Putting Your Sermon Online
Tip of the Month: June 2007
Multiple steps are required in order for you to successfully put your sermon or other audio clips online. The first step is making the recording. Your sermon will need to be recorded into a media file type that is suitable for the web. Today, that means MP3. Audio recording and editing software will generally use its own file types for its internal processing and provide a way to export audio files to a standard format like .WAV.
Let’s assume that you already have your audio recording in electronic format such as .WAV or .MP3. Most churches are able to hook up a computer or MP3 recording device to their sound system to produce the recording. This sounds complex, but there are many tutorials available on the web for creating a mini-studio to create recordings for podcasts or other audio files. These are designed to make this entire process simple for you.
Tools you can use:
Once you have your sermon recorded and saved to an electronic format, you will likely need to edit it to optimize the file size, remove blank spots, and/or adjust volume levels. There are several tools you can use that range from free to reasonably priced to high-end professional. Here are some free and reasonably priced tools that you might consider:
Whichever software you choose, licensing issues are critical and most audio software will require an additional plug-in to export to MP3. Make sure you know if your software needs an extra plug-in to export to MP3, because that is the file type in which you will want to publish your audio file. For example, Audacity uses another program called LAME, and Cakewalk provides a plug-in at an extra cost.
Settings for your MP3 file
ID3 Tags
ID3 tags are information (meta data) that is included in your mp3 file and displays in your listener’s iPod, mp3 player, or computer. The ID3 tags can be used to display the artist (speaker), title, genre, year, and other information. For a detailed tutorial, check out http://www.podcast411.com/id3tags.html. Suggestions for your sermon ID3 tags include:
- Name: Sermon Title
- Artist: Pastor / Speaker’s name
- Album: Sermon Series name, you can also include the church name as well
- Genre: select Speech
- Year: year the sermon was given
- Track: the number of the sermon in the sermon series
- Comments: put the sermon date
Optimal file size
Sermons (and speech in general) can be sampled down to a lower bit rate to optimize the file size for download. This is very important to both conserve bandwidth and to ensure that your listeners on low-speed connections can download the file in a reasonable amount of time.
While a more in-depth discussion about audio compression techniques is beyond the scope of this article, we’ve included a few of the basics along with some suggested settings. You can play around with them to find the optimal settings for your files.
Bit Rate:
When you have the option, you can save your file using Variable Bit Rate (as opposed to Constant Bit Rate). Most speech can have ‘acceptable’ quality at 16kbps.
Mono:
In most cases, you can output the file in mono format to help to reduce the file size without impairing your sound quality.
File Size:
In order to make sure that your listeners have the best experience possible, you need to optimize your sound file so that it maintains good sound quality, yet downloads as quickly as possible. Remember that many people are still on dial-up or may be accessing the download from a slower speed connection. A 45 minute sermon can easily be optimized to between 5-6MB in size.
How to upload the MP3 file to your site with ChurchKatalyst
You can use the Media Manager (Site | Media Manager) to upload the MP3 file. Before uploading your MP3 file, be sure that you have optimized it and make sure that it’s file size is less than 8MB.
To upload the file, you would do the following:
- Go to Site | Media Manager
- Click on the ‘stories’ folder and then on the ‘audio’ folder.
- Click on the ‘Browse’ button and select the audio file from your computer.
- Click the OK (or Save) button in the pop-up window.
- Click the ‘Upload’ icon in the top right.
This will then upload the MP3 file to the server so that you can include it in your content.
How to include your MP3 audio file in your content
In the ChurchKatalyst system, we have created a plug-in to allow you to easily add MP3 audio files to your content. The plug-in provide a QuickTime player control {show picture} with a download link so that your users can listen online or download the MP3 file to their computer. Wherever you want the audio to show up, you simply insert a tag such as {ckaudio}myfile.mp3{/ckaudio}. You would change the ‘myfile.mp3’ to be the name of your MP3 audio file.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions, comments, or suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at ResultsKatalyst Feedback.
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