This are the instructions for how to transfer a recorded sermon to the church website server, ready for it to be published. (Some sections of these instructions are not needed now that the recording is done by the sound desk operators, not the visual operators.)
1. After the evening service finishes, the sound desk operators will have 'finalised' a CD with the sermons from the St.Matthew's services that day. The CD will probably have a number of tracks which aren't sermons (such as the readings and some hymns), and it might be that each sermon is split over a number of individual files. When you have the CD in the PC's CD reader, open the Audiograbber program. It will list the different tracks on the CD, and you can use the play controls at the bottom of the window to play the tracks to work out what they are.
2. When you have worked out which are the sermon files, untick all the other tracks and then press the 'Grab' button. It saves the files in MP3 format in the E:\DATA\SermonAudio directory (eg, 'track3.mp3'). Navigate to that directory and change the names of the files to follow this date pattern 'YYYY-MM-DD-[ap]m.mp3' (eg, '2005-02-06-am.mp3').
3. If a sermon is split over a number of files, then more work is needed before you can continue with this process. (For the technically minded, this involves using the Audacity program to stitch the files back together. If you don't know how, don't try; instead, tell Jonathan who'll sort it out.)
4. Open the SyncBack program. Select the only line on the display, and then press the 'Run' button at the bottom ('4' in the third picture). This then copies (via FTP) the created MP3 file to the webserver, and will take 5-10 minutes per sermon.
5. When SyncBack has finished running, it should automatically popup a web page with a form for you to fill in the details of the sermons, ready for the published list to be updated.
6. If nothing appears, please open Sermon Maintenance. When asked, the username is 'operator' and the password is the same one as for the video PC itself.
7a. If you uploaded a single sermon with the filename adhering to the naming convention above, you should see a page titled "Add Details For A New Sermon" (see picture below). This has a number of fields that need filling in, though it guesses which date the sermon is for, from the title of the sermon file that's been uploaded. When you're ready, press the Submit button.
7b. If you uploaded more than one sermon, or the filenames did not match the convention, you should see a section titled "Include Recently Uploaded Sermons" that lists all the uploaded files (see picture below). It highlights any sermon files which have invalid filenames, and provides an easy-to-use renaming facility. When you are happy with the filenames, pick the file that you want to add the details for, and then press the Add button. This then takes you to the same screen as in 11a. above. Once you have completed the details for one file, you will return to this screen to pick the next one.
8. Use the link to bring up the list of recorded sermons. If the one(s) you've uploaded are now showing correctly, brilliant! If something is wrong with it, please use the Sermon Maintenance to correct the details or filename appropriately. This is also where sermons should be removed when space is getting tight. If you can't get it to work as you expect, please let Jonathan or Philip know.
9. Finally, please run the 'run_after_syncback.bat' script in the E:\DATA\SermonAudio directory. This moves the audio files that we have finished with to archive directories. There they won't get in the way of future operations.
Job done for this week - thanks!
Last Updated: 31/08/2005