The Ministry of Helps

1Co 12:28 And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers,
after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

My goal here is hoping you'll catch a vision of a unique niche service you could develop in helping any ministry while working at home on your computer in your spare time.

Helping in the ministry is not all about being center stage in preaching and teaching leading worship. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes with needed helpers to make it all happen more smoothly.

In 2004 Glen Miller my pastor and founder of Lake Hamilton Bible Camp saw the need to stop recording on cassette and begin computer recording on CD.

I did some research myself to see just what was needed in helping to make this possible for him. I thought I was just going to be learning this and show my boss how he could continue recording and editing a better way. But no, this became my new job. This retired Glen from the over 40 years of audio recording, and gave him a new freedom to fellowship more with others during our camp meetings as well as more freedom to teach the Bible. I knew that if I was do this, it would be something I would need to be faithful to keep doing. Glen knew me and trusted me too always encouraging me like any good pastor would. I started working for him 3 days out of high school in California in 1974 before moving here to Hot Springs in 1974 to help start this ministry. I've found my place early on working in the background helping where ever I'm needed. And you can learn to be a blessing too.

Taking a tape recorder to play into a computer is not hard. It all done in real time. This means if a cassette is 90 minutes, it takes 90 minutes to have the computer record from the cassette player. Got to be there to turn the tape over too. Time consuming, but it's DC software that is makes cleaning up all those audio problems in a recordings so amazing. Like background noise like, hiss, microphone pops, cracklings, muffled sounding audio, very low, or too high volume. Some of the early camp meetings we had here in the early 1970's and 1980's had some poor audio quality, because of line noise in his old mics. There was HUM in recordings. After much research on comparing software online I found the company Tracertek the makers of "Diamond Cut" software to be the best for our needs. Really it's not made for easy editing of cutting out gaps in the audio message. DC is mainly used to live record a service, and used to record from a cassette being played into the computer. It's greatness is later to filter out every conceivable audio problem. There are hundreds of filters I have yet to use. But I use several of them. I've been able to restore most of these recordings even better then the original cassette master, or reel to reel tape masters. I use Sony Sound Forge the home edition to do all my normal editing.

While many ministries, big or small, might still be recording their services on audio cassette, most have moved on to CD recordings, or just DVD Video (which still has a need for audio enhancement).

Every pastor has probably been recording on cassette for years and no doubt has a big box of masters from recordings during the week, and Sunday morning messages. Unless someone wanted a copy of any of those messages they just ended up in a box. That is what Glen called, "treasures on tape."

There is a big need in converting all those treasures on cassette to CD masters. Then catalog them, write synopsis of the message. Start a website, make CD's available for sale to help support the ministry online. Transcribe some audio messages into booklet form. Many of the camps booklets here are taken directly from transcribing the cassettes word for word. Then edit it, and print them in house to sell or give away. Putting MP3 audio messages for listeners all over the world to hear is a great help. The list goes on in what can be done with these old anointed cassettes just sitting in a box some where collecting dust. Someone needs to take the time and convert them to CD masters.

This work is not hard. If you're the type that works well by yourself. You could be a great help to your pastor in making him the best he could be in promoting the ministry. All you have to do is ask him if you could help. Willing helpers is hard to find in ministry.

You probably bought some audio CD's from other ministries that sounded low or just need some tweaking. With your help those messages could sound so much better. If you love to work alone, this job could get you hired. To me, I rather do this, then stand behind a microphone any day. I don't see myself preaching, I can share sometimes when I help take the offering here, but rather just encourage and get behind someone who's really called to minister publicly.

You don't need the latest computer to transfer cassettes to CD. They can be easily fixed on a basic Pentium 4 computer. I'm still using one of those down here in the camps office. You can also pick these up real cheap as off lease, used or refurbished. Maybe you have a friend that has an older one in their closet their no longer using that might help get you started.

You don't need the latest technology to start for just transferring cassettes and editing and saving files. But if you have a multi core CPU you'll just get your work done so much faster when running these software filters to fix all these audio problems.

Originally my old Pentium 4 computer did not have a good internal sound board for recording purposes. None really do even to date. I needed a professional sound card. You can find them at: tracertek.com which is also the makers of my filter software called, "Diamond Cut". I used that to audio record from the cassette. Then save the *.wav file in stereo to make CD copies unless I convert it and upload it to our website in mp3 format.

For posting audio files on your website. You can conserve space by saving them in (mono) single track. The file size will become 7 to 10 megs or even less. Depends on the compression format you use, and in choosing Apple mp3, or WMA (Windows Media Audio). Say you have a 50 meg website, you might list 4-5 audio files and still have enough room for pages and small images. Depends on audio time too. I like to put out whole messages especially any ministry toward the end that would help someone give their life to the Lord is a great need.

