The
following instructions will explain how to set up the recording of the
weekly worship service and how to edit the service and create the MP3
versions for the church website.
Creating Recordings
General
- Make sure that the main soundbooth power-switch is turned on before you open any of the mixer software; the computer won't respond correctly if the mixing board isn't powered up.
Recording settings
Note: Service recording is the responsibility of the Sunday-morning sound man; the PreSonus mixer is connected to the Mac Mini (named "Mark") for both recording and universal control (saving mixer settings, remote access, etc.) capabilities.
- Click on the "Record All" button (small square with red circle) close to top left of screen to deselect all channels.
- Scroll down and select Aux 25 + 26 to record by clicking on the Record button (small square with red circle)
- Channels 25+26 = the main mix coming from the mixing board. We can also record individual channels, but that is reserved for special instances, since it takes up mucho hard drive space.
- Click on the Record button in the main control grid (upper left of screen)
- Start recording 15 minutes before service starts (include prelude)
- Also include all of postlude
- Press Stop button in main control grid when done recording
Saving
- First, go to File -> Save Session
- Next, go to Session -> Export Tracks
- NOTE: We still have the exported audio files to Ezekiel (the old soundbooth PC) - accessible by network - so that the people editing sermon audio don't have to change their procedures at all.
- Click on the three-dots button to the right of the Folder field to select folder to save exported file in.
- In the Finder field that appears, click on Ezekiel in the left-hand column under "Shared" computers
- If it says "connected as: soundbooth", proceed to the next step. If it has a button that says "Connect As...", however, click on that, and login in with username soundbooth and the password [get from Jeff Olson or Mike Graff]. You will then be connected.
- Click on the "Recordings" folder that should automatically appear
- Click on the "New Folder" button in the bottom left of the Finder to create a folder. Title it the same as above ("YYYYMMDD_service#"), press "Create", then press "Open".
- Format defaults should be fine (Wave File, resolution 16-bit, sample rate 44.1 kHz)
- Under Options, Session should default to being checked.
- The default filename (at top) should be fine (as long as you've appropriately titled the Session as noted above)
- Press OK. The file will export, and it will pop up in the Finder, showing you that it did it successfully when done. Close that Finder window by clicking on the red button in the upper left.
- Finally, go to File -> Close Session, click Yes to save changes (if prompted), and you will return to the Capture main screen.
NOTE: Once these steps have been completed after the first service, start the process again by clicking on "Create Session" in Capture and repeating all above steps for the second service.
- If there is a problem
with either service, please create a "README.txt" or "README.doc" file
(your preference) with your notes as to the problem, etc. This will be
helpful for deciding which service to use.
Editing Recordings
Connecting
- Use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to Ezekiel, at this address:
int.firstfreechurch.org:3391
Locating
- You'll find the service recordings in D:\Service Recordings\YYYYMMDD_1/Audio Files and YYYYMMDD_2/Audio Files. First service file is found in YYYYMMDD_1 folder, and second service is found in YYYYMMDD_2. Unless instructed otherwise by the recording person (usually via readme.txt or similar note), using the second service recording is recommended (sometimes the "kinks" are worked out of the first service). Usually you want the "Pastor Joel" or similar file, although sometimes you may need to poke around to find the right file.
- Important: do not use "mixdown" files. Use files inside an "Audio Files" subfolder instead. For some reason that we haven't figured out, the mixdown files seem to sometimes have multi-second dropouts in them.
Backup
IMPORTANT: Make a backup of the .wav file before doing any editing!! Leave the backup on the system so that we can revert to it if needed. Once a backup is made, then rename the file as "FEFC_YYMMDD_sermon.wav".
