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Joyce Meyer Ministries (JMM) is an international nonprofit
that delivers worldwide humanitarian aid and
focuses on reaching people through media. Based just
outside St Louis, we are a Christian ministry that is about
helping people in a practical way, both through missions
outreach around the world and also through Joyce Meyer’s
teaching ministry.
Our signature program, “Enjoying Everyday Life,”
airs daily on more than 400 television stations worldwide
in 39 different languages including ABC Family, The Discovery
Channel, TBN, WGN, Daystar and many others.
The ministry is not a traditional brick-and-mortar
John Pipes
Fention, Missouri USA
Managing Assets to
Automating workflow with Final Cut Server, and creative engineering that utilizes the latest
technologies, allows these broadcasters to put their ministry’s resources where they matter most.
John Pipes is the Senior Producer of Broadcasting for Joyce Meyer
Ministries. He has worked on hundreds of television programs, commercials,
music videos, corporate projects, and five feature films. Before
joining JMM, he operated Home Run Films, a television production
company catering to faith-based organizations. Still a hands-on
cutter, he has edited on everything from CMX to FCP. He has been a
Creative COW contributor since its inception in April, 2001.
church with a congregation, so most JMM events are
held in arena sized venues. Content for TV, web and DVD
distribution is shot worldwide at our domestic conferences,
international crusades or in our St. Louis studio.
Our productions range from live multi-camera
concert and speaking events to single camera film style
documentaries of global humanitarian and missions
outreach efforts that showcase our feeding centers,
medical clinics, orphanages, hospitals and disaster relief
initiatives. We also produce interview packages, video
support for our events, partner campaigns, promotional
materials and much more. By the time you read this, we
8 The Asset Management and Distribution Issue — Creative COW Magazine
Opposite (Title Image): A Joyce Meyer
Ministries arena event. Above and right:
Stage set-up for an open-air event, with
some of the six cameras for live recording.
will have recently wrapped up an open-air
event in Kolkata (Calcutta) India, where we
anticipate several hundred thousand people
attending.
We have a lot of production going on,
which means a lot of data to manage. Effectively
communicating what was shot, where it
is, and how to get to it is incredibly important
to our staff, so that the deadlines of a daily TV
program are met. In the last two years, this
process has gone through a big change for
us, as we have transitioned from a standard
definition tape-based workflow and Avid editing
suites, to high definition production and
postproduction workflow based on Sony’s
XDCAM HD format, and Apple’s Final Cut Pro
and Final Cut Server solutions. Now we have
the ability to manage metadata, automate
processes, and at least partially take advantage
of a file-based workflow.
I say “partially” take advantage of a filebased
workflow, because the practical application
is that ingesting from, and editing to,
disc the old fashioned way as HD-SDI video is
still the most reliable method for half-hour TV
programs in our experience.
Sony’s XDCAM HD format does give us
the benefit of data where we can take ad-
vantage of it, while maintaining a one-to-one relationship of what
video we shot to what video we archive on a shelf in the vault. We
need to keep our original media.
We also just shoot too much material to make transferring
footage and then erasing it from flash cards practical. The possibility
of erasing a card before transfer occurs would be too great.
XDCAM discs are also comparable in price to tape, so this has been
a very good solution for our needs.
This recent India production is a great example of how much
media we generate. We packed 130 fifty gigabyte XDCAM HD discs
for the trip. We’ll cover the festival with a six camera switched HD
package. This multi-cam team will shoot four days of concert and
speaking seminars, recording ISOs of each camera, along with a line
Creative COW Magazine — The Asset Management and Distribution Issue 9