Ave Maria!

[Update: Some of the links that were broken in this post have been fixed]

Hello friends! We wanted to take this Thanksgiving Day here in the US to thank everyone for your prayers, support and regular viewership of AirMaria. You are the AirMaria community, and we wanted to thank you for making AirMaria a success in spreading devotion to Our Lady.

Also today marks the 2nd anniversary of the first post on AirMaria back on Thanksgiving Day 2006 (a few months before the official start in March 2007, note the “FITVN” in the thumbnail below which was the first name we were intending to use before coming up with AirMaria.)

The video was Fr. Peter in the first of his series, the Golden Thread. It is an introduction to the theology of John Duns Scotus and interestingly talks about the 700th anniversary of his death that just took place at the beginning of this month. Also, the video file for this episode was lost for about a year and I just found a copy while doing the switch to the new server last week. Sooo …in the spirit of thanksgiving we present Fr. Peter’s Golden Thread, the lost episode. We plan on continuing his series with new episodes in the near future.

Speaking of servers, the switch to the new server (or should I say servers) has worked quite well. The speed at which the web pages and videos download has improved dramatically, making viewing on AirMaria much more enjoyable.

Well, the Summer is well over and and we have accomplished our main goal of the summer, uploading all our past videos to the 10 most prominent video share sites on the internet. We had about 500 videos and with ten different sites makes 5000 uploads all in about 3 months. This was accomplished with a team of lay people working with the friars. At the same time we developed a web based system for making the uploading more automatic and for coordinating the effort. So all future videos will be able to be uploaded more easily, enabling a larger volume in the times ahead.

We get at least 1000 views per video from the combined viewership of all these sites, so over 500,000 views have been generated from doing this mass uploading. It is a very fruitful volunteer community effort and now we have extended our viewing community to many different sites. So, welcome to our extended community, and thanks to our entire uploading team!

We have several videos from the summer and fall that have been well received.

Sandals & Fiddlebacks – Franciscan Traditional Latin Mass

FiNews #37 – FI Vocations Video (Short Version)

FiNews #36 – Friars and Friends: Street Hockey

FiNews #35 – Franciscans Conquer Mt Washington

Roving Reporter #34: Our Lady of Guadalupe at Lacrosse, Wisconsin

Roving Reporter #40: Knights of Lepanto Spring Encampment 2008

FiNews – The Organ at OLO Guadalupe Natl Shrine

Video – FiNews #41: All Hallows Eve at Griswold

Mark Miravalle has now produced over one hundred MaryCast videos for AirMaria and is still going strong. This series is a must view. I am continually struck by how informative and inspiring his videos are on Our Lady and her role in Redemption. These will continue to be classics on Marian theology for years and, God willing, ages to come.

Fr. Pablo Straub has made his first regular appearance on AirMaria with his Vote Pro-Life series which he has produced in English and Spanish. So this was also our first foray into Spanish posting.

Fra Joseph has restarted his series on apologetics after moving to our new friary in Lacrosse, WI. His current topic is the Holy Eucharist. He now has over 60 videos in his series.

Padre Pio Daily has started. And is the new series that replaces the St. Maximilian Daily after completing the full year intended.

Sometime next week we should surpass 2,000 posts on AirMaria! Also, our Google Ranking for our site has increased to 5 which is an indication of how many people are linking to us. This helps put AirMaria higher on the search pages and so attracts more viewers. We hope to get a six by this time next year.

New Front Page Design

We are working on a new front page design for AirMaria which should be ready by January 1st 2009. This will involve a switch to new software which should make AirMaria more user-friendly and enjoyable.

Hardware Upgrades

We also plan on moving more toward hard drives for storing and archiving video and even for filming (direct disk capture of video from camera). Hard drives have come down so far in price that it is actually cheaper to use these than to store it on tape. This combined with all the added advantages of instant access to the video, makes this the only logical avenue. In this vein we need to get more hard drives. We want to place 2 1TB hard drives in each one of our desktop editing computers and have a stand-alone network serversto store the video centrally. The cost of the hard drives, server and network upgrades will be $1200. The Cameras will be $1100 each.

All this progress and future planning has been made possible by your prayers, volunteering and donations. We greatly appreciate them. We intend to continue to improve our quality and production rates. To this end and to meet everyday expenses we will continue to need your generous support. May God reward you.

