2024 Ministry Progress Summaries

Video/audio transcript

0:000:00 - hey guys right now I’m going to be making the ministry progress summary here through March 23rd
0:070:07 - 2024 so it’s been several months here um I ended up getting really busy with some
0:130:13 - of the coding projects I had for automating some of the video processing
0:180:18 - for all of the content that we’ll be having moving forward so I didn’t quite finish all of the things that I thought
0:240:24 - I was going to focus on at the end of the last Ministry progress summary which was oh I guess back in October or so um
0:310:31 - but we’re going to be going over kind of all of the things that I did instead so um I really wanted to finish a lot of
0:390:39 - the uh kind of automation for processing videos before I processed all of the
0:440:44 - videos for the Bible basics series that we’ve been doing in our Zoom Bible
0:490:49 - studies on the weekends here just because I had maybe a backlog of 20 videos or so and I knew that if I tried
0:570:57 - to do it all manual first I’d end up wasting a lot of time relative to me just waiting a while until I finish some
1:031:03 - of the automation so that’s really mostly what I focused on the last several months was getting this video
1:101:10 - automation uh process sort of set up I made a python application on the command
1:151:15 - line that basically helps me process a lot of the videos and calculate timestamps completely automatically so
1:211:21 - I’ll go over some of the specifics in that a little I mean not too much technical depth here and go over some of
1:271:27 - the other things we did um and then as per normal I will also be going over uh
1:331:33 - kind of what I’m planning on focusing on for the next little bit in the future kind of what my my next stretch goals
1:391:39 - are uh just as we’ve been doing for all of the ministry progress summaries since I started doing
1:471:47 - these all right well to kick us off I just wanted to go over uh some of the
1:531:53 - things that I had thought that I might be focusing on at the end of the last Ministry progress summary so this was
1:581:58 - kind of what had in the upcoming plan section from that last progress update I
2:042:04 - had from last October and I just wanted to go over some of these things and well basically say that I didn’t get to them
2:112:11 - and so it’s not that I won’t get to these things ever um I am planning on doing all of this eventually uh you know
2:182:18 - kind of time permitting and depending on uh you know what else i’ deem a higher priority and things like that but um I
2:252:25 - thought that I was going to be releasing more frequently here you know first of all just because I thought I was going
2:302:30 - to be releasing some of the Bible basics content that we’ve been doing from our video series but I ended up kind of
2:362:36 - bottlenecking all of that behind uh finishing the content automation process
2:422:42 - that I mentioned just before um and so I actually didn’t end up making any
2:472:47 - releases in between then and now and the reason why I’m doing it now is because I finally finished the initial steps in
2:552:55 - that process that lets me much more rapidly make new video content
3:003:00 - kind of with the structure in the format that I want and so that’s kind of why it ended up being longer here than I
3:063:06 - thought it might and um you know this time for for real I really do think that I will be keeping a more consistent
3:133:13 - schedule um I I may not release every couple weeks you know I’ll still probably follow kind of Milestones with
3:203:20 - the ministry progress uh so for example the next progress summary after this current one that I’m making will
3:263:26 - probably kind of be once I posted a lot of the videos for uh the Bible basics part one series that we’ve been doing uh
3:333:33 - so getting that theology proper series up on YouTube and you know once I’ve at least made a lot more progress there and
3:393:39 - maybe achieved some of my other milestones in uh that project that lets me automate things maybe I’ll make
3:453:45 - another one but um you know so despite my best intentions haven’t been as consistent here in providing updates
3:523:52 - although I have been busy as we will see here um and then some of the other content things I just ended up not
3:583:58 - focusing on those because I I put most of my effort and my focus on getting the new video content up and to be able to
4:064:06 - do that uh largely focusing on trying to automate some of the tasks that are involved in that so some of the other
4:124:12 - things that I may come back to in the future uh doing some of those discussion
4:174:17 - based questions from that Bible study of Romans that we had with one of the local groups I’ve been involved with uh
4:244:24 - finishing the verse by verse uh series that I started on 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 five I got through I don’t
4:314:31 - know like maybe verse 16 verse 20 I can’t quite remember there were a few verses at the end of the chapter that I
4:374:37 - I still hadn’t gotten to yet and just kind of for completeness sake may as well finish off that chapter um I have a
4:434:43 - couple larger studies still in progress here uh one on the concept of how we ought to view judging others as
4:494:49 - Believers and then one on the lukewarmness of the modern church but I haven’t managed to make a lot of
4:554:55 - progress there either again just because my focus has been elsewhere and then some of the future matters or stretch
5:025:02 - goals still thinking about them didn’t really make a lot of progress here in terms of I don’t know weighing pros and
5:085:08 - cons or uh kind of looking at what my options are here so thinking about
5:135:13 - starting another Series in the middle of the week uh you know where my friend and co-host and I might kind of bounce ideas
5:195:19 - off each other in a less uh I guess I would say consistently structured uh way
5:275:27 - so our normal group Bible studies are right now they’re happening on Sundays but they’ve been either on Saturdays or
5:335:33 - Sundays for several years now but if we could do one in the middle of the week you know that might help increase the
5:395:39 - amount of content we can put out so that was one of the ideas and then the other one was just getting more involved with
5:445:44 - some online Christian Community so like forums sub subreddits Facebook groups
5:495:49 - that sort of thing um but I just didn’t make a lot of progress there either so I won’t belabor this overly just this was
5:565:56 - a list of things that I thought I was GNA kind of focus on and then honestly most of my focus ended up getting kind
6:026:02 - of tied up in the other matters that uh I’ll talk about in just a minute here and so I don’t really view this as like
6:086:08 - a a failure really it’s just kind of updating people on well well I didn’t actually do these things and I’m going
6:146:14 - to you know tell you about what the things I did do instead but you know not all of these things are never going to
6:206:20 - be done like I said before just maybe I’ll get to them in a while once I finished the set of other things that I
6:266:26 - chose to focus on this cycle instead
6:326:32 - all right well going through that last section kind of should obviously bring up the question of well if I didn’t do
6:386:38 - all of the things that I thought maybe I was going to do what did I do instead and so I’m going to kind of go over a
