ERUUF Sermons & Readings

All ERUUF Podcast Listeners,

It is time for me to start to gather additional volunteers to help make this ERUUF podcasting site a more timely enterprise with frequent updates and the ability to get the sermons and readings posted to the web more promptly. Many of you have noticed that the site has gone for many weeks now without an update.   I need some help with the backlog of services and here’s where you can come in…

Here is my process for preparing and posting the podcasts to this site.  It usually takes me 20-30 minutes per service to complete this process.  It will take someone new about twice that long to get through the steps the first couple of times, but it is done the same way every week, so it gets easier over time.

1) Copy the service audio from the main sanctuary audio PC at the sound desk.  It’s required that you have a USB memory stick or flash card that is at least 1GB capacity/free space.  To save some space, the service tracks can be compressed on the audio desk PC into ‘archive quality’ MP3 before you copy them off.  There is a shortcut on the desktop of that PC to do this.  I usually copy both 9:15 and 11:15 service audio in case of a difference in programming or audio quality problems with one service or the other.  If the 11:15 service is decent quality recording, though, I usually use this version.

2) On your home PC, you need to have an audio editing program.  For several years, I used "Audacity" — a free/open source audio editor.  This is the same software that we use to record the services and it is quite capable for trimming and piecing together the spoken word portions of the service to make a track suitable for podcasting.  In this process, you want to remove the "dead time" between speakers, long pauses and shuffling sounds as people walk up to the podium, and then put the remaining parts together into a single 30-40 minute long track.  We can only include the spoken word portions of the service in the podcast — no music!  ERUUF does not own the rights to copy/distribute the music from the services on the web, so we have to eliminate all (or nearly all) of the service music.  Sometimes it’s not possible to eliminate all the music (a speaker overlaps the music for a few seconds, for example), but in general we just want to get the portion of the service that was created by ERUUF members, ministers, and other staff, where it is clear that we do own the copyrights on the parts that are being podcasted.

More recently I discovered "Propaganda" — software specifically tailored for podcasting.  The investment in this software was worthwhile as it made the weekly process of editing the raw audio down to a podcast track much simpler.  One feature that sold me on this tool is that it automatically aligns tracks if you trim the start or end of an adjacent track.  Plus it is simple to drag and drop tracks onto the ‘timeline’ to create the base of what you need to edit.

3) After you are done with editing, export the podcast to a ".wav" file and run it through the free "Levelator" tool from The Converations Network.  This program does an excellent job of balancing the entire audio track to approximately the same volume level and eliminating the variations in the speaker’s volume due to things like microphone placement or vocal ’strength’.  The consistancy that you get after this step is well worth the ~5 minute processing time for the .wav file.  The output here is another .wav file.

4) Run this levelator’ed .wav file through the LAME MP3 encoder.  I have a batch file shortcut on my desktop and with this I can just drag and drop the .wav file onto the shortcut and it will encode the podcast as a 64kbps, mono track with a 22.05 kHz sample rate.  These settings provide an excellent balance of audio quality and file size.  In general we want a 30 minute podcast track to be around 12-14MB.

Here are the complete batch file contents:

REM Creating "%~dpn1_64kbps.mp3"
"C:\Program Files\lame-3.96.1\lame.exe" -b 64 -m m --resample 22.05 %1 "%~dpn1_64kbps.mp3"
pause


5) Then you need to upload the completed MP3 podcast file to the ERUUF website via FTP.  There are many free programs that support FTP file transfer.  I am partial to "Filezilla".  You will need to get the Podcasting’s account’s FTP username and password for this step, and it is important that this information is not shared with anyone else.  The podcasts are organized in the FTP site by year.

6) Finally, you login to the ERUUF Podcasting site and create a new entry for the podcast.  The text of this entry usually comes from the ERUUF Currents newsletter / Upcoming Services website page.  I have also always included a "table of contents" for the podcast that lists the various time positions where the major parts of the service (reading, story, reflection, sermon, etc.) take place, along with the speaker.  You can get these time points from the editor program you used in step 2.  The podcast mp3 file is included in the new entry with the "Add Media File" button in the "Podcasting Files" section of the new entry.   Be sure to also select the Category "Sermons" and to add a Title to the posting.  The publication time is also important to let people know what date the sermon is from so they can find it on the calendar.  You will almost certainly have to "Edit" the publication time, otherwise it will seem that the sermon occured on a Tuesday evening or whatever time it happens to be when you are making your post.

After all of the parts of the new post are correct to your satisfaction, just press the "Publish" button and it will go up immediately.

If you are willing to help with this process, please contact me:  scott.gaskins@gmail.com

Thank you!