The post FiNews – AirMaria Thanksgiving Update first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Wow! Yes, you’re eyes are not playing tricks on you. AirMaria has a much anticipated change of theme, thanks to Michael Banate. Deo Gratias!

The post FiNews – New Design for AirMaria first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Ave Maria!

AirMaria has reached 500,000 visitors on our Site Meter. Deo Gratias and thanks to our loyal viewers.

A few weeks ago we also reached a Google ranking of 5 after being at 4 for a long time. This will drive more traffic to AirMaria when people do Google searches. This was brought about by many people linking to us from their websites. So, thank you, and please give us a link if you have not already.

New Camera

Last week we bought a new HD camera, Sony HXR-NX5U NXCAM Professional Camcorder.

Here is a sample of its output. You can also see it on Youtube where an extra-high quality version is available (click on the button at the bottom of the YouTube viewing window that says “360p” and choose “720p”, and then click full screen, could be slow on a DSL). It is amazing the quality not only from the camera but the fact that you can deliver such quality on the internet, truly a new era in internet video. After we finish some back projects we hope to make extensive use of it.

Urgent Need for Small Donations

Although we received a generous donation for the camera the unforeseen accessories set us back enough that we will need some extra donations for bills this month and buy some hard drives for our ever expanding collection of video. Any help will be appreciated.

Thank you for your continued generous support. Keep us in your prayers as we keep you in ours.

Ave Maria!

Fra Roderic

The post FiNews – AirMaria 500,000 Visitors, New Camera! first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Ave Maria!

I trust everyone has had a blessed Advent and are looking forward to some holy Christmas cheer.

A Great Year

We at AirMaria have much to be thankful for the past year. As many of you already know, we have relocated our center of operation to our friary in Bloomington, Indiana at the Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center. You can see various video on the place here. We have a great support community here as well as some very highly developed facilities. There are many talks at the retreat center that give spiritual nourishment to the local community, including us friars. Not the least of these are the recent talks by Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura. And, of course, we are now able to put this great material on the internet for all our viewers to benefit.

Global Production

We are also continuing to get videos from around the globe:

• Our friary in Griswold, CT – Homilies and the Face of Pro-life
• Our friary in England and the Day With Mary apostolate run by Claudio Lo Sterzo, which is starting to get into high gear.
• Our friary in Perth, Australia
• Our friary in Maine, NY.
• Dr. Mark Miravalle in Ohio with his Marycast
• We may even be getting material from Italy in the near future. ,
• And then we have many conferences that we have recorded from our travels to other venues.

Global Distribution

We are continuing to upload these videos (now over 4,000) to AirMaria  with 1.7 million views from across the world. Not only does AirMaria reach the world but we are also uploading to other web sites like:

• YouTube over 1.7 million views and almost 4,000 subscribers
• Catholic Online almost 3,000 videos with 6.5 million views
• Gloria TV 3,400 videos with 8.5 million views
• and other secular sites like Daily Motion, MySpace, iTunes, Twitter, Technorati, Twitter and Facebook

Total views is about 20 million! This number is accelerating as more people find out about us and all our past videos continue to rack up views. So we are well on our way to leveraging the international reach of the internet both in regard to enabling our far flung religious order and associates to contribute from across the globe and in reaching an ever greater audience.

Hard Copies

We are also producing “hard copies” of the videos at the events here at the retreat center and elsewhere. We have developed on the spot DVD recording so that at the end of a conference DVDs are ready to hand out. This makes the organizers look good, the attendees are happy and the donations from these have been very helpful at paying for many of our expenses. We have also started to use USB flash drives to distribute audio files of the conferences in the same way and hope to do CDs as well.

Radio

We continue to operate our three radio stations:

• WHVM Radio Owego, NY
• WOMB Radio Bloomington, IN
• WPMR Radio New Bedford, MA

These are still almost entirely rebroadcasting EWTN’s radio signal. We have started to get some of our own programming going for these, including many promotions and public announcements, some novenas, a weekly show in New Bedford, and a weekly live rosary streamed live from in front of the Planned Parenthood in Bloomington. We are currently working to expand coverage in the Owego station. We still have a faint hope for a station or two in Connecticut. This needs prayers! Wew!

