MP3 settings bitrate for sermon audio

[pdc]

Originally Posted by tropicalfish

For web distribution I use MP3 VBR V9 (the lowest variable setting) and 16000 or 24000kHz sampling rate. Files range from 8 to 15 MB depending on sermon length.

I think there are some mixed up ideas and numbers here. Variable Bit Rate coding is not a "lowest" setting. It allows for a range of quality settings, which in turn effect the size of the file. VBR is used in various compression and non compression codecs. Lossless therefore is VBR.

Sample rates (number of samples per second) are 44.1kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, etc. Bit depth (accuracy of the sample more or less) is usually 16-bit, 24-bit, etc.

[pdc]

Originally Posted by Jay M

Our customers are a bit slow. It was less than a year ago that we stopped making cassettes! We did all we could to discourage cassette sales, we didn't offer them on our web site, we charged more for them than CDs, and we never mentioned them on our broadcast. People still called in to request them. Finally sales slowed down enough that we could stop producing them without offending too many customers.

For CDs, I don't know what will happen. A few years ago we made an MP3 version of all the CD titles free, but almost as many people still buy CDs.

I agree, that I would not begin a CD ministry today if I didn't need to!

~Jay

Yes, I was talking with Tascam's national sales manager a couple of weeks ago, and he told me that Tascam has tried on numerous occasions to stop producing cassette decks and other machines, but Kingdom will send in an order for 300 or so, and kind of force them into it. Sales will slow and then when Tascam thinks it's all over, another order will come in.

If I were in charge, and I have been, and people wanted tapes or CDs, I would buy them an a jump drive, and tell them to bring it church anytime they want a copy of a sermon. Churches have better things to do than cater to the multiple dead formats. It eats up too much time and money IMO. But, some people think them there new fangled VCRs are fine to flash 12:00 too.

[buggyboy]

thanks again for the input.

I agree that the archive version should be in wavs if possible. I believe we may move in that direction, but given our "tech staff" is me myself and I... well, we 3 tend to move slowly.

For now my plan is to render all sermons to wav (mono)... store for 1 year

burn cds as needed from the wavs

at end of the year convert all wavs to mps at 192 or 128kbps (44.1khz) vbr
and burn to dvd

for sermons uploaded to web, convert wav to ~64 vbr
I think we'll probably host a month or so of sermons at a time
either on our website or a hosting service.

Thanks, you guys are the bomb

[tropicalfish]

Originally Posted by Jay M

I've heard that variable is better, but haven't tried it myself. Do you have any compatibility problems? My fear early on was that variable might not be compatible with every device.

~Jay

Should work with any media player, really. VBR is getting much more common since it's almost always smaller in file size to a similar CBR setting, without sacrifice in quality.

[tropicalfish]

Originally Posted by buggyboy

thanks again for the input.

I agree that the archive version should be in wavs if possible. I believe we may move in that direction, but given our "tech staff" is me myself and I... well, we 3 tend to move slowly.

For now my plan is to render all sermons to wav (mono)... store for 1 year

burn cds as needed from the wavs

at end of the year convert all wavs to mps at 192 or 128kbps (44.1khz) vbr
and burn to dvd

for sermons uploaded to web, convert wav to ~64 vbr
I think we'll probably host a month or so of sermons at a time
either on our website or a hosting service.

Thanks, you guys are the bomb

Store them as FLAC. WAVs take up way too much space, and FLAC is lossless.

If you don't want lossless, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 are good alternatives.


As for hosting sermons online... you should be able to do all of them. If your sermons are approx 40 mins long each, with 2 sermons every week (that's like 9MB each with the compression settings I posted earlier), that's 936MB per year. Most web hosting plans should give you at least a few GB so you can host your sermons for longer.

[buggyboy]

Good point Fish... I hadn't really considered storing the original mixdown as flac.
I use lamedropxp to convert to mp3...and it will handle flac, so that's a plus.

I just took a spin through the interweb and found this program
http://www.burrrn.net/?page_id=4
It looks very simple to use and it should handle burning flac.

anyone ever use burrrn?
or other "volunteer / technically challenged" burning programs?

I'd like to find a program with a clean and simple interface. A one function kind of deal.

Happy thanksgiving!

[tropicalfish]

Burrrn is pretty outdated, but if it works for you, great! It's the easiest I've found to use.
Infrarecorder doesn't always get the CD-TEXT right or gives you coasters.
I use IMGBurn but getting it to work is a bit difficult sometimes because it requires you to install the FLAC library or something and that doesn't always work (sometimes requires reinstall of FLAC library, but I haven't had that happen for a while now, thankfully).

[buggyboy]

I'm going to give burrrn and cpburnderxp a try.
I should probably start a new thread at this point.
thanks for the help