Sermons were top ranked in satisfaction in a recent survey -- so developing a workable process to try and get them back to the web with minimal user/volunteer involvement is a top priority. Since they are a strength then we need to find ways to include and emphasize it when marketing St. A's.
Unfortunately video taping and editing video is time intensive and requires equipment, the files, software, high speed internet to upload. So it is not one of the things you can easily hand off from one person to another. So just looking to restart the audio podcast for the time being and consider video for more static areas of the website.
A member has donated a Sony digital recorder and I have it to test/play with but need the software (PC Only) apparently to get the file off and trim. I can definitely commit to doing this but it is possible there would be a lag between service and posting.
The video versions worked well for getting them out on Facebook (they don't host audio clips) though their 20 minute limit tended to cause me hassle to take all of Ed's work and trim start/stop or cut a sermon into 2 pieces to get it under the limit. Unfortunately, either FB or I then left weird artifacting when I tried to recompress.
So unless I do an iMovie and create some standard animation/slideshow to go with the audio FB is out for a while longer as well. I'm hoping I can come up with something that could stand in and allow me to get them up on FB.
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perhaps the solution to posting audio on facebook is to just do a link share to the audio file....
ReplyDeletethat or maybe use a URL shortening service like bit.ly to post the link to the audio from the SAEC site.
the video recording of sermons COULD be a simple thing. here is (was) the workflow i used most recently:
ReplyDeleteA. equipment used -- Flip mino video camera; tripod; Mac; Quicktime Pro (for compression)
B. process:
1. go to church with Flip and tripod
2. communicate with preacher regarding where the sermon will be given (if not previously agreed upon -- we used to record them from the pulpit, but then sermons were given from the front pews area)
3. setup tripod, test video recorder
4. record sermon (with a few extra seconds before & after)
5. upload sermon onto Mac (file format is .avi)
6. open sermon in Quicktime Pro (make adjustments to color, remove extra space if needed, compress)
7. export as .mov file
8. upload to webserver/website
9. test movie
C. notes
1. our sermons were approximately 25 minutes
2. source AVI files were about 600 MB for 640x480 @ 30fps
3. after compression, MOV files were approximately 35-50 MB for 480x360 @12fps using H.264 encoding
4. the Flip recording was great because of the small size, lightweight camera that fits in your pocket. less equipment to carry, maintain, guard, etc.
D. warnings
1. if planning to use iMovie, newer versions do not play well with non-HD AVI files. they will first need to undergo a transcoding which often took approx. 30 minutes before they could be edited in iMovie.
2. once done editing, the export/compression process added another 30 minutes.
other techniques i used:
1. Mac laptop with external firewire iSight camera (no longer available for sale)
2. Mac laptop with built-in iSight camera (now standard on all Mac laptops)
correction -- most of the sermons were approx. 300 MB recorded, and approx. 30 MB compressed/uploaded. not sure why some of them grew up to 600 MB... probably has to do with the amount of movement in front of the camera.
ReplyDeletesince Flip cameras are now "HD", i'm sure the size/resolutions are much higher.
St. Augustine's Sermons Audio Workflow
ReplyDelete1. Record sermon as video with Flip camcorder
2. Go home, compress sermon video
3. Extract sermon audio as separate file
4. Create sermon audio info
5. Upload audio and video to web server
6. Update sermons page on website and XML feed for Podcast
7. Test audio, video, and podcast download.
How to extract the audio from the video
Software used:
Switch Plus Audio Converter (Mac/Windows versions available)
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/plus.html
1. Open sermon video inside Switch
2. Adjust settings (if not previously set)
3. Convert
Settings used:
Output format: MP3
- Variable Bitrate (VBR)
- Minimum Bitrate (kbps) -- 32
- Maximum Bitrate (kbps) -- 128
- Quality -- 7
- Stereo Encoding -- Joint