Church Home Page
[ Location: Home | Resources | Articles | General Articles ]
articles

Back

Creating MP3 Sermons

by Michael Atkinson. August 2005

We are often asked if we are able to provide our online sermons in MP3 format. Because an MP3 sermon is about 10 mb, this would mean quite a big download for users, but would also mean that we would have to find an extra 20 mb each week to host the sermons. This article was written to give help and advice on changing the RealAudio sermons that we produce into MP3 format.

Downloading the sermons

Vist the sermons section of the website and download the appropriate sermons by clicking on the download icon. You need to save the sermons in a folder with a memorable name.

Once you have saved all the sermons you want to put on your CD, you will need to convert them into the MP3 format. To do this you will need to create an empty directory to put all the converted sermons into (my suggestion is a subdirectory of where they were saved in the first place called "MP3 versions").You may need a program to convert them with.

Converting the Sermons to MP3

Switch

Switch which is free and found at www.nch.com.au/switch/ is quick to download (312 KB) and easy to use. Click "Download Switch Free!" and save the setup program.

You need to run the setup program to install Switch and a shortcut will then reside on your desktop or in the start menu. Open up Switch

There are 4 steps to converting files:

Switch
  1. Add the files you want to convert. Click on Add and select the files from the directory you saved them in
  2. Tell Switch where to put the converted files (select the folder you created earlier by clicking on the "...")
  3. Make sure that it is going to convert the files to the MP3 format
  4. Click convert

Burning the MP3 files to a CD

Now that the files are converted you need to burn them on to a CD. Windows Media Player will do this for you.

First of all you need to add the newly created MP3 files to the Media Gallery by clicking on "Media Library" then "Add" and then "Add folder..."Select the folder containing the MP3 files to add to the library NOT the folder with the originals.

  1. Right click on My Playlists and click on New...
  2. Then click on Contributing Artist and Select the "Unknown Artist" Tab. Double click on the sermons you want to add to your playlist
  3. Finally Click on "New Playlist" and "Save Playlist as..." and give your playlist a name

To make a CD insert a blank CD into the CD drive:

  1. Click on "Burn"
  2. Select the Playlist that you want to copy
  3. To copy to a CD make sure that "CD Drive (HighMAT)" is selected
  4. Click on "Start Burn" To copy sermons to an MP3 player you should follow the same instructions in the "Sync" section pressing "Start Sync" when ready to copy