We’ve been working through the best solution for Cedar Creek to deliver messages online in a video format.  While there are a ton of different options out there, we have landed on Vimeo for now.  We tried Lightcast Media, but the cost compared to Vimeo’s plus account was significantly more.  Plus, for our purposes, we get a very good quality video delivery from Vimeo.  Vimeo’s plus account is around $60 per year compared to several hundred dollars per month for LightCast Media.  Vimeo offers a ton of upload space as well.  I had several criteria that I was trying to achieve that led us to where we are:

1. Good quality – having a good user experience is important.
2. Cost – we want to keep it affordable.  LightCast Media is a great service and down the road, if we consider doing an internet campus, we will revisit them.  If your church has the funds and puts a high priority on online delivery, I would go with LightCast.
3. Easy and reproducible process – for our multi-sites we deliver the message on a P2 card same day.  For the online message, we also record a dvd of the message and rip from there.  We needed a process that was fairly easy to replicate for volunteers and paid staff.  We do use some compression software that was an investment, but the rest of the process is relatively easy with some instruction.  Our goal is to have the video from Sunday online by Tuesday morning/Monday afternoon.  The audio podcast is usually online by Sunday afternoon.
4. Archiving past messages – Vimeo offers a good solution where users can view past message series online by visiting the CCC Vimeo page.
5. Added bonuses: Vimeo gives gives easy options to share videos, embed in blogs or Facebook pages, gives you 5gb of uploads per week, easy upload, and has a clean/easy to use interface.

Here is Phillip’s message from 2/22/09 to give you an idea of the quality and delivery.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/3397993[/vimeo]