Looking Ahead

We have plenty of room here in Bloomington for a fully equipped permanent studio. We plan on getting there in stages. Given the fact that we are at an active retreat center where we have many talks, both at our Conference Center and at our Chapel where we are doing daily homilies, we want to focus on streamlining the video production process for these events first and then work on doing some live streaming of events and liturgies both for our radio (audio) and on the internet (video and audio) then improve our temporary fixed studio and our mobile studio for off site event recording and finally work on the permanent studio. Many of these endeavors are complimentary in the sense that much of the equipment and knowledge to operate in one capacity can be applied to or is a stepping stone to achieving the other objectives.

Live Edit

First, improving our live edit system which is currently based on a twelve year old video mixer. The most most important upgrade we need is High Definition (HD) capability. It is nearly impossible to find a standard definition camera in the stores anymore and all the websites including AirMaria can handle HD and the vast majority of internet users have the bandwidth to view it. We even have some HD cameras. It is time to make the switch in our live editing capability. A low end HD mixer will cost $965 with additional accessories and converters of $900. This can be used for event recording here, in our temporary studio, our mobile studio and even our permanent one, at least at first. And the same manufacturer makes a more capable one when it is time to upgrade. We will also need a better laptop computer. This will cost $2000. Total cost is $3,515

Cameras

Although we have some HD cameras, for recording the events, what would be preferable is to permanently mount three relatively low cost and inconspicuous cameras in both of these facilities.  Further, it would be good if these were remotely controllable, enabling one person to record an event. We have a plan to use high definition security cameras but need to experiment by getting one to work with. The cost of the camera  and needed accessories and software is $1630

Studios

The studios, both portable and our temporary stationary, will use three HD cameras. These we already have (they are not really perfectly suited for our needs but they are enough to get started.) For now we will use the same three cameras for both setups. Improvements that we want to make with these are relativity small, consisting mainly of lights and backdrops. Cost $950

Continued Video Production

In addition we will continue working on our ongoing efforts of providing daily homilies, our regular programming, keeping our servers going, improving the website, storing and categorizing our video library, and web site improvements. Our on going expenses $500/month which includes server fees and ongoing storage needs. Our current needs for hard drive storage is very urgent, requiring $1200 in order to sufficiently back up our video footage. We also need to make upgrades to our editing software for post production:

• Final Cut pro X   $299
• Adobe Design Suite $360 per year subscription

Total of $660

DVD Production

To be able to produce DVDs on site and hand them out as people leave, we still need a good DVD label printer which can print directly onto the disk. The one listed below from Primera is very high quality and can keep up with our 11 bay DVD duplicator. This will greatly simplify the printing process and enabling us to revise the label, which is necessary with the usual changes in schedule, speakers and topic that inevitably occurs during live events. This would be particularly helpful because the donations from the DVDs help cover expenses. Also it can do CDs just as easily. Cost is $1500

It can also do Blu-ray Disks which we eventually want to try, making full use of our full HD capabilities.

Internet Improvements

Finally we want to do direct video input Facebook and investigate other distribution channels like Internet TV, including Apple TV, Roku, Hulu.

The Internet connection is not too good here. We improved this as best we can for now but it is still the weak link in our setup. We will be investigating our options. This will be necessary for live streaming our events.

Multiple Uses

The goal is that as the talk is in progress we can live stream to the internet (video and audio) and radio (audio) and when it is finished have files ready for upload to AirMaria on the internet, burn to DVDs and Audio CDs and copy to USB drives ready to give to those attending the event (we are considering for future ordering as well.)

Total Needs:

Our development goals summarized as follows are thus:

• Current needs
  • Cameras for live recording equipment (experimental) -$1630
  • Live edit capacity – $3,515
  • Studio Improvements – $950
  • Data Storage – $1200
  • Post editing upgrade of software – $660
  • DVD printer – $1500
• Total $9455

http://airmaria.com/donations/

• Future
  • Live broadcasting
  • Permanent TV Studio

So we have our work cut our for us. Pleas note how small these amounts are for the kind of work that we are doing. The costs are so low because the local community has already contributed so much, just as they did in Griswold when we were there. Thus, every dollar that you contribute goes directly toward new equipment and delivery of content on the internet. To have reached so many millions so far and the potential for so many more in the future, I think you will have a hard time finding a more worthwhile way to contribute for the evangelization of the world in this Year of Faith. Please consider a  donation today.

From the team at AirMaria, we thank you for helping to make so much possible. Have a Blessed and Merry Christmas!

The post FiNews – AirMaria Update – Need Help first appeared on AirMaria.com.