Do Pastors Dream of Electric Sheep?

A few weeks ago Pastor Gillespie had a great article on “Automated Audio Recording of Services.”  It’s a great option but all geeky pastors know that not one size fits all, so here’s another option for recording your services (or sermons).

Zoom H2 Handy Recorder

At our church Trinity, Creston IA we lack some of the necessary options for recording as Pr. Gillespie suggests (mainly not enough computers and all in the wrong locations).  Fortunately, technology keeps marching on and portable audio recorders have increased in quality and decreased in price.  Enter the Zoom Handy Recorder H2.  This unit is primarily made for recording musician jam sessions.  The price is relatively low (about $150 at Amazon) and the quality is excellent.  It has many features that you won’t need for worship service (or sermon) recording.  However, its portability gives you the option of recording from any location (i.e. fellowship hall, outside, Sunday School classroom).

Because the unit is made to place in the middle of a jam session, it has front and back microphones for recording in stereo.  I place the unit on the pulpit.  The front microphone pick up everything I say (even when my back is to the microphone while I’m facing the altar)  and the rear microphone the congregation.

Front Mic Records Me

Rear Mic Records the Congregation

The recording is stored directly onto a 1G SD card (included).  An hour service takes about 100MB.  After the service simply pop out the card, insert it into your computer open it with an audio editing program (I suggest Audacity – The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor look for a review of this software here sometime in the future).   Cut out the extra stuff before and after the service (or sermon), add an intro, save it, burn it to a CD or publish it to the web.

1GB SD Card

I currently use this great tool to record my sermons every Sunday (http://wattswhat.podbean.com/).  I have plans of recording bible classes, too.

It’s simple, relatively inexpensive and produces a great quality result.

Rev. Jonathan C. Watt

Automatically recording the audio of your church’s services for sermon podcast creation or distribution to shut-ins is easy enough for even the technophobe. I’ve accomplished this with both PCs and Macs.

First, you will require a number of components:

• PC or Mac (and perhaps Linux). Minimal hardware is needed. A old Pentium or G4 Mac will do fine, as long as it has a decent hard drive and soundcard (PC). It is preferable that this is networked with shared drives so the system can be headless and accessed via Remote Desktop or VNC. Configuring such sharing is outside the realm of this tutorial.
• On the PC end, Total Recorder ($35.95) recording software. I’ve used the AGC [automatic gain control] add-on ($32.95) since the host sound system does not have compression of sound level on its tape output. They also offer a video recording solution, but that will have to wait for another episode. On the Mac end, Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro is the best solution at $32. You may qualify for education or package discounts.
• Automated FTP upload (either via Applescript or http://www.primasoft.com/ftp.htm) if you’d like to have it automatically uploaded to web site. I have used an open source “wput” FTP uploader on PC. Generally, you will want to edit the audio before uploading it to any server. Copyright laws apply. So, I won’t cover this here. Broadcast rights can be tricky too.
• Decent audio editing software is needed to edit the final product. Audacity is by far the most popular and free. On the Mac side, I use Rogue Amoeba’s Fission. They have a package deal and education discounts if you have a school.

Second, run a tape out from the audio system (in have in the past split/multiplied the output so it goes to both tape and computer.) Connect this to the line input on the sound card. Depending on the electrical grounding situation, you may need to use a direct box that transformer isolates your sound system from the PC. Quality matters so try something like the Whirlwind pcDI. Alternatively, make sure everything is on the same AC circuit and ideally in the same outlet block.

Third, configure the software end.

On a PC, configure Total Recorder to automatically record the services (from 9:55 am to 10:50 am). Total Recorder is set to run in the “startup” folder so will be running on restart or on power loss. The BIOS is configured to restart on power loss. By default Total Recorder minimizes to the system tray. It must be running for the automated scheduling to occur. To access the scheduling, select “Scheduler…”

Configure a schedule to record each of the services. I have had Total Recorder record both an MP3 for easy editing in Audacity and a WMA Lossless for archive and CD burning.

The “auto create” filename scheme automatically saves this file with a dated file name and suffix. All ID3 tag data is editable.

On a Mac, things are very similar. Audio Hijack Pro’s scheduling service will run automatically after install and reboot. I have it marked to “open at Logon”anyway (ctrl-click on icon on dock and select options.) Next, configure a recording program for church services:

Then, setup the schedule of recording.

Then configure the recording options. I record straight to AAC for enhanced iTunes podcast. It would be suitable for CD burning in a pinch:

Adjust the tagging. This saves me 10 minutes as it tags the file perfectly, even embedding album art:

Finally, drop in any helpful (and free!) AU plugins to adjust your audio output. I do some slight compression and some significant limiting. These do tax the CPU, so be wary of too many.

You’ve made it! You have an automated recording system making suitable MP3/AAC for editing for podcasting.