6:446:44 - couple slides here some of the highlevel uh things that I focused on in the last few months here and so you know one of
6:516:51 - the high priorities has been continuing to record those Bible study meetings we’ve been having from our Zoom bible
6:576:57 - study on the weekends here and so we are actually almost done now with this first
7:037:03 - part of the Bible basic series on ichus which is theology proper so we started out that study talking about the the
7:107:10 - essence of God and uh we’ve been talking about the Trinity now for several months uh we are getting close to the end here
7:177:17 - uh almost done in the section now talking about christophanies in the Old Testament which is the last main section
7:237:23 - of the study so I think we’ll be done in several weeks here but you know over the last few months we have continued to do
7:297:29 - do this every week um I actually got a series of questions from a friend uh
7:347:34 - kind of talking about death and resuscitation in the afterlife and sleep as a metaphor for death and kind of a a
7:417:41 - long series of pretty detailed questions about some of these things and so I actually made a video series on this uh
7:487:48 - pretty in depth ended up I think being four videos and maybe four four and a half hours of content across all of
7:557:55 - these topics here and so I will be releasing these videos uh kind of
8:008:00 - alongside the Bible basics videos uh that I’ve been talking about uh over the next several weeks here uh you know
8:078:07 - maybe even a couple months you know we’ll see how many I get to every week um but you know this was another uh kind
8:138:13 - of thing that I hadn’t really anticipated although I’m I’m glad that I did it I think it turned out well I’m pretty happy with uh some of the content
8:208:20 - that I wrote kind of to answer some of these questions here and so that was another content Focus thing that I spent
8:268:26 - time on and then this is not really interesting but um the uh mailing list
8:328:32 - provider that I was using for my Ministry website as well as the ministry website of my friend Jordan that I
8:388:38 - helped him set up um so you know I’ll just plug his site again uh this is his
8:448:44 - ministry site and uh you can kind of tell it uses the same theme and stuff because I helped him set it up but uh
8:498:49 - this new thing here this mailing list comes from a platform called buttondown
8:568:56 - and this isn’t the one that we used to use we used to use one called tiny letter but then the company that uh
9:029:02 - owned or bought tiny letter MailChimp they actually shut it down and so I had to update uh the mailing list providers
9:099:09 - that we were using in our websites because well the company that used to run it just decided to close it which
9:169:16 - was kind of unfortunate so uh this wasn’t horribly complicated but we had to kind of export the mailing list like
9:239:23 - the people on our list that we had import them into the new thing set up all the code to make you know make these
9:289:28 - new sign up forms work and uh you know that sort of thing so this took a a couple days a couple weekends in here as
9:369:36 - well I work with Jordan I did it from my own site as well kind of getting the mailing list updated so that’s you know
9:429:42 - kind of boring stuff but it is something that I spent a lot of time on and then as I’ve kind of already been talking
9:489:48 - about before here I spent an awful lot of time coding in the last few months trying to automate some of the video
9:549:54 - processing stuff so I’m not going to really spend too much time going over all this in great detail because most
10:0010:00 - people probably don’t care that much but uh I mean the read me on the GitHub repository is still kind of a work in
10:0710:07 - progress um but this is the project I made for processing video stuff on the
10:1310:13 - command line so it it uses Python and wrap some FFM Peg commands and I also
10:1910:19 - use pandas and open pix Open PI XL for uh kind of you know Reading Writing and
10:2710:27 - reading stuff from Excel file to keep track of State between all of the recording segments I have and so uh I
10:3410:34 - really won’t get into any of the nitty-gritty specifics but you can see I I had a lot of wrapper scripts here for doing various things like comining video
10:4210:42 - segments into the video and uh generating transition slides from the markdown files I have organizing the raw
10:4910:49 - recordings and the processed recordings and you know I won’t bore you with all the details but uh I actually ran this
10:5510:55 - through an online like I don’t know lines of code count for all the python files and it’s not quite a thousand
11:0211:02 - lines but we’re talking maybe 7 800 lines of code here and all the logic that goes into that and you know a lot
11:0711:07 - of research involved as well and so I kind of started this um before I released the last Ministry progress
11:1411:14 - summary video but it had some bugs like some of the timestamp alignment wasn’t quite right and uh things like that and
11:2111:21 - so not only did I I finish that I added a lot of extra functionality to help automate a lot of things here so this
11:2711:27 - was probably the in task that took up by far the most amount of time here and I
11:3311:33 - mean it was kind of in fits and starts I didn’t just sit there and do like two hours a day for I don’t know like a very
11:3911:39 - long time it was you know maybe I would sit down and do like four or five hours on a Saturday at some point or you know
11:4511:45 - get up early in the morning and do an hour or two here and there um but you know it took me a nice long time and I’m
11:5211:52 - not GNA Pretend This is perfect I think it’s helping me automate a lot of the stuff in my process but you know I don’t
11:5911:59 - know how useful it is to the World At Large because not everyone maybe structures their content the same way as me and stuff but uh not going to overly
12:0612:06 - belabor it but this is what I spend a lot of time on writing a lot of python code to automate parts of the video
12:1312:13 - processing steps that I take to try to make the content better so that is uh
12:1812:18 - you know I’ll go over exactly what’s involved in this a little bit later in one of the the future slides but this is probably what sucked the most of my time
12:2512:25 - away this last content cycle was focusing on on trying to get this done so that I could process all of the
12:3312:33 - backlog of videos that I have for the Bible basics part one study that theology proper that we’ve been going
12:3812:38 - through uh so that I wouldn’t waste a bunch of time doing stuff by hand given that I was so close to finishing some of
12:4512:45 - the automation here um and then as part of this I kind of set up um my DOT files
12:5112:51 - repository again uh kind of set up a better command line environment for dealing with python stuff um so I’m
12:5812:58 - using the windows subsystem for Linux uh well I guess the second version of that
13:0313:03 - that’s actually a VM um and uh you know using a shell called well I don’t
13:1013:10 - actually know how you pronounce this Exxon sh conch I guess is how they would have you pronounce it um but it’s
13:1613:16 - basically a shell that’s Python and uh you know a package that helps you manage virtual environments and things like
13:2213:22 - this uh really not interesting for most people I would suppose um I also uh
13:2713:27 - worked more on the keyboard project that I have been working on on and off for probably five years now um I do touch