Program
File Information/Metadata
Go to File->Information to get to File Information editor
Album: Month Day, Year Worship Service (e.g., "January 5, 2014 Worship Service")
Artist: "First Free Church - Pastor Joel Sutton" (or "First Free Church - <guest preacher>")
Title: Sermon Title (get from church website if needed)
Copyright: (use copyright text from file in d:\service recordings), or here:
Date Created: Year of service only (e.g., 2014) (note: this maps to the ID3v2 "Year" tag, so we only want to put the year in here, not the full date)
URL:
http://www.firstfreechurch.org/sermons
Trimming
- Find the beginning of the sermon and trim everything prior. If there is a pastoral prayer before the sermon, do not include that.
- Find the end of the sermon and trim everything following. If there is a closing prayer, include that.
Adjusting volume
Increasing the volume of the sermon, since it's often too quiet.
Be sure to make sure that the entire wav file is selected before doing these steps ("Sel All" button)
- Effect -> Volume -> Maximize Volume -> Presets -> Full Dynamic Range -> OK
- If there are a few minor sharp peaks, you may need to use Effects -> Volume -> Change Volume, and possibly increase the volume (try Preset -> Double).
Save
- Save the wav file. This saves all the file information and the volume adjustments to the original wav file.
Saving for Website
Save an MP3 version of the sermon recording for the church website.
The MP3 encoder currently in use by Goldwave is LAME v3.97 (C:\Program Files\GoldWave\lame_enc.dll).
- Open the sermon recording (FEFC_YYYYMMDD_sermon.wav).
- File->Save Copy
- File name: FEFC_YYYYMMDD_sermon (e.g., FEFC_20021222_sermon)
- Save as Type: MPEG Audio (*.mp3)
- Attributes: Layer-3, 44100 Hz, 64 kbps, mono
- Click Save
Uploading to website
- Log into https://cpmdb1.com/admin with your
account (contact Jeff Olson if you don't remember it)
- Go to
Publish
- Go to
Sermons
- Select the sermon
from the list by clicking on the title
- Under Sermon Media on
the right, click Upload Media. Select the sermon .mp3 file and upload it.
- Make sure that the
uploaded .mp3 file is selected under "Choose Audio".
- Check the two boxes under "Share This Sermon" to publish the sermon to our church Facebook page and Twitter feed.
- When clicking the Facebook checkbox you also have to click the box next to "First Evangelical Free Church - Minneapolis" that pops up.
- Click Publish
Now.
Give yourself a high-five!
Troubleshooting
No sound when connecting remotely
If you are connecting to Ezekiel remotely using Remote Desktop Connection,
sometimes you may get an error message when trying to play the sound
files. Usually the error message will be something like "there are no
drivers installed on your system".
I've
looked into it on Microsoft's support site and it's a known problem
with Windows, specifically with Remote Desktop Connection.
The
only workaround is to reboot the remote machine. To do that remotely,
the easiest way is to go to the Start Menu and then Windows Security
(or use the keystroke Ctrl-Alt-End, which is the Remote Desktop variant
of Ctrl-Alt-Del). From there, click the Shutdown button and make sure
you choose Restart.
I
usually try to check to make sure no one has any open files on Ezekiel
before rebooting. To do that, go to Computer Management (right click on
My Computer, and choose Manage); then go to Shared Folders->Open
Files. If there are no open files, then there should not be a problem
with rebooting.
Choppy Playback in Goldwave
If you are
experiencing choppy playback in Goldwave over a remote connection, you
can adjust the buffer. To do that, follow these steps:
Creating CD
Lydia does the next step, which is to create a CD master. You can go to
Creating Worship Service CDs to see what the process is, if you're curious.
Compressing Old Files
To save space, the following command can be run periodically on Ezekiel to compress the .wav files to .flac:
:: Find and FLAC compress all Wav files in the service recordings folder that are more than 60 days old
c:\cygwin\bin\find.exe "d:\Service Recordings" -name "*.wav" -mtime +60 -exec flac -4 --delete-input-file -V {} ;
Backups
Backups of the service recordings are made automatically by a scheduled task running on Luke, the office PC. It runs under the 'jolson' account. The task runs Synctoy and echoes any new or changed files to the external backup drive attached to Luke. It runs weekly on Friday nights.