If your ministry has a website you could save your audio files as Windows Media 11 to 20,000 kbps, this is 16 bit, mono. The quality is pretty good, but it also could sound better quality in mp3 format which will make a little bigger file size.

If you only have a 10 meg website you could have 3 to 4 *.WMA audio files to rotate each week in .WMA which can be a tighter compression but is clear enough for anyone wanting to listen online. The file size will only be around 3-5 megabytes. Makes a big difference if you only have smaller size website. You don't want the compression to tight or you'll lose all tone in speech, and make it even harder to understand online. Diamond Cut software can also help clean it up to make it sound better too. But that's extra work, and if you just stay at Windows Media 11 to 20,000 kbps, this is 16 bit, mono you should not have much problem with just two track speech.

While *.mp3 is a slightly bigger file size then *.wma. Depending on recording time it could be 7-10 megs for mp3, but it becomes more compatible with iPad, iPhone and other smart devices instead of just windows based systems. Apple mp3 sounds better in my opinion.

If you take the time and take those gaps out it will make your file size even smaller. Try and get as much noise out your original *.WAV file because compressing this tight is going to magnify any background noise too. But you also have to watch out if some files have too much background noise sometimes you can also loose some tone in speech, so then I have to use a warming filter in DC8

As of January 2012 a began converting and recompiling all my online audio files to *.mp3 This is the setting Sony Sound Forge recommends for compressing voice audio for podcasts. i.e.: 16 Kbps, 11,025 Hz, 16 Bit, Mono, MP3. Also in that same format, you can save it in two track stereo. It's only a tiny bit bigger. I'm using Sony Sound Forge Version 10 Home Edition. There are tons of free Shareware files you can try. I just personally like Sony Sound Forge home edition. It's only $69.00.

In January we also bought an extra full gig of web space. I've wanted to be able to share at least a 100 full messages to rotate each month. There are now many scores of full messages in our free audio directory

When I started this CD project late 2004 for Glen Miller my Pastor of Lake Hamilton Bible Camp, All I had myself was a 5 year old Pentium 2. I had a friend who upgraded his, so he gave me his old Pentium 3 running Windows 2000. But he said the hard drive was starting to go bad, as sometimes it would not boot. There is always warning signs. This was all I needed to launch me and it lasted a few months before it crashed. When you only have lemons to work with, then keep making lemonade till you can afford something better.

I then bought a Pentium 4 running XP in an e-Machine. Gateway had bought them out by then. They used to have power supply issues. Not anymore. Well that system lasted me a good 3 years before that hard drive crashed. But the power supply never did die. Trust me, you got to have a weekly backup plan for all your hard drive data.

Next time I bought me a basic Dell Core2Duo 2.93 GHz for home use. (Under $500) I still have this one at home. Wow that doubled my speed, and saving these giant *.wav files took less then a minute instead of 2 or more minutes. This home computer is running under Windows Vista. I really liked XP better as it don't have hardware and some software compatibility issues like Vista does.

In October 2011 I wanted a new audio computer to work full time at the camps office instead of at home. Sometimes if you want to help your pastor you might have to pay for a computer yourself to do the job. I needed mine at home too. I still wanted this new computer for also playing in tapes, converting to CD, and also working on the camps website, and posting FREE audio files each month. But also thinking of helping with the video editing too. That needs a lot of power. (Richard Tate here is doing this for us after a camp meeting. Rhonda who worked here did it before him and Patti did it before that. Maybe I'll be learning to do it too)

This new machine I bought was a custom built system from www.tracertek.com They are also the makers of Diamond Cut (DC8) software. I have DC version 6 and 7 on different workstations at the camp. DC-8 is a major update, so I needed to buy another full version for a new machine. I use it really for filtering all my audio files. It's really not made for editing like Sony Sound forge, and SF can work in all kinds of file formats.