13:3413:34 - type on a layer that’s different than querty I’ve been trying to get this finished like actually finished fulltime
13:4013:40 - for like multiple years now because I want before I start really writing up
13:4613:46 - and really ramping up the the rate of production here um I want to have this done so that I am touch typing kind of
13:5313:53 - in the most efficient way possible when I’m starting to write a lot more and I really am a lot closer I spent a lot of
14:0014:00 - winter break here so that happened in between uh the last release in October and this new content update I spent
14:0714:07 - couple weeks there really cleaning up the code base for this and uh you know I have a few more things to do it it kind
14:1414:14 - of is always in an in progress state but I’m a lot closer than I was to being ready to use this full-time every day
14:2014:20 - and that will be important as I start to make more content um this is probably
14:2614:26 - the other uh the other most important thing from this release the the other thing I spent a lot of time working with
14:3314:33 - is I uh made it so that I could actually have timestamps on the web pages on my
14:3814:38 - website uh that play the video on the page itself and so it used to be every
14:4414:44 - time you clicked on a timestamp it would open the video in a new tab but what happens if you want to change where you
14:5014:50 - are in the video on the page as you read the page or look at content so I will demo this as well I’m going to be
14:5614:56 - demoing kind of the output of my video video processing um all that all that
15:0115:01 - work I did for automation kind of show well why did I do all that what do I get out of it and then also be demoing this
15:0715:07 - uh page internal timestamps uh that I spent time doing to let you control the
15:1315:13 - videos that are actually embedded on the web pages on the Bible do site um and
15:1915:19 - then finally again probably not real interesting for a lot of people but I spent time figuring out how to use
15:2415:24 - better Greek and Hebrew fonts on web pages here you can actually specify
15:2915:29 - ranges of characters in Unicode if people know what Unicode is it’s kind of
15:3415:34 - like a uh you know the Latin alphabet has 26 letters you know lowercase and
15:4015:40 - uppercase and numbers and symbols and stuff but if you want to use a Greek letter or a letter in the Hebrew
15:4615:46 - alphabet well it’s actually kind of better sometimes to use fonts that were
15:5115:51 - specifically designed for Greek and Hebrew um so there’s a few uh some some good options um gentium is a good option
15:5815:58 - for Greek cardo is good as well um you know I some people like Greek I’m not a
16:0416:04 - big fan I like Gena much better and then s Ezra and Hebrew are probably the two
16:0916:09 - best Hebrew fonts and so I figured out how to actually use those on the web you know be able to host them myself and
16:1516:15 - specify that these are the fonts I want used for Greek and Hebrew uh you know that’s just kind of something I’ve been meaning to do for a while but I finally
16:2216:22 - got around to it so uh I’m sorry that was a bit rambly uh this is a lot of kind of programm you know C stuff that I
16:3016:30 - was working on trying to get some of the content processing done more
16:3516:35 - automatically or kind of get you know my my keyboard project get my touch typing
16:4016:40 - closer to the state where I’ll be ready to pump out a lot more content in the long term and so uh I know I’ve been
16:4716:47 - kind of doing these releases for gosh a couple years now keep saying you know I’m trying to make it better for the
16:5216:52 - future I’m trying to make it better for the future and I mean I’m still am um but I really do think we’re getting
16:5816:58 - closer here especially now that a lot of the video processing automation has kind of uh it’s least mostly done now I’ve
17:0517:05 - gotten a lot of it in place that I really will start cranking up the content production here I think uh
17:1117:11 - hopefully in the next few months so that is what I actually did here um you know
17:1617:16 - again I did some new content stuff I had to fix the mailing list and I did a bunch of coding related things um and
17:2317:23 - that’s largely what I’ve been doing since last October
17:3017:30 - so just to go into a little bit more detail although I know I’ve kind of talked about this already the main reason why I delayed kind of posting any
17:3917:39 - new stuff or uh making any content releases until now was because I wanted
17:4517:45 - to finish the bulk of the video processing automation before I processed all the videos so if I’m I’m doing all
17:5217:52 - this work to to write a python application to do a lot of the work for me in an automated fashion well I kind
17:5817:58 - kind of want to wait until I finish that automation before I go process my backlog of 20 videos right um and that’s
18:0618:06 - kind of why I ended up delaying here why this is coming out a bit later than maybe I had wanted um because I wanted
18:1318:13 - to mostly finish the python application to automate all the video processing stuff before I processed all of the new
18:2018:20 - videos um so kind of long story short just ended up being a little bit harder than I thought it would be it’s not
18:2718:27 - super surprising or unexpected you know it is not that trivial to kind of automate you know splicing all these
18:3418:34 - video segments together on the command line and calculating time stamps dynamically based on the length of the
18:3918:39 - video and so on and so forth um but um I do think this will end up saving me a
18:4618:46 - lot of time in the long run here um because if IID done all of this stuff by hand it would have taken me hours and
18:5118:51 - hours and hours and instead I spent I don’t know probably right now about an equivalent amount of time actually you
18:5818:58 - know coding something to do it but now moving forward in the future I won’t have nearly as much uh time that I have
19:0419:04 - to spend doing a bunch of tedious content processing steps um and so even
19:0919:09 - as it is now um there are still things that I need to do to make this better
19:1619:16 - really um there are a couple a couple to-dos that I have still on this uh
19:2219:22 - video processing project that right now are still kind of manual and still pretty tedious and I have ideas for how
19:2919:29 - to automate them as well but uh kind of decided that i’ I’ve kind of gotten a
19:3419:34 - lot of the way there and I want to start getting content up again you know so that I’m not just delaying for six
19:4019:40 - months or even a year while I finish some of this so I’m gonna uh kind of bite the bullet and do a little bit of
19:4619:46 - the process still pretty manual although I have ideas on how to fix it and that’s going to be kind of some of the upcoming
19:5219:52 - work that I’m going to plan to focus on you know alongside continuing to release all the new content here um
19:5919:59 - but as terms of what the project does at the moment and I will demo this uh kind of in the next section we go over here
20:0620:06 - um I automatically combine all these recording segments that I do so right now I’m recording with zoom that’s the
20:1320:13 - platform we’ve been using for uh recording our group Bible studies and uh I have been inserting these title
20:2120:21 - transition slides between them so uh kind of black slides full screen with white text on them uh relaying the new
