Ugly Church Sermon Clips [Don't Make These Mistakes]

Hey, it’s Brady,

Many of you are making the same obvious mistakes with your sermon clips.

Let’s fix that.

1. Caption Overlap

If you place your captions too low, they will overlap with the auto captions generated by the social app. The result? Both types of captions are unreadable. Curiously, AI sermon tools still frequently put captions in areas of the frame that are not part of the “safe zone.” Watch out for this.

2. Eyeline Overlap

Similarly, you don’t want the eyeline of your speaker overlapping with the UI elements of the social app either. Connection happens through the eyes.

3. Logo Watermark

Your logo already exists on your profile. Meaning, it shows up on every post automatically. You don’t need it there twice.

4. Double Captions

Adding a hook to your sermon clips is smart. Necessary, I’d say. But if you have your captions on-screen at the same time, in the same styling, it will confuse people as both lines of text compete for attention. Show just the hook first. Then bring in the captions after.

5. Auto Reframing Glitches

Auto reframing is one of AI’s gifts to video editors. But you may have to manually set some keyframes - otherwise, your pastor could disappear off the screen. Specifically with churches, we’ve noticed the AI tools struggle with screens - mistaking them for people.

6. Caption Blindfold

If your church has a multi-cam setup, watch for this hiccup. Your captions might be properly placed for camera 1, but when your stream cuts to camera 2, suddenly, your captions are right across your pastor’s face.

7. Lower Third Cut Off

If you’re repurposing a sermon with graphics in the recording, make sure to punch-in as needed if lower thirds are on the screen -  otherwise, they’ll be cut off while still taking up a ton of the frame.

Sermons give churches a massive advantage on social media. We have fresh, new content ready for us every week!

But sloppy editing like this can dramatically affect the performance of your posts.

These are mistakes we frequently encounter when using AI tools to edit sermon clips.

So don’t automatically rely on the first drafts these tools render for you.

Make the necessary edits before exporting.

Human vs. AI Sermon Clips: Full Experiment

We put four of the top AI tools to the test!

Three made for churches and one mainstream option.

Using real sermons, we measured editing experience, post quality, and time saved.

The goal? To find out which tool is worth using for your church’s social media… or if it’s still better to do it yourself.

Get the answers here.

Thanks as always for your time, attention, and trust. - Brady Shearer