My 2012 configuration is as follows: AMD 1100 Turbo 6 core processor. This is my first AMD. I've always owned INTEL CPU's. But this one is just fine and runs even cooler. Not even a hint of warm air out the side and back. I wanted 16 gig of RAM, M-Audio 2496 64 bit audio card. Their new Diamond Cut v8 software pre installed. I use it for recording, but it's power is really in filtering, and fixing every conceivable audio problem known. This software is easy to use once you read the basics of how to filter an audio file. I read the first 3 chapters and I was off fixing old tapes like they should have been recorded. But I've found a few that got recorded way too high of volume that sounded splattered. My old DC 7 and new 8 helped better, but still there might be something in this massive manual that still could help them even better. Maybe with little more experience. :-)

I have always bought from tracertek. We usually bought their Juli@ sound cards. But in ordering my own computer, Tracertek said the Juli@ card was presently having problems in 64 bit mode. So taking their word for it, I steered into buying their M-Audio Audiophile 2496 instead. This new system is running under Windows 7 Professional. I was also little nervous in trying a whole new operating system I had no experience with. But wow it's so much better and really it reminds me a lot in the simple ways of XP-PRO. So smooth. I really like it. It's also got 11 USB's, plus Firewire. Some USB 3.0 besides many USB 2.0. That's great for these new faster external hard drives. I bought both a CD/DVD rewritable as well as a Bluray rewritable too. The Bluray rewritables also will burn CD's and DVD's too, but buying both allows for burning two CD's at once. I'm thinking if I took my machine to record somewhere it could double as a quick two drive duplicator in the field. One drive will also will burn a title on the CD itself. This computers video card can even run two monitors at once. It has VGA, DVI-D and a HDMI port too. One is really all you need but for video editing one or two can also be used. I keep computers till they die, so I'm hoping it will last longer being the hard drive is an SSD drive. My C: drive is just for programs. But it's one of those electronic SSD Drives non has no moving parts. Maybe this type hard drive will be more reliable then the others.

While I record on that lightning fast hard drive I save my files on it's D-drive which is a single 1,000 gig hard drive. They had options for a bigger drives for only $69.00 more. But for me it's cheaper to buy 1,000 gig back-up hard drives. If my memory serves me right I've been though 8 hard drive crashes. But that's because I bought my first PC in 1984. Remember DOS 2.0? That's before Windows! Hard drive's no mater what the brand eventually fail. So you need to plan for this. Put all your programs you bought in a box is a safe place and mark on each box the name of the computer it comes from. So if the hard drive crashes and your forced to by a new computer, then you got the program to quickly reinstall. If you bought them as just a download. Make a file folder for the registration key. Contact the company you bought it from. They will help you, they just need to verify who you are.

Since this document is really a personal history, I want to mention that in January 2013 I recently upgraded my wife Patti's home computer. This system would also make a really wonderful church audio/video workstation. Her old one was just a Pentium 4 AMD, and has never given her any trouble, even now. But in our fun times together, we both like Digital SLR photography and she's a media artist at work, so wanted her to have a work station for not only picture editing, but she wants to put together stories in fixing our pictures, printing on our Epson Photo printer. And being able to work with our home video files too.

I bought her Corel Paint Shop Pro photo software which was really slow on the old computer. She was getting by and not complaining, but I knew better. So I secretly got her one of tracertek's DOUBLE DOUBLE computers, I just made her second drive two terabytes instead of what their showing. If you compare prices with DELL XPS, or the top dog of HP. Your not going to buy a system with 32 gigs of RAM for this price. She was surprised, but she deserves it. I'm not getting any commission linking you to them. I just love doing business with them, and have really helped the campground with several version of DC software. We been using them everyday since 2004.

I always backup my hard drive files to an external Western Digital My Book hard drive. Those seem to be a little more reliable. Not saying one never died. I also have a mini Western Digital Passport 60 gig we bought in 2004. Then again in January 2012 I bought a 750 Gig Toshiba mini hard drive. They keep growing in size and selling for less money. Their small like the WD Passport, but this one is now USB 3.0 as well as backward compatible to USB 2.0. This new USB3.0 speed is very noticeably faster in file transfer speed. If your saving in uncompressed WAV files as masters. It does take time to copy these giant 500 to 700 meg files to an external backup drive. So if your computer has USB 3.0 buy an external drive and take advantage of it.

Internal computer drives should never be used for permanent solution of any sole file storage. While a raid system would be great, they cost a hundreds of dollars. And those single one Terabyte external drives now days are less then $100.00. That's cheaper to replace. They won't last forever so plan on always upgrading ever couple years BEFORE something happens.

I make two or more mirror copies of all my storage files. I recommend replacing those back up external drives every 2 years. Even if they don't die. The key here is the first sign that you feel their not connecting very fast. That's your warning sign.

All hard drives crash. I already had one external Terabyte Western Digital MyBook that died. It's symptom was that it was taking several minutes to boot plugging into the computer. But thankfully I had another drive just like it which is a mirror copy. So just made another mirror copy again. I started before going to bed, and by the next morning it's usually done. NOTE: If you're not using them, ALWAYS unplug them ASAP so they will last longer.

