Grace Reformed Baptist Church

How to create online sermons

Capturing the Audio

If you used the first method previously mentioned (ripping audio from a CD), then you can skip to the "Creating a RealAudio File" section. Once a programs like Exact Audio Copy pulls the audio from the CD and saves it as a WAV file, you're ready to start encoding the file into RealAudio and/or MP3 format.

If you're using one of the other methods, read on:

1. Connect the audio source to your computer. Whether you're recording a sermon live onto your computer or extracting the audio from a cassette, you'll need to hook up the audio source to your PC's sound card.

   Here's what a typical soundcard looks like:

   

   Connect your audio source to the Line Input or Line-In jack on your soundcard. It will often be the port that's colored blue, or that is marked by one of these symbols:

   

2. Prepare Windows for recording:
   1. In the bottom-right corner of your screen, double click the speaker icon. It may either look like or
   2. In the "Volume Control" window, click the "Options" menu, then click "Properties".
   3. In the "Adjust volume for", set the mode to "Recording" (instead of "Playback"). Then click "OK".

   4. You should now see a window labeled "Recording Control" that looks something like this:

      

   5. Put a check in the box labeled "Line In" (or something similar).
   6. The vertical slider in the "Line In" section will control the recording level of the sound card. It's somewhat trial-and-error to find the right setting for it. When you get to the part of this tutorial dealing with recording sound, you may find that the input is too loud or too quiet. If so, return to this section and adjust the vertical slider up and down until you get a good signal.
   7. When you're done, click the icon in the top-right corner of the "Recording Control" window to close it.
3. Record the audio. The techniques you use here will vary based on the audio software you're using. In this tutorial, we'll use Audacity.

   1. Start Audacity. If this is the first time you've used it, we'll need to setup our recording preferences first. Click the "Edit" menu, then click "Preferences".

      Under the "Audio I/O" tab, set the Channels to "1 (Mono)". (You can record in 2 channels (stereo) if you prefer, but in this tutorial, we'll be producing mono RealAudio and MP3 files anyway, so we can save space by recording in mono to begin with.)

      

      Click the "OK" button to return to the main Audacity screen.

      Make sure the input source box shows "Line In" (or something similar), then click the red "Record" button. (Audacity includes a slider to control the recording input level directly, so you won't have to return to the Windows "Recording Control" tool to make adjustments.)

      

   2. Once Audacity has begun recording, start the audio source (i.e. begin playing your sermon cassette or switch on the direct feed from your sound equipment). You will see a waveform within Audacity indicating that it is receiving input.

      
   3. When you have finished recording your entire sermon, click the "Stop" button. You are now ready to save your sermon file, although if you like, you can edit it with Audacity first. (Instructions on how to do that are beyond the scope of this tutorial, but you can use Audacity to trim the extraneous audio off the front and back of your sermon file, normalize the audio, etc.)