Putting Sermons Online
A small number of church websites now allow you to listen to sermons online
("streaming audio"). This page describes how to upload an audio copy of a
sermon to a website. Our method isn't necessarily the easiest, and will
require some experimentation on your part, but we like it because it has the
advantage of being virtually free!
There are three basic steps:
- Copy the sermon onto your computer
- Convert the sermon into RealAudio or MP3
- Upload the RealAudio/MP3 file to your webserver
To do this you will need:
- A copy of the sermon on tape.
- A tape player connected to your computer. Connect it using a lead
going from the Line Out (or Headphone) socket on your tape player to the Line In
socket on your computer's soundcard.
- Sound editing software. If you don't already have this then you can
download it as shareware (e.g. try GoldWave or Cool Edit).
Play the tape of the sermon onto your computer, using the sound editing
software to record a digital audio copy of it onto your hard drive. You should
save this audio file in a wave (.WAV) format. The size of this file depends on
the quality settings you choose, but for a 20-minute talk we would expect a file
of around 50Mb in size.
At this stage you can use the sound editing software to remove the parts of
the tape that you don't want, such as the gaps before and after the sermon.
2. Convert the sermon to RealAudio or MP3
To do this you will need either of:
- Software to generate RealAudio files. For this you will need a copy
of RealSystem Producer, produced by RealNetworks. Don't pay lots of money,
since there is a cut-down free version called RealSystem Producer Basic. You
have to hunt around on their website to find it; last time we looked it was
available here (but it
keeps moving, so you may have to do a search).
- Software to generate MP3 files. Your sound editing software may do
this already, otherwise it is easy to find shareware which you can download.
Using this software, the .WAV file produced in the first step can be
converted to a compressed format which can be streamed from a webserver to the
user. The choice of whether you use RealAudio or MP3 to do this is up to you,
but it is worth experimenting to see what works best. One advantage of using
RealAudio is that it is easier for users to listen to it online; often with MP3
they will have to download the sermon before they can listen to it.
We recommend that you use a very high level of compression, sacrificing
sound quality for a smaller file size. This has the advantage that only a
small bandwidth is required for a user to listen to the talk online. Our
experiments found that creating a RealAudio file with a bandwidth of 8.5kbps
produced acceptable results (giving a file size of around 1.4Mb for a 20-minute
talk). Using a higher bandwidth, such as 16kbps, gives much better sound quality
but makes the resulting file correspondingly larger; this may cause you to run
out of space on your website if you are hoping to upload even a moderate number
of talks.
Having produced the compressed audio file ready for the website, you may also
want to create a backup of the sermon in a high-quality MP3 format (using a
bandwith of 64kbps gives a file size of around 10Mb for a 20-minute talk). This
means that you can then delete the large .WAV file safe in the knowledge that
you've still got a high-quality copy in case you ever need to recreate the file
for the website.
3. Upload the RealAudio/MP3 file to your webserver
Contrary to what you may have heard, you don't need a special (i.e.
expensive) webserver to play streaming audio files. Simply use your regular
webserver and you shouldn't have any problems. Some of the functionality isn't
quite as good as you would get if you spent lots of money, but it works fine for
online sermons.
If you are using RealAudio then your sound file will have a .RM extension.
Before you upload it to your webserver you need to also create a .RAM file which
points to the .RM audio file. The .RAM file is made by creating a one-line text
file containing the location of the .RM file on your website (e.g. http://www.mychurch.co.uk/sermon.rm) and then saving this
text file with a .RAM extension (e.g. save it as sermon.ram). Then upload these two files to your webserver
and provide a link to the .RAM file from a webpage. Users clicking on this link
will be able to listen to the sermon online! (If you want users to be able to
download the sermon then on the webpage link directly to the .RM file.)
If you are using MP3 then before you upload the .MP3 file to your webserver
you need to create a .M3U file which points to the .MP3 audio file. The .M3U
file is made like the .RAM file — create a one-line text file containing the
location of the .MP3 file on your website (e.g. http://www.mychurch.co.uk/sermon.mp3) and then save this
text file with a .M3U extension (e.g. save it as sermon.m3u). Then upload these two files to your webserver
and provide a link to the .M3U file from a webpage. Users clicking on this link
will be able to listen to the sermon online! (If you want users to be able to
download the sermon then on the webpage link directly to the .MP3 file.)
Further comments
It takes a bit of fiddling around to get the first few sermons available
online, but it gets much easier once you've got the hang of it! One church which
is using the method described on this page is St Luke's, Wimbledon Park — take a
look at their sermon
archive to see how it works in practice.
If you want to read more about RealAudio then the WebDeveloper.com
Secret Guide to RealAudio is helpful.
This article came from hosea.co.uk
(closed January 2004)
If you would like professional help
with designing/hosting etc your web
site then please feel free to contact
me at chris@browncow.co.uk
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