20:2820:28 - topic so these are kind of topic Transitions and so I kind of add those
20:3320:33 - uh splice everything together and then I generate timestamps automatically for all of the headers in the content and so
20:4020:40 - that’s kind of all the automation I maybe it doesn’t sound so hard but actually getting all that to work
20:4620:46 - properly and uh so for example when you add the title transition slides that
20:5120:51 - adds time and you have to take that into account when you calculate the time stamps otherwise everything gets offset
20:5720:57 - and the time stamps are wrong um so kind of getting all that set up these are the the things that I’ve added
21:0421:04 - here uh and there will be other things like I mentioned that I’ll go over that I’m still kind of kind of be working on
21:0921:09 - in the meantime to completely automate even more of the process but for all of
21:1621:16 - the hours and hours of video content that we’ve already recorded for this first part of Bible basics um having
21:2221:22 - these things automated will save me a massive amount of time in getting all this content processed and kind of on
21:2821:28 - the website in this final format that I think I finally kind of figured out how I want all the videos to be in the long
21:3521:35 - term here and so doing it all before I had the Automation in place kind of just would have been time inefficient and so
21:4121:41 - that’s why things have been a little bit delayed
21:4621:46 - here all right so as promised I’m gonna just go over kind of the briefest highest level overview here of some of
21:5321:53 - this video processing stuff that I’ve been mentioned like what is it how does it work what effort am I saving in this
22:0122:01 - so I’m just going to be going over a few Concepts here I I’ll show you like one of the directories of the recordings
22:0822:08 - that that you know kind of how it’s set up and how the things fit together um so this is the directory here um for one of
22:1622:16 - the recordings that I’ve already processed so this is the very first lesson in this Bible basics part one
22:2122:21 - series that we’ve been going over for theology proper uh discussing the essence of God and so I have uh script
22:2822:28 - that automatically generates this kind of directory structure once I say okay
22:3422:34 - I’m ready to make a recording I go to the content directory and you know execute something on the command line
22:3922:39 - that kind of builds out the right directories and so this file here the Excel file titled segments. xlsx that
22:4722:47 - contains all of the recording segments that I’m planning to to record and so um I kind of have them in an Excel file and
22:5522:55 - each row in that Excel file represents one of the recordings that I want to make for each section and so those kind
23:0223:02 - of correspond to headers within the content and so once I have recorded that
23:0723:07 - the recordings end up in a subdirectory here so I’m in the recording directory
23:1223:12 - for this particular lesson in the study and then you go into the recording subdirectory and then I dump all of the
23:1823:18 - files into the raw folder here and so these are nice and pretty you know I I
23:2423:24 - numbered them in sequential order by tens but I did that automatic I that isn’t how they come out of Zoom I clean
23:3023:30 - them up to do this to get them in order and then I process them to remove silence in between uh kind of like
23:3723:37 - awkward pauses within uh the video so if there’s like a a silence while we begin
23:4323:43 - or end a segment or you know if we’re waiting for someone to unmute themselves when they’re talking on the recording or
23:4923:49 - something like that I can just cut out usually it ends up being maybe 15 or 20 seconds of Silence on some of the longer
23:5523:55 - recordings or even a couple minutes depending of just kind of what ends up not being useful content you know you
24:0124:01 - don’t need to sit there in the video and you know watch as we wait for someone to unmute themselves to talk we can just
24:0724:07 - take that out and it reduces the length of the video even if it’s not by much and so that’s mostly what the processing
24:1424:14 - is here um I can also clean up the audio some although I haven’t had to do that recently since we’ve had better audio
24:1924:19 - but uh so that’s what those two directories are and then there’s another directory for containing the uh topic
24:2624:26 - transition slides that I’ve mentioned and so uh I’ll show you what these look like in a second once we actually look at the video but I record these
24:3224:32 - separately and then uh the application that I’ve written takes the processed
24:3824:38 - video files and then combines them with these topic transition video segments
24:4324:43 - and splices them all together to make the video file that’s in kind of like the root recording directory for this
24:4924:49 - lesson and then after I’ve made the video uh I have to add chapters to it um
24:5524:55 - and so that those correspond with all of the segment boundaries so the headers in
25:0125:01 - the uh the content the timestamps basically for each section and so I do
25:0625:06 - that I make a metadata file I attach that to the video and then I actually um
25:1225:12 - I actually automatically generate the description that I need to paste into uh
25:1825:18 - the Youtube video when I’m uploading the video to release it on YouTube so you know like the playlist link and the link
25:2425:24 - to the content on Bible docs the link to the slides on Bible docs the summary and then all these timestamps well these are
25:3125:31 - the things that show up as chapters in the metadata and also these are the timestamps that I’m automatically
25:3725:37 - generating so that’s kind of the the overall structure of how how the
25:4225:42 - recording directories work um and so uh that you know maybe it’s kind of just
25:4825:48 - gwiz information here um there’s a lot of effort that kind of goes into automating all that you know I have to
25:5425:54 - have this consistent directory structure so that the application knows kind of what directories it needs to expect all
26:0126:01 - these different files in and stuff but in the end you end up getting videos that I can upload to Youtube and you
26:0726:07 - know just copy paste the YouTube description and then you know it has like we were just looking at in the text
26:1226:12 - file version of this you know has links to the web page content the slides content the summary and then all these
26:1826:18 - timestamps here and um you know again just saying oh well you’re timestamping
26:2526:25 - all the headers the big deal about this is that this that you see right here with all these timestamps is actually
26:3126:31 - completely automatically generated so the only thing that I have to do is write my content uh as I always do in in
26:3826:38 - my markdown files and and you know have my headers and subheaders for the topics that we talk about and then I just
26:4526:45 - record the recording in such a way that I I kind of record each section separately and then stop the recording
26:5126:51 - and restart for each new section so that I have these uh these nice separable recording segments for each of the
26:5826:58 - sections and then I run my script and out pops everything that you see here completely automatically and so that’s
27:0527:05 - just kind of a taste of what this looks like and now to see what the uh transition slides look like um so this
