but also allows participants to speak and appear via video conferencing.

Live streaming is the broadcasting of live video to an audience over your preferred streaming platform. This is a real-time event that allows the host and viewers to interact live over the duration of the stream.

Pre-recorded videos allow you to create video content beforehand, edit it to your liking, and schedule it to go live or be posted at a predefined time.

Whether you choose to do a livestream or a pre-recorded version will depend on your church’s capabilities, resources, and capacity. Either route can be effective and engaging for the kids and families in your community.

The best option is to ask around your church family and see who might have some experience with this. If you have to start from scratch, there’s a wide range of video editing software packages or even apps that work on your phone or tablet. You can also find training videos for specific software packages online on YouTube or their company websites. Here are a few options that are rated as easy to use: Apple iMovie, Nero Video, Adobe Premiere Elements, Shortcut, and VSDC.

If you don’t have a volunteer at your church with this skill set, you can still learn the basics quickly. YouTube has some great video editing tutorials. If you’ve chosen a video editing software, you’ll probably find some good training videos for that specific software on YouTube as well.

Group is granting special permissions for Rocky Railway 2020 VBS for specific online uses. A complete description of these modified permissions can be found in the Online VBS Guide: Adapting Rocky Railway into a VBS-at-home experience at the top of this page.

There’s no perfect answer, but a good rule of thumb is approximately 2 hours. That’s the length of most feature films, so kids are comfortable with that time frame. Ultimately, it’s a judgment call. You could consider going longer if your online program has a lot of activities that the kids are participating in. If your program is more of a “sit and view” experience, shorter is better.

Video technology has come a long way since the rise of social media. Even the camera on a lot of phones could shoot a good quality movie. Here are a couple of things to consider:

• If you’re going to use an external audio source (like a microphone), you’ll want a camera that has an input jack for one (or more) audio inputs.
• If you will be editing the video, make sure the digital file format your camera shoots in is one your video editing software can work with.
• A good place to start is to ask around your church family to see if someone has a digital video camera you could borrow. If you need to buy a camera, a quick Google search will give you lots of options.

A good handheld or lavalier mic is the best way to record spoken audio when the speaker needs to be mobile. You can even get wireless mics for under $100 if you need to make that investment. Your church may already have a wireless mic that can be repurposed to work with your video camera. Depending on your program, you could also try to record video and use the mic on your phone, but the audio quality may not meet your expectations. It would be worth experimenting.

There are lots of training videos on YouTube. It’s a great place to start, and once you understand the big picture, there are many great training videos on specific topics.