Mission Statement

Catholic Digital Studio is a multimedia site devoted to spreading the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. Through written, audio and visual media, we intend to spread hope to a world that desperately needs to hear Christ's message of salvation.

We have a large selection of free Catholic Video downloads featuring productions created by Catholic Digital Studio. The main subject of our productions are classes taught by lay apologist, Mr. Vic Scaravilli. Also included are featured videos produced by other Catholic Internet evangelists such as: Father Jeffrey Mickler, That Catholic Show by Greg and Jennifer Willits, the Pro-life Video Collection, The Miracle of Damascus, Sacred Heart of Medford's Audio-Visual Blog, Hanga Abbey: A Model of Hope, Steve Silvia and the Singing Sisters.

Our Online Catholic Library has links to free e-books and to other excellent Catholic websites, listed under such topics as: Bibles and Bible studies, Catechesis, Theology, Church History, Church Councils, Spirituality, Saints Biographies, Catholic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, the Writings of Vic Scaravilli and the Children's Corner.

This site hopes to educate and inspire Catholics, so that we all can participate in the New Evangelization as One Body. Let us join together in order to bring about the New Springtime.

Status

Catholic Digital Studio is a not-for-profit, lay apostolate that is owned and operated by Mary Ann Button. I do not accept donations, but I do accept and appreciate prayers. I have not yet submitted this site to Bishop Robert Vasa (our Diocesan Bishop) for approval, but I do plan to do so as soon as I have some of the bugs and kinks worked out. This is still a BETA site.

Contact Catholic Digital Studio

Mary Ann Button is the Web Mistress and owner of this website. She may be contacted through email at thebutton@charter.net.

If you prefer snail mail, you may contact the Web Mistress here:

The History of Catholic Digital Studio

Believe it or not, Catholic Digital Studio is an accident, a site that came about through a very strange and unlikely series of events.

In Fall, 2006, I started shopping for a home. I had looked at many and couldn't find anything to suit until I came upon a seemingly lovely house in a seemingly lovely neighborhood.

I called my stepfather, who is an experienced contractor, to evaluate the home and property prior to my making an offer.

Immediately, he called to my attention some rather obvious dry rot that was in the eaves above the front door. Also, heaters are apparently not to be placed in the hallway stairs. There was large sunken-in area about 4 feet in diameter beneath the metal snow roof. The windows were incorrectly inserted and the new vinyl siding was so loosely attached that it had separated from the house in several places --- dangling, actually. To anyone with a brain, the house was an obvious lemon. It was also in a bad neighborhood, in my stepdad's opinion.

But it had a cute kitchen and a couple mature fruit trees in the back!

From that day on, I was no longer trusted to evaluate or buy a house without the help of a higher authority: my stepdad. I was not allowed to buy a home outside their counsel.

Things quickly got frustrating. I'd find a potential buy, describe it over the phone to my stepdad. I quickly realized I had not the knowledge to describe anything in terms of contractor's language. A picture speaks a thousand words. I replaced words with photographs, which I emailed home for evaluation.

My stepdad felt photos still did not accurately convey the state of my prospective buys to a satisfactory degree, so I bought my very first camcorder and began filming the inside, outside, basements and subfloors of prospective houses. He liked the films, well, except for the one that made them both vomit. Apparently, cameras are panned slowly in films for a reason.

The whole process was quite tedious. I got very irritated when I dropped my carkeys in mud whilst trying to film the subfloor of a potential buy. It was also an icky process, what with all the spider webs and doggy-do that clung to my shoes.

One wintry day, my brother emailed me a video from a new Internet TV channel called You Tube. I went onto the site and started playing around. It was fairly awesome.

After drinking my fill of funny animal videos, I decided to look up some of the Catholic channels, and therein I found a great void. There were a scant few at that time.

In place of this void, I came across a very anti-Catholic Channel called BereanBeacon, started by a very naughty boy who had uploaded 95 anti-Catholic videos to You Tube. His videos starred an ex-Catholic priest with an Irish lilt who taught lies about the Church. This injusticed filled me righteous indignation!

I thirsted for Justice, and also some hot tea. Reaching for the warm drink living on my computer desk, I saw my camcorder sitting atop a pile of Real Estate papers. The battery was recharging. Some very interesting thoughts suddenly filled my mind.

And so this equally naughty girl subscribed to You Tube, under the username Button36. I taped my very first video called Catholic Believe: The Nicene Creed soon after. It was to be the first of a series of Catholic videos, my response to BereanBeacon.

I quickly discovered how hard it is to direct oneself and the great time and effort involved in shooting videos. One must find something to say. Do research on it. Write an outline. Make sure there are no errors. Do a few rehearsals. Get the lighting right. Get the hair and makeup in place. And finally one needs to place the camera in a place where two mischevious cats won't knock it down or peer into it and get wet-nose prints on the camera lens.