27:1127:11 - is 49 minutes into this recording if I click on this timestamp link you’ll see that um now when I go to that timestamp
27:1927:19 - in the video um there’s this nice transition between the content that comes before it so I’ll go back just a
27:2527:25 - little bit here um I go maybe a little bit more back um you know
27:3127:31 - this video is playing this video is playing you know we’re talking about something looks like here we are in 2
27:3627:36 - Corinthians chapter 3 and then after that um when you get to one of these
27:4227:42 - topic transitions um which I guess it’ll take a few more seconds here um but you kind of have this pause this ability for
27:5027:50 - the video to be silent for several seconds uh as we transition topics and then we pick up with the next one and so
27:5627:56 - it looks real sharp uh and and when you’re kind of transitioning between things in the
28:0228:02 - video so that uh people who are watching this especially on a faster playback speed won’t have I don’t know the the
28:0928:09 - the topics bleed into each other as much it makes a lot of sense um this is something else I’ve wanted to do for a
28:1528:15 - while but I hadn’t figured out a way to kind of automate it until recently um
28:2028:20 - and so if I were to try to do all this by hand in a video editor you know it would take hours and hours and hours for all the videos I have but the point of
28:2728:27 - all this this kind of rambling that I’m doing here is that I set all of this stuff up to basically happen all on its
28:3428:34 - own um so I run a couple commands on the command line and then it magically does everything else that is the idea and in
28:4028:40 - fact now I have it so that that is actually more or less what it does so this was that thing that I mentioned
28:4728:47 - that I spent most of my time on here was making all of this stuff work properly so that I can record my video segments
28:5428:54 - and run a couple commands and then have everything basically come out ready for me to upload to Youtube just like
29:0329:03 - that so I actually realized that I kind of combined this new section here with
29:0829:08 - what I was just talking about but um I should say that everything that I just talked about for the videos on YouTube
29:1629:16 - it actually holds true for all of the videos in the playlist and so it’s not just like one or two it’s going to be
29:2329:23 - everything that I upload that will have been processed in this way and so uh you
29:2929:29 - can see it on YouTube actually but you can also see it on the videos as they’re embedded in the website here and so um I
29:3729:37 - you know showed you what one of those uh slide transitions looks like on the YouTube video but it also holds just as
29:4329:43 - much in the videos when they’re embedded and so I’ll get to the embedded timestamps in a second here but you know
29:4929:49 - this is what we were just talking about all of that automation that helps kind
29:5529:55 - of produce these these clean looking videos in the end that has has those nice transitions between topics uh and
30:0230:02 - these time stamps that are actually time accurate for everything this was just the demo of kind of what it all looks
30:0930:09 - like in its output form all right and so the other thing
30:1630:16 - that I said I was going to demo here were the page internal timestamps and if
30:2130:21 - you’re a software developer uh you kind of manage these by using the API that
30:2630:26 - YouTube has for embedding video iframes on your website and so it’s all
30:3230:32 - JavaScript here um you know I’m not writing anything else because I’m embedding these on web pages so uh it
30:3830:38 - took me kind of a while to piece through the API and figure out what I needed to do here but I actually added a cookie on
30:4530:45 - the website on the settings page that lets you uh basically set whether you
30:5030:50 - want timestamps on the website to the internal links that change uh where the
30:5630:56 - embedded video is playing or whether you want to make them external links that actually open the video in a new tab so
31:0331:03 - if I go back to this page right now and I click on one of these timestamps you’ll actually see that it changes the
31:0931:09 - time in the video directly um and uh if I change that setting so I actually have
31:1631:16 - it so that you can change the setting uh in a global sense through the settings
31:2231:22 - page here um well if you do that then you can actually uh basically change
31:2931:29 - whether you want the links to open in an external tab or whether you want them to control the video now if you’re on a
31:3431:34 - specific page just like many the other toggles I have I actually let you um control that toggle here so you know if
31:4131:41 - you see here when I’m changing these These are changing the time in that embedded video at the top of the screen
31:4631:46 - um well if I toggle this then actually now if I click one of these it’ll open in a new tab and so you can dynamically
31:5431:54 - toggle that on a per page basis as well and if I toggle it back then you’ll see that now we’re changing in the embedded
31:5931:59 - video again um so that’s pretty cool you can also toggle it for the whole site like I said on that settings page on the
32:0532:05 - other cool thing that I did was I set it up so that you know even if the video is playing up here at the top so uh you
32:1232:12 - know you can see the the bar is ticking stuff’s happening in the video well if you scroll down and you’re reading
32:1732:17 - something or you’re listening to the audio and you’re trying to follow along in the page links if you ever want to jump back to the video I put a link in
32:2432:24 - the sidebar that Scrolls you back up to the video um and so this is more useful perhaps on aggregation pages that have a
32:3232:32 - a bunch of study lessons kind of all smooshed together on one page for searching and skimming well if you have
32:3932:39 - one video playing and you’re not exactly sure where it is on the page you can use this link in the sidebar to just always
32:4432:44 - take you back up to the video and the other thing let’s make sure I’m not missing anything here in what I’m going
32:5132:51 - over all right the other thing that’s really useful about everything that I’ve set up here is if you ever want to find
32:5732:57 - where we talk about something in a video uh so you know all the content is on these pages in the content section in
33:0333:03 - the table of contents over here but if you ever want to search through the transcript so that you can hear exactly
33:0933:09 - where we are going to be talking about something you can go down to the transcript and then you can search on
33:1433:14 - the page this is just normal search in browsers you know this is nothing special about this and uh in this first
33:2133:21 - lesson when we’re going over the essence of god let’s say I want to go search for where we talked about uh so-called
33:2733:27 - essential characteristics right and this is something that comes up when you talk about like what makes God God so
33:3533:35 - characterist got to figure out how to spell here so you can see I actually tag um some sections here this is in the
33:4133:41 - content so those are the first couple matches but now I’m down in the transcript and you know this is real far
33:4733:47 - down on the page you can see in the scroll bar here and if I want to go play say 55 minutes into the video you can
33:5333:53 - see we’re talking about essential characteristics and um you know we’re talking about what God is and what makes
