Church media team's four Advent Sunday highlights: $1.32 on Sume

A church media team can turn each Advent Sunday into a captioned highlight and a set of written notes for $0.33, which is $1.32 across four Sundays on Sume (read 2026-10-03). The steps are a trim ($0.02), caption burn ($0.20), audio detach ($0.01) and a 10-minute speech-to-text pass ($0.01 per audio minute).

Advent 2026 begins on Sunday, November 29, with further Sundays on December 6, 13 and 20. A highlight posted on Sunday afternoon reaches people who could not attend, and the notes give the congregation something to forward.

Each Sunday's four jobs

Import the recording of the service and trim 50 seconds of the message you want to share, at $0.02. A video under 60 seconds keeps the caption job at its fixed $0.20, and the captions are generated from the speech in the clip, so the words on screen match what was said. If a name or scripture reference is misheard, pass script_text to align the burned-in words to your corrected text.

For notes, detach the audio of the full sermon section as wav ($0.01) and send up to 10 minutes to speech-to-text at $0.01 per audio minute, which is $0.10 for 10 minutes. Longer messages need to be split first, since a single transcription accepts at most 10 minutes. The transcript has timestamps you can use to choose which 50 seconds to trim next week.

Permission and care

Decide who can appear. A highlight of the speaker is simple. Pictures of the congregation, and of children in particular, call for a clear policy and notice at the door. Keep the highlight to the message and the music you have the right to share, because worship songs are covered by licenses that differ for streaming and for clips.

The transcript is a draft. Someone from the team should read it before it is published, particularly names and quotations. For the Christmas Eve service itself, the post on service times with photos and captions covers a different announcement video.

Budget and checks before you start

Agree on a weekly routine so the work takes under an hour. Saturday: pick the passage and note the service minute. Sunday afternoon: trim, caption, post. Monday: send the notes to the pastor for review. Having the same four steps each week matters more than any tool, and the cost is a little over $0.30 a week.

Add the Christmas Eve service as a fifth item if you record it, and remember that streaming and clip licenses for music vary, so confirm what your license covers before posting a performance.