Cloth Soup: 2009

One of my favorite things about my PocketPC Windows Mobile Smart Phone (What a mouth full!) is that I keep my Greek and Hebrew on it to check in when ever the moment demands it ...especially dealing with cults and their translations. Now that the iPod touch and iPhone has dropped to less than $200, I'm considering the device, but don't want to lose the handy Greek and Hebrew. Well here's are two demonstrations to almost make me a convert.

I'd like to get one and practice with it for awhile and see if it helps me in my ministry before I give a recommendation.

Please note that the recent bug list on Apple shows that the split screen is slowing the reader down to a crawl, so there's a work around. So I just may walk around this slow down until they resolve it. For any of you with an iPhone, please let us know in the comments what you think of Olive Tree's free Bible Software for the iPhone and how you use it.

For the sakes of their people who sometimes are away from service, pastors today record and upload their sermons to the internet. Members may listen to these sermons on their computer or on their PMM (portable music player, such as an iPod or even cell phone) so perhaps during a commute Monday morning catch what they missed on Sunday. Additionally visitors may find your site and may want to hear what "the preacher is like." So we should put our best foot forward.

At BestBuy or Costco, these can be had for anywhere between $30 - $100, provide lots of recording time and a good microphone and is easy to use.

Do hit record early and end late, so you don't miss your introductory lessons (such as children's lessons if they are important and connect to the main sermon) and the blessing immediately post-sermon. An ideal spot to leave it to record would be on the pulpit, with the microphone facing your mouth, but level and out of the way so it doesn't slide away, not easily hit by long wizard sleeves.

After recording, before uploading, please make edit and put your best foot forward. Your people don't need to hear noise, hiss, ruffling with the mic, or clicking loud buttons. So get rid of it by cutting those noises out, using a free program such as Audacity to fix your audio post-production. Trim out the unwanted sections before and after the sermon. Then, normalize. Click the menu Effect, then Normalize. This will even out the sound levels and prevent "cracking."

Save your file often during the process. But keep a copy of the original file untouched until your are done.

When exporting for others to listen to your output, you may instead of stereo just use a mono output, in order to save storage space. It helps that sermons can fit on an 8gb music player or less, so keep the file sizes small and manageable. One way to do this is to control the format settings.

Firstly I use the MP3 format because it is very compatible between a variety of music players. WMA and AAC is very exclusive for Microsoft and Apple products respectively, but MP3 is the compatible grand-daddy even if it isn't the most effecient. Using Audacity, go to Edit / Preferences / Quality.

Default sampling rate: 22050 Hz
Default Sample Format:16-bit

If you are recording purely in mono, with no musical introductions and exits as I do, then make sure all your tracks are Stereo Track to Mono. This will optimize file size so you only have one channel instead of two, which is suitable for most sermon broadcasts.

Then click File / Export. Please, fill out the bottom so it's easy to download, find, and play your sermons. Once you've got it right, save the tag information but saving the template, and even setting it as default so it auto-loads the tags the next time you do this. The genre setting of "podcast" allows some music players to auto-resume from the same point, much like an audio book.

Your MP3 export options should be variable, quality of "9, 45-85 kbps" (Smaller files), with Joint Stereo checked. This will give you an appropriate file size but will keep the sound quality relatively high.

Since the file is finished, we upload. I uploaded these to a server, such as CTS MemberConnect. After that's all filled out, I also post a link to a blog which turns these files into an RSS feed, so they can either be subscribed via your news catcher, or podcatcher of choice. That makes it automatically available to your member's preferred method of listening to it, such as on on iTunes. Be prepared to get rated there for not playing nice with people's easily offended feelings, and ...preach on!

For further reading of what a blog and a sermon online can do, here's "supercharging sermons with a blog." Interactivity is a key point there.

Please comment below with responses, what you use to record, what settings you've found useful, any compatibility issues, efficient ways to make ministry better.

Cloth Soup

iPod touch for greek and hebrew bible study

Uploading and recordings sermons

Possible topics