33:5933:59 - God God and things well if I want to go play this uh I’ll scroll back up in a second but I can go ahead and just click
34:0434:04 - on the timestamp now the video is playing 55 minutes in and if I jump back to the video you can see that we’re 55
34:1034:10 - minutes in and so what’s really useful is that you can actually use a full text search on the page to search the
34:1634:16 - transcripts of all the videos that we’ve done to figure out when we talk about stuff and then you can just click the
34:2334:23 - link and then you’ll have the audio immediately you know playing in your ears for exactly that text maps that you
34:3134:31 - found so it basically lets you full text search the video which is something that is super super powerful and so I’ve
34:3834:38 - already taken advantage of this myself a little bit you know trying to find where did we talk about this and you know this
34:4434:44 - study or this study and eventually all of these transcripts will show up indexed on Google searches as well which
34:5034:50 - will let you kind of search all of the uh content on Bible docs that much more powerfully so I’m happy with how this
34:5734:57 - turned out having those timestamps on the page and then being able to jump back to the video it really lets you
35:0335:03 - figure out uh or sorry really lets you use this workflow where you search for things uh just like how you normally
35:1035:10 - search for things but then you can immediately go there in the video and that’s that’s super cool um it’s something that I’ve wanted to support
35:1635:16 - for a while but I finally got around to kind of doing all the coding in the JavaScript to to let you do that um so
35:2335:23 - uh in action like I said here you know all the timestamps on pages so not on YouTube but on uh the embedded pages on
35:3035:30 - my website now you can change uh where you are in the video that’s on the page so that you have audio playing on the
35:3635:36 - page or like I said if you prefer you can toggle it or set the global setting so that your time STP links actually
35:4335:43 - still open it up on YouTube and you know that’d be if you want to see I don’t know like the comments on the YouTube
35:4835:48 - video or you just rather view it on YouTube um that’s still an option as well so that’s kind of a demo of all of
35:5535:55 - the timestamp stuff that I also added to the website in this content release
36:0336:03 - cycle all right so kind of last main thing we’re going to talk about here is now that I have all the stuff that I
36:1036:10 - kind of just demoed uh set up so that on a new video recording I kind of have all
36:1636:16 - this stuff happen automatically you know I record the the sorry I splice all the video recordings together with the topic
36:2236:22 - Transitions and I timestamp it and I build that YouTube description automatically and all of the time stamps
36:2736:27 - now just kind of work on the website and let you full teex search the transcripts and all that all that stuff is now set
36:3436:34 - up but now that I have all of that I’m kind of ready to to kind of start
36:3936:39 - producing videos uh kind of more weekly or or bi-weekly depending on our schedule but being really consistent
36:4636:46 - about it because I have the structure how I think I want it kind of in perpetuity now so I I can’t think of a
36:5336:53 - lot that I will ever want to change about this now that I’ve kind of done all that leg work get it all set up this
36:5836:58 - is how I want the content to be uh you know for the next 10 20 years even uh
37:0337:03 - you know we’ll see how long this channel sticks around but um because I have it kind of in the form that I want to
37:0937:09 - repeat um so I kind of have the template set up now and I have everything in place to make it repeatable in a
37:1637:16 - sustainable sort of way so I really am planning on uh going through that video
37:2137:21 - backlog that I have now and releasing I’m going to set a a pretty modest Target for myself of maybe two two
37:2737:27 - videos a week here for the next few weeks going at least get two videos a week out from that backlog that we have
37:3337:33 - making sure that they’re all processed they’re all fully Polished in this in this form and that they show up properly
37:3937:39 - on the website that way we’ll get through that backlog of 20 25 videos we have uh for this study that we’ve been
37:4537:45 - going through and once I catch back up then as soon as we have a new lesson from our group Bible studies on the
37:5237:52 - weekends I’ll actually post it as soon as I’m done recording it and so as soon as we finish something I’ll have it up
37:5737:57 - on the YouTube channel within a day or two um that’s going to be the goal moving forward here and so if you are
38:0438:04 - not already subscribed to the YouTube channel you want to stay up todate with all of the new releases that are going
38:0938:09 - to be rolling out over the next couple months I would recommend you do that because that way you’ll be notified uh
38:1538:15 - well if you tap the Bell on for the subscriptions at least you’ll be notified uh whenever I post the new videos here um and so that will be
38:2238:22 - something that is going to happen like I said I’m not going to do it all at once it’ll probably be a couple videos a week for the next few weeks here here but I’m
38:2838:28 - going to be releasing content much more consistently now hopefully carrying this
38:3338:33 - onward kind of as we go here into the future like I hopefully I won’t have any more of these big pauses now because I
38:4038:40 - have all of the stuff in place to let me do this sustainably you know it’s not going to be a huge drain on my time
38:4538:45 - since I’ve automated so much of this that every single week we make a new recording I can just uh pop over to the
38:5238:52 - command line run a couple things and then the video’s ready I don’t have to sit there and do as much work as I have
38:5738:57 - been doing doing in the past to get everything ready to go up and so the upshot of that is that hopefully I can
39:0239:02 - do this week after week after week without it actually being a burden um and so I can do it much more sustainably
39:0839:08 - which means we won’t have gaps in content anymore at least that’s the goal in the idea
39:1739:17 - here all right finally gonna talk about my upcoming plans kind of just how I’ve
39:2239:22 - always done in these Ministry progress summaries what are the things that I’m planning on focusing on in the near
39:2739:27 - future what are my next goals kind of how am I going to be spending my time in the next few weeks here um so first of
39:3339:33 - all like we were just talking about I’m going to be focusing on uh getting the full backlog of ready videos that I have
39:3939:39 - up and posted to YouTube kind of in in all of the processed form you know with the the pretty transition slides and the
39:4639:46 - time stamps the hyperlink to the embedded video and all that um get all of the content that I have kind of
39:5239:52 - sitting that’s ready that I just need to get up on the site uh I think it’s about 20 videos at present um and so uh I’m
40:0040:00 - going to be doing that that’s going to be a main focus here I want to get through that backlog so that I’m kind of like not in a hole anymore so that I can
40:0840:08 - kind of keep up with it week after week after that so that I don’t have uh kind of this growing backlog that I have to
