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How Its Made -- Online Sermons
Below are the technical details of how we make sermons recordings distribute them to the WEB and Podcasts.
WARNING : What follows is highly technical in nature. If nitty gritty details are NOT your style, then just look at the pretty pictures and click here to be rescued. :)
The signal originates at the our main audio board which is a
Soundcraft Spirit Live 42. |
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The signal is then passed through a
Yahama GC 2020B II COMP/Limiter
to allow for boosting/throttling the level coming off of the soundcraft board. |
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The signal is then sent to the computer for recording via RCA to 1/8"(3.5mm) stereo cable.
The cable is plugged into the computer's microphone jack |
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Step 2 : Data Acquisition / Processing
The computer is a Macintosh G5 with dual 2.5Ghz CPU's, 2 GB RAM and 250 GB HD running OSX 10.4
Pretty beefy for audio recording. :) This computer also serves as a production studio when services are not in progress. |
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The program used to record the audio is :
Live Audio Capture v2.0.1 by David Buschman
This custom written program allows non-technical people to perform the needed steps/tasks consistently and accurately without having the know the gritty details of the all the "moving parts" work. It is written in Java 5.0 using SWT for its UI.
When recording begins the audio stream is duplicated and sent down two seperate paths :
1. The first path will become the online podcast/mp3.
2. The second path will become the Audio CD tracks.
This duplication of the signal happens in real time while the recording is in progress. |
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Path 1 : PodCast/MP3 |
The data from this path is saved in 1 single AIFF file format.
Once recording has completed, the program will do some cleanup processing and produce a completed AIFF file.
Files sizes here are ~ 10MB/min of audio |
AIFF -> 30 Minutes ~ 300 MB |
With the addition of a title, author, and year for the sermon, an MP3 can be created with ID3 tags using the Live Audio Capture program.
To keep the size of the files down, the output settings are set to
56kbps mono and sampled at 24 Khz.
This will create a file size of ~ 166Kb/minute of audio for the final MP3.
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MP3 -> 30 minutes ~ 6 MB |
Path 2 : Audio CD Tracks |
The data from this path is saved into 1 or more WAV format files/tracks.
The Live Audio Capture program includes an optional check box to automatically start a new file/track every 4 minutes to prevent long duration tracks from forming. |
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Step 3 : Product Distribution
| Path 1 : PodCast/MP3 |
If the MP3 files are to be uploaded to the WEB server for online sermons and podcasts, a little bit more work must be done. There are a few files that the Live Audio Capture program will generate before uploading the sermon.
1. A Meta-data file for the web-site to tell the web server where the new files are and what are they named.
2. A RSS Item file that gives specific information about this sermon for the iTunes RSS feed when the XML is regenerated.
3. A RSS last updated file to update the time of the latest entry in the podcast to note the most recent addition.
4. An updated RSS header file to make any needed changes to he podcast information itself. |
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The upload process is handler by FTP where the all the above files are placed in the correct directory on the web server.
Once the FTP is completed, the user can push and update button to run a special script on the server to perform the following steps :
1. Add the sermon to the current web page and create all needed links.
2. Updated the RSS feed file with the new sermon.
3. Ping the Apple iTunes website, letting them know that a new file in the podcast has been added and they need to update their servers with the new information. |
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Path 2 : Audio CD Tracks |
If the Live Audio Capture program is running on OSX, then the click of a button will open iTunes and import the new tracks into the iTunes library. Then the operator creates a playlist with the name of the sermons, moves the tracks into that playlist and burns a audio CD from iTunes.
If on windows, this step must be done by hand. |
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Sundays
Services and Classes
9:00 am | 10:40 am
Youth Discipleship University
6:00 pm
College and Young Adults
7:00 pm
youth room 115-116
Tuesdays
PEAK - (6th to 8th grade)
and C-Groups (9th to 12th grade)
6:30 - 8:30 pm
Wednesdays
AWANA's
6:15 pm
Choir Rehearsal
6:30 pm
Tender Warriors Men's group
7:00 pm
1st & 3rd Thursdays
MOPS (Mom's of Preschoolers)
9:00 am during academic year
There are numerous other
small groups that meet
throughout the week.
See the "Getting Connected"
page for more information.
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