need help in recording sermons

[pjohanson]

I am in charge of the projection system at church. The sound tech and I are confused as to how to record services digitally. We currently record them through the soundboard to a cassette recorder and then duplicate the tapes. We have a small digital recorder (h2 zoom?) which drives me crazy 'cause he has it set in the ledge of the soundbooth where it picks up our voices too. I have never heard the recording from these to know how well it works to record the sermon from 50 ft away

Is there a way to record the sermons through the soundboard to put on CD’s or mp3 without using the projection computer resources which are already being used? Even though we JUST got a new computer which is hooked up to two projectors for the congregation, wouldn't trying to do an audio recording possibly conflict with me doing projection if they are both done at the same time on the same machine?? I assume that the recording should be done on stand alone equipment that isn’t tied up doing something else at the same time (like while I am doing Easy Worship).

Does that sound reasonable??

Is there a guide or book or web site to help us? (I haven't found specific answers yet on the Internet, and any conferences are too far away for any of us to go to.) We are about a church of 200 which is large for our area, but a drop in the bucket for lots of other areas of the country.

On another issue, we audio record one of our Sunday School teachers lessons, and then I marry up the wav file to the powerpoint presentation in Windows Media player to make a large wmv file for her web site. Is there a way I should do this so it is much smaller file and able to be opened by people without sacrificing a lot of quality??

These questions may be way to simple for you, but we are baffled!

Can you help at all?? Even if to point me to another resource place.

Thanks for your kindness and mercy in reading my questions!

In Him who calls us to be ministers of light and sound,
PJohanson

[[Admin] osborn4]

Many have been able to record audio on the projection computer with no problems. But I don't recommend it and I don't do it. To me, it's just one more thing that may go wrong, no matter how unlikely.

An computer to record audio on doesn't have to be beefy, so you can use a fairly old one. Booth space is usually the limiter there.

Just take a line out from the board, like what goes to your cassette recorder, and plug it into the audio in on the computer. Use an application like Audacity to capture the audio and use the Lame MP3 encoder to save an MP3 and burn that to a CD.

Of course, that will give you only one big track. Audacity has ways of making tracks, but I haven't explored them.

The other option is to get a digital recorder with a microphone in plug and run a line from the soundboard to it. And some find it easiest to get a dedicated CD recorder.

[petereit]

Hey, welcome to churchmedia.net!

Something you might want to consider is a CD recorder. You could probably find a good used one on EBay for a couple hundred dollars. Here's a link to one that is very similar to the one we use.

You would plug this straight into the line out on your board. It records onto blank CD-R disks that play in just about any CD player.

They're (mostly) fool-proof and you wouldn't need to tie up a computer.

[pjohanson]

If I got a cd recorder, Does it have the ability to convert the sermon to mp3 if we wish, or do we take the cd, then put it in a regular computer and convert through some sort of program?

Thanks for the helpful advice both of you gave!!

PJ

[daver2]

Welcome to CMN PJ.

If you are just recording the sermon to CD you should be fine. All of the CD recorders I know about will not record in MP3 - they record to a much higher standard.

To convert the CD-ROM to MP3 you would need to use a computer to 'rip' the CD track and then convert it to MP3. This software is generally free if you look around on the internet.

We find that any recording of a sermon usually requires a little post event editing to remove pops, bangs, long pauses, page rustling, baby crying etc. to improve the listening experience before mass duplication. My recommendation, therefore, would follow Joel's suggestion and use a relatively cheap (but reliable) PC and the free Audacity software to record the entire service - and then perform a bit of post editing as necessary and creation of an MP3 using the the Lame MP3 encoder.

We generally run sermon series - and using this method has the added advantage that we can produce the entire sermon series on CD or DVD by editing the individual sermons together.

We still, however, use our analogue recorder as a backup just in case our PC dies (it has never happened yet - but will one day). I also vote for not using the projectuion PC as a simultaneous sound recorder. Our video PC crashes more regularly than I would like...

There should be a couple of threads on CMN discussing CD recording and Audacity - I remember posting on some of them so they must exist somewhere!

Dave

[Tim Padrick]

The H2 has line level inputs does it not?

[WaynePflughaupt]

On a related note, Google “nch software audio file splitter” and you’ll find a great program for easily and automatically splitting a large audio file like a sermon or lecture into smaller files - 1-minute, 4-minutes, anything you like. That way when you burn it to a CD you have easy access to any point in the sermon.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

[northerntech]

We switched to a DVD hard drive recorder (ours is a Sony, around $300) earlier this year after previously using a Zoom H4, which is a slightly more versatile version of the H2 mentioned earlier in the thread. This gave us a much larger record window (we use 3 hour duration to get both services), higher quality and the ability to set it as a timed event (like a VCR), so now no one forgets to push the record button. Dump the recording to a DVD for easy editing in a computer after the service. Job done.

[rickster]

We used to record from the record out bus of our mixer to a Marantz CD recorder. The unit we used recorded directly to CD, on-the-fly, and closed the CD file when you stopped recording and finalized. Here's the issue with that: Since you're recording to CD directly and there is no SRAM image stored in the machine, if you happen to put in a defective CD, you lose the entire sermon with no chance to recover anything.

I switched to a Marantz PMD-580 digital recorder, which stores the audio to a compact flash card. This unit is network based and has a neat feature where it will auto-magically transfer the file to a network storage location of your choice. The file is stored as an mp3 file. So, I have it send the file to a PC. Then, with a few mouse clicks, I take the transferred file and master an audio CD which is written to a blank CD. Next, I take that CD and put in the multi-up copier and make 7 copies at a time. It works rather well for us. We conclude the sermon and have CD's available at the Welcome Center BEFORE the church service ends. We have both a master CD AND an mp3 file archived on the PC. Eventually, this will be set up to store the file to a network server in parallel. We also take the mp3 file and post it to our website for podcasting.

[Frank DeWitt]

As had been said a dedicated computer is the safe way to go. The good news is someone in your church has one at home that they don't use and it will do the job. Very low power is needed.

I like EZTrackerCD very much. It will record simultaneously in .wav, and ,mp3 It is made for live church use so the interface is simple It will insert a track at the push of a soft button, or every x minutes. or you can do both. (We set the software for a new track every 6 minutes, and press the button at the end of each part in the service until we get to the sermon, then the software breaks the sermon into 6 min tracks. When the service ends, use the built in CD burner. http://eztrackercd.com/

Frank

[mkt]

Originally Posted by Tim Padrick

The H2 has line level inputs does it not?

Yes, it does. And we've used our H2 quite successfully with the line input by splitting the mono feed that goes into our tape deck. SD card is removable for easy transfer to computer or other media. The H2 even includes a 1Gb card in the box. It also includes a mic stand adapter so you don't have to balance the unit on ledges.

I'd have to check, but my recollection is that recording in both wav and mp3 formats is supported.

Paul

[mfullererie]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the spot to post this or not, so if it is not, my apologies in advance...

We are currently recording digitally for podcast using Audacity, but I have noticed that there is a low hissing noise in the background. It is not bad enough to make the audio unlistenable, but it's there...and I'm a perfectionist...

If anyone wants to listen to the files, visit sermon(dot)net/southharborcreek
Thank you in advance!