40:1440:14 - get out from under um so that’s going to be kind of priority number one uh in the next little bit now we are also going to
40:2040:20 - be finishing our Bible basics part one study that I’ve mentioned several times here we’re actually really close to the
40:2640:26 - end so as I mentioned we’re talking about christophanies in the Old Testament which is actually the last big section in the study and so we’ll
40:3240:32 - actually probably finish this study in several weeks time uh you know I don’t know exactly how soon it might be three
40:3740:37 - or four um but after that I think I’m going to have us start doing christology
40:4340:43 - or soteriology uh these are other sections of that uh Systematic Theology on ichus uh talking about uh Jesus
40:5140:51 - Christ or salvation respectively I haven’t quite decided which one of these we’re going to do but I think that’s
40:5640:56 - probably where we’re going to next so I’m just going to keep making more content from that group Bible study that
41:0141:01 - we’ve been having kind of just how we have been doing for the last year or so now as we pick back up in this Bible
41:0741:07 - basic series um and then as it relates to some of my other goals here in the
41:1341:13 - immediate short- term I have three other things I want to do um I want to actually set up uh complete automation
41:2041:20 - for silence removal in the video processing so I mentioned right now that uh that’s kind of what the processed
41:2641:26 - video segments are they cut out kind of extraneous uh time in the clips where no
41:3141:31 - one’s saying anything it’s just kind of dead content um well I am using a kind of a graphical user interface tool to do
41:3741:37 - that right now um I have a command line tool that will do this but the problem I’ve had is that the recordings that
41:4541:45 - Zoom spits out they just seem to go kind of crazy in the command line version of it and so I don’t really know why um I
41:5241:52 - think both tools are using FFM Peg on the back end one of them is a python rapper for it that’s the one that’s on
41:5841:58 - the command line and I don’t really know why it’s causing all these bugs but I haven’t been able to completely automate
42:0442:04 - it because I can’t use the scripal version of it because python recordings don’t seem to play nice with it so um I
42:1142:11 - have had on my to-do list for a while now seeing if I can switch us to a different uh kind of group video meeting
42:1742:17 - application so uh either Microsoft teams or Google meet or uh you know the brave
42:2442:24 - browser actually has a meeting thing built in you know I I don’t know which of these I think I’m going to try to have us use Microsoft teams next um just
42:3142:31 - because it’s pretty feature Rich and uh it’s kind of a drop in replacement for Zoom but hopefully uh the recordings
42:3842:38 - from Microsoft teams won’t interfere with the video processing in this way so that I can use the completely automated
42:4542:45 - command line version of the tool and that will cut out one of the steps that is right now still kind of manual for me
42:5142:51 - um it doesn’t take super long maybe a half hour or so to go do it all but it’s a half hour per video that is otherwise
42:5842:58 - kind of preventable so I want to do this again before I start really cranking up
43:0343:03 - the content production Pace I want to have everything completely automated and so I’m trying to knock out the stuff
43:1043:10 - that right now is not completely automated even if it’s a lot closer um and in that vein I’m also going to try
43:1543:15 - to automate the transition uh segments a little bit more so right now I am automatically generating the transition
43:2243:22 - slides from the content so those nice black slides you see that transition between segments in the video I am
43:2943:29 - creating the slides that show that I’m creating those automatically but right now I have to actually manually go in
43:3543:35 - and record A short segment for each one of those and you know then I run a script that actually standardizes the
43:4143:41 - length of all of them to three seconds and spices them all together but you know I still have to do this extra step
43:4643:46 - of manually recording all those and um I think there’s a way for me to automatically generate the video
43:5343:53 - segments from uh the slides if I figure out how to save each slide as an image
43:5843:58 - uh you know of the right resolution 1920 x 1080 then I can use ffmpeg to turn
44:0344:03 - those images into 3se second videos without audio tracks and then I can splice it all together uh hopefully
44:0944:09 - without having to do anything manual at all um so those are two more uh things
44:1444:14 - that I want to set up in the video processing automation that I’ve been working on for the last little bit and
44:2044:20 - if I do those two things um I still need to automate the uh the transcript part
44:2644:26 - of it a little bit more too so right now I am copy pasting the transcript off of YouTube into a spreadsheet basically
44:3444:34 - like Excel and I’m using some regular Expressions to extract the timestamps and then build all the short codes and
44:4044:40 - stuff but I still have to go do that every new video and uh there is a library that will let you download uh
44:4744:47 - the transcript from a YouTube video Once you set up a YouTube API key in your application and I need to go look into
44:5344:53 - that as well so that I can completely automate that um I’m going to start with these two things because the transcript
44:5844:58 - stuff only takes me maybe five minutes it’s not bad at all um these things take me a little bit longer and so I’m going
45:0445:04 - to try to eliminate every single manual step from the process um I think it’s possible I just need to do more uh some
45:1145:11 - more software development here to get all of the remaining to-dos done um and
45:1645:16 - then finally um I also want to set up a podcast for all of the content that
45:2145:21 - we’ve been making here so I have identified the platform I want to host the podcast with it’s a a platform
45:2845:28 - called podbean um and it will automatically publish the podcast to
45:3345:33 - both Apple podcast and Spotify those are the two most popular podcast platforms by like a wide margin you know between
45:4045:40 - the two of them that’s like 90% market share or something um and so I need to have all of my content up in podcast
45:4845:48 - form on both of those platforms and I want the timestamps to work on both of those platforms um and the reason for
45:5445:54 - that is because a lot of the content that we have here uh like this video for example is already over an hour long you
46:0146:01 - really want timestamps and uh you know like the topics listed out and when the
46:0646:06 - topics start if you have content uh in as much length and depth as we have in
46:1146:11 - our Bible study videos here and so I need to figure out how to add metadata to MP3 files so to rip the audio off of
46:1946:19 - the video files and then make sure that they have timestamps embedded in the metadata and that you know the uh Apple
46:2646:26 - podcast and Spotify actually set up timestamps a little bit differently Apple podcast uses metadata on the MP3
46:3246:32 - file itself and Spotify uses timestamps in the episode description but um I kind
46:3846:38 - of know what I have to do here but getting all that set up to and you know I have to pay money of course it’s not free um to uh host the podcast files and
