Ripping Your Audio File (Mac)
Our tutorials are geared towards encoding in iTunes, Apple's free music player (download it at http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ if you don't already have it installed). You can actually use any software you want, but iTunes is free and by far the most popular software for compressing and encoding audio, listening to music, and for podcasting (says me).
These instructions are for Mac users. If you use a PC running Microsoft Windows, check out these instructions instead.
1. Set up iTunes for importing sermon audio
In iTunes, go to the iTunes menu and select Preferences…
In the Preferences dialog box, click the Advanced icon in the toolbar, then the Importing tab.
On the Importing tab, in the On CD Insert pop-up menu, choose how you would like iTunes to respond when you insert a disc. We recommend Import CD and Eject because it is easy. Other choices we suggest are Ask to import CD and Import CD. We will explain importing in a moment.
Select AAC Encoder in the Import Using pop-up menu. Then select Custom... in the Setting pop-up menu. This will bring up the AAC Encoder dialog box.
- In the AAC Encoder dialog box, select 48 kbps in the Stereo bit Rate pop-up menu.
- Select Auto in the Sample Rate pop-up menu.
- Select Mono in the Channels pop-up menu.
- Do not check the Use Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR) checkbox.
- Check the Optimize for voice checkbox.
- Click OK.
- Click OK again.
Now you are set to import sermon audio!
If you prefer, you can choose the MP3 Encoder in the Import Using pop-up menu. MP3 files are slightly larger and don't sound quite as good as AAC files, but are playable on a wider variety of portable music players.
If you choose MP3, use the same settings as for AAC, with the following exceptions:
- Check the Smart Encoding Adjustments checkbox.
- Check the Filter Frequencies Below 10 Hz checkbox.
2. Import your audio file into iTunes
If your audio file is already on your computer, you can simply drag and drop the file on to the Music Library icon.
If you have a CD with your audio sermon on it, open iTunes and insert the CD into the CD drive on your computer. iTunes will respond to a new disc according to the settings you chose in Step 1. If you chose one of our recommended settings, it will either automatically import the disc or ask you if you would like to import the disc.
When iTunes is done "ripping" (importing) the disc, you should hear a little chime.
iTunes may try to compare the contents of the disk with a list of known albums on the Internet (the CDDB). Occasionally it thinks it found a match and will ask if it can name the tracks on the new disk. Since this is an original, one-of-a-kind recording, don't let it rename anything. It will confuse you later.
There is also a setting in the importing tab that controls whether or not the disc plays as it copies. I recommend you not play the track as it imports. It steals processing power and could cause errors in the imported music.
3. Edit the song information (Title, Album, Artist, etc)
Find the song you just imported, right-click (click the right mouse button) over it, or if you don't have a two-button mouse, hold the CTRL key and click, then select Get Info.
...
Now select the Info tab and fill in the appropriate fields. This is creating something called the id3 tag, which is stored inside the file and is NOT the file name you see displayed on your computer when you look at it in a folder.
HINTS:
If you want to keep all the sermons for this church in one folder on your computer, then use the church name for the artist and put the preachers name in the Album.
Since the file name is different than the ID3 tag that stores info on the song title, album, etc, it is a good idea to decide on a naming scheme for the file name - and stick with it. One example that would alphabetize properly is "2006-12-05_First_Christian_Church.AAC"