I filmed my first video in 3 takes. It's very wierd filming oneself the first time because one must visualize the audience. When the audience is absent, filming is a little uncomfortable because it seems like you're talking only to yourself. The first two takes failed because of the giggles!

Anyhow, my camcorder didn't have a USB port. I'd bought a cheap model because I only intended to film houses. I needed to find software to convert the DVDs to Digital format. I required an editing program that would convert the finished video to a file format suitable for You Tube. And in the process one must learn to use software and learn film editing all in one enormous gulp.

It's a lot of work. To be honest, I don't enjoy filming myself. Someone had to speak the truth and defend the Church. No one was doing so on You Tube (now there are many Catholic channels ). I figured I must be the best worker ant that God had at the moment, so I'd have to do until God could find someone better. I prayed I find "that someone better" soon.

After I uploaded my first video to You Tube, I went to my Catholic Adult Education class. The course was Shopping for Jesus, and we were in the second or third class.

I remember sitting in class watching Vic Scaravilli, our teacher, and thinking, WOW!!! He's really good. This is "the someone better," that I'd been praying for!

I asked Vic what he thought of the idea of me taping him for the Internet. I told him about BereanBeacon's handiwork. He was cool with my project and encouraged me. By the next class, I started taping him. And from there, my video projects started multiplying, so much so that I'm presently so swamped with work that I'm 6 months behind in cutting my videos.

I started having problems almost immediately. My computer had only had 512 MB of RAM, and it took 5 hours to convert a 30 minute DVD to digital format! At that rate, I'd get Shopping for Jesus online after the Parousia!

Then, the software would freeze when I'd edit the digital videos. It was an older computer with one core -- and one needs dual core processors to efficiently run Video Editing software. I also had problems with audio-video disjointment, where the lips don't match the face. I knew I needed a new computer and new software.

In February, 2007, I found the right home and I bought it. Just before I moved out of my apartment, I ordered a new computer and bought Nero Software to go with it.

Right around that time, Denise of Semper Fi Catholic told me about a lost video called The Miracle of Damascus. The video was approved by the Church. I offered to cut it for the internet if she could get a copy. (To be honest, I figured it would be no more than 45 minutes long). A third party burned the whole series to DVD for me. I was shocked when 3 DVDs arrived in the mail. The series was five hours long!

A promise is a promise and I intended to keep it. I got permission from Rick Salbato, the copyright owner, to cut The Miracle of Damascus for the internet.

I made a choice to cut The Miracle of Damascus before starting to cut Shopping for Jesus, reasoning that Our Lady would want me to place her desires first and ours second. I figured Shopping for Jesus would be blessed by Our Lady of Soufanieh.

The Miracle of Damascus was cut in the midst of hammer, nails and lots of drying paint, and sponges, mops, washcloths and cleaning supplies of every variety. The home was a disaster! The former owners had been living in their own filth and the carpet had to be removed. Every surface of my home needed to be washed down with soap, water and Pine Sol. Dad and I did lots of mandatory remodelling.

In fact, at one point, while scrubbing crud out of the refrigerator drawers, I started crying, saying, "Is everything in this house dirty?" Yes, it was one of many mini-temper tantrums I had while getting this house ready. Dad and I also had a few arguments about the interior paint color. He wanted nuclear white. I wanted yellow. We settled on off-white. See, if he didn't like the color, he wouldn't paint! (And the WHOLE interior needed repainting).

I guess I learned obedience by peering down the barrel of a paint brush. HA!

Anyway, The Miracle of Damascus was put together amidst chaos. So, if it's imperfect, it's the cat's fault. I blame them for most everything, you see.

If there's any learned advice I can offer Catholic Internet filmmakers, it is this: if you create any works involving the Virgin Mary, make backups of your backups! While working on The Miracle of Damascus, Nero would crash, the power would go out or data sometimes got corrupted during exports or uploads. When I'd work on other more routine Catholic videos, these problems occurred rarely. It was a strange thing.

In this whole process, I also had the pleasure (sic) of learning Microsoft Vista and dealing with the problems involved in software incompatiblity. To this day, Nero software is the only cheaper reliable video software editing program that works nicely with Vista. Adobe Premiere is coming out with a fully Vista compatible and fully updatable version sometime in 2008.

The one feature I like about Nero is the fact that you can compress videos to a small file size without compromising too much clarity. It's also really, really easy to use. I like things to be simple and uncomplicated. I've also been told that Adobe Premiere and Nero are compatible with each other, that is, one can use Premiere to do all the editing and cool effects and then use Nero to compress it to a reasonable file size for You Tube and other embedding sites.

If you really want to get fancy, I recommend a Mac combined with Sony video editing software. I would've gone that route, but have no idea how to use Macs. If you are able to run a Mac, I'd go this route, because Macs almost never crash.

-Mary Ann Button

Web Mistress

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