46:4646:46 - get the RSS feed set up for the podcasts and uh that way people can just subscribe to them on Apple podcasts or
46:5346:53 - Spotify podcasts and every time we post a new lesson uh you’ll have the audio
46:5946:59 - version of it that you can listen to uh you know if you’re commuting or doing dishes and you know things like that so I want to get the podcast form of things
47:0547:05 - set up as well and that’s still I haven’t quite done everything I need to do there I kind of have an idea of what
47:1047:10 - I have to do but even more of the kind of you know coding side of things here
47:1747:17 - left to do before I I’ll kind of have all the content stuff done so I guess
47:2247:22 - probably kind of technical still but I will be making that effort to keep releasing content as we go now I’ve
47:2847:28 - mentioned that I’m going to try to keep up with it so that every week at least we’re going to have something new that gets posted to the channel even as I’m
47:3547:35 - working on some of these remaining content to-dos I have enough automated now that I’m going to be pressing
47:4147:41 - forward with new content kind of without backlogging it as I have been in the
47:4647:46 - past few months here finally um after all of that stuff that I mentioned I’m going to turn my focus back to trying to
47:5347:53 - launch the in-person Bible study in my house so I have a projector setup and I’ve kind of been ready to do this for a
47:5947:59 - couple years but I I kept wanting to get the content in a better place so that I’m can kind of do it sustainably so you
48:0548:05 - know like that parable of counting the cost so not building a tower and running out of materials halfway here I kind of
48:1248:12 - want to have everything set up in a sustainable fashion before I you know invite folks over and we try to make
48:1848:18 - this this uh you know this video series and podcast of of the Bible study that I
48:2348:23 - host in person I want to have everything set up and ready for that to happen so that people who miss a week will kind of
48:2948:29 - seamlessly be able to view last week’s stuff online uh you know in whatever format they want and have it all there
48:3548:35 - but to do that I have to make it time efficient and to make it time efficient I have to automate it and so uh a lot of
48:4148:41 - the in-person Bible study stuff is kind of hard dependent on me finishing the rest of the video processing stuff and
48:4848:48 - the the podcast side of things as well so that I have everything in place so that when I start doing the in-person
48:5448:54 - Bible studies and and recording those I’ll have everything ready to kind of take that content and and automatically
49:0149:01 - get it where it needs to be uh because at that point I’ll be uh doing the Bible
49:0749:07 - studies from our ichus group that we’ve been doing for the last few years so that’s at least one video a week you
49:1349:13 - know a couple hours of video content plus these studies plus if I ever do anything in the middle of the week you
49:1949:19 - know we’re talking maybe two or three videos a week of you know substantial length I have to automate it because
49:2749:27 - otherwise I just would not be able to keep up and so until I get some of that stuff done this is still kind of on hold
49:3349:33 - I have a lot of to-dos here you know relating to getting the house ready for it and figuring out how I’m going to
49:3949:39 - have you know a a multi-channel microphone thing for people to be able to ask questions on the recordings and
49:4549:45 - things like that um I have some to-dos here but I’m not going to focus as much time and energy on this until I finish
49:5149:51 - all the rest of the content stuff uh some of the to-dos that I just mentioned before uh because all of that kind of
49:5749:57 - needs to preedee this before I feel like I’ll be where I want to be in terms of sustainability on uh kind of the time
50:0550:05 - efficiency front all right well that just about
50:1150:11 - does it here I’m just going over what we talked about in this ministry update um so I talked about how a lot of the
50:1750:17 - things that I was planning to do kind of got pushed aside in a li of me working
50:2350:23 - on some of the video Automation in the processing uh so that I could get all of the Bible basics part one videos up in
50:3050:30 - the near future here and I wanted to do that uh because I wanted to finish most of the automation before I did uh the
50:3750:37 - bulk of the video processing just to save time and so that’s what I ended up doing in practice and so that’s why it’s
50:4350:43 - been several months here um I kind of then went over uh kind of what the video
50:4950:49 - processing workflows involved we looked at all of the files in this sort of directory structure that I have set up
50:5550:55 - and then looked at what the videos look like on YouTube with the topic transition slides uh the black slides in
51:0151:01 - between sections and then uh the accurate time stamps for everything that get automatically generated uh and then
51:0751:07 - we also looked at the page internal timestamps on my website and how they
51:1351:13 - actually let you a full text search transcript so that if you want to go uh click on a timestamp and then have the
51:1951:19 - video play exactly where uh you want to hear the thing well now that actually works perfectly as well and so uh you
51:2751:27 - know jumping back to the video and all that to set up that entire framework on my website and then uh after that I
51:3451:34 - mentioned how I’m going to try to be more consistent here now that I have a lot more of this Automation in place it
51:3951:39 - should be more sustainable for me to kind of do a video a week or every other week and stuff like that so hopefully we
51:4551:45 - won’t have gaps in video releases kind of as much as we have the last couple uh honestly the last couple years um I’m
51:5251:52 - hoping now that I have everything in place to be much more consistent than we have been here here and then finally I
51:5751:57 - talked about some of the upcoming stuff I’m planning on doing um so going to keep making those content releases as we
52:0352:03 - keep uh plugging forward in our group study of the Systematic Theology on ichus uh as well as trying to finish off
52:1152:11 - a bit more Automation in my video processing workflow uh so that I can have everything completely automated
52:1752:17 - rather than just having I don’t know maybe 80% of it automated like I have it right now and so those are the main
52:2352:23 - things I’m going to be focusing on in the short term with that longer term goal of eventually getting that
52:2852:28 - in-person Bible study set up uh kind of once I have all of the Automation in place so that uh I can sustainably do
52:3552:35 - two or three videos a week like I’d like to do so that is uh what I’m planning on
52:4052:40 - focusing on in the future um so I hope this video has been helpful and I don’t know exactly when I’ll make the next one
52:4652:46 - of these um I I don’t think it’ll probably be uh you know in two weeks I think in maybe a month or two uh as I I
52:5352:53 - finish getting through all of that uh all of that video content in the back blog that’s going up here but I hope
52:5952:59 - this uh kind of helped situate people with what progress has been made where my focus has been the last little bit
53:0553:05 - and uh kind of what things to look forward to so thanks for watching and
53:1053:10 - stay tuned for all the content videos that will be coming out in the next few weeks here