Do you have a computer now that seems very slow. Defragging is not helping it, and you're keeping it up to date with virus your program. It's possible your computer's hard drive is on the way out. If you want to save it, you got to act fast. We recently had one of the camps networked computers die. I took the case off, and unpluged the hard drive while the computer was running. Then plugged it back in. And pulled the main power plug in the back. Then plugged it back in ans started it. It booted up fine. So rebooted it again and it worked fine. So I shut it down, and took the computer to "Best Buy" and asked the tech guys if they would "CLONE" the hard drive to a brand new hard drive. They did and that worked! This system is so needed here. It's running XP-PRO with a three office work stations all net worked, plus this machine has special drivers to run our media printers to print our magazine. I wanted to save this hard drive if possible. Well, it's like a new computer now. Cost was less then $300.00 for that service including a new hard drive.

I can't stress enough the need to have an external hard drive backup plan. I explained this my on going history here just to show you that internal computer hard drives are like time bombs. It would be awful to lose my whole life of cassette recordings, plus the 8 camp meetings I computer record each year starting with winter camp 2004 For me this is terabytes of audio data files.

I don't even store my back up drives in the same building. If you got a home basement, gun vault or even a large fire proof safe that's far better. Anything to protect it from fire or severe weather. I'm just trying to have common sense. Because accidents are never planned. But you should consider planning for weather events just in case.

If you have not even backed up your family pictures on your computer, you better go do that ASAP. Is there any data in your computer right now that you don't mine losing? Enough said.

I usually just buy tower desktop computers because of the expansion slots. But maybe you have a laptop where you can't install a physical sound card into your computer. You can also buy a USB audio powered device too.

You need software to record and then a fast way to quickly edit your *.WAV file.

Tracertek software called "Diamond Cut" is really made for just recording in from a cassette, player, then quickly filtering the WAV file only.

For my main editing work I use, "Sony Sound Forge" the home edition. It retails for $69. Mine is now version 10. But I've also owned older versions of 9, 8, and even version 7 at the time met my needs. However version 8 and up will allow you to save WAV files into MP3 format, and version 7 did not. There are a lot of excess inventory older versions still available. While still new programs their just priced down far less then what it normally cost brand new.

I personally have bought my last two full versions on eBay. If you do buy on eBay, just make sure the program says it's a NEW unopened, and it's the FULL version. NOT an upgrade!

When buying from eBay, make sure it's in the country you live it. If they offer free shipping take advantage of that. Always look at a sellers feedback before buying. If they got bad feedback, click and read it. It might be nothing, or something that could be a warning to you. I was an eBay seller here for the campground too. Another way to help raise money for your pastor too.

How To Record

To transfer a cassette into the computer, we bought those inexpensive Radio Shack cassette decks. About $35.00. You might consider buying an extended warranty. The tape head won't wear out in a year, but pressing the button keys hundreds of times might. Update: I replaced a player in 2012. The head did wear out, and the clue was the volume was so much lower. While I had bought an additional warranty for that player, it died in 3 years instead of the two. So this time didn't bother with buying a extended warranty for it.

I plug my 1/4" patch cord I bought from Radio Shack into the earphone jack on the cassette player and the other end has two plugs that hook up to the left and right jacks on the back of the computers sound card. I got that at radio shack too. Test your cassette out first before recording into the computer and adjust for lower volume. Record a little on you computer and stop and look at it. A low volume recording is BETTER then to high of volume that could cause clipping or even worse splattering. That even can destroy the audio recording to where you'll have to start over. Make the meters to show about 1/3 the volume coming in on the computer. Better to keep it lower normal, because some speakers scream later and that needs to be monitored. You can also just test the cassette and fast forward it and play it in places, turn it over and do the same to check it. You'll learn what works best for you. Then you can write your own help file. Trust me, I wrote this because people will ask how to do this in their church when we have camp meetings. So writing this helps me to gather my thoughts to try an explain it.

Ok, make sure your recording software is set to 44,100 Hz, 16 Bit Stereo. Press record on your software, and then press play on your cassette recorder.

Remember you have to be there to turn the tape over when it's time unless your cassette deck has auto-reverse. No need to stop recording, unless you want to save side one as a separate file name and then copy/paste side two's file to the end of side one. For me it's easier to just make it all one file and later after I've saved it to go back and edit out with Sony Sound Forge the long gap between side one and side two.

After you save your *.WAV file, look at your file at 1:1,024 magnification. The audio should be within the fixed audio lines on screen. If higher run the normalize feature to 4-5 DB. I used to do it at 6DB but I make it to show it a little lower higher. Everyone speaks either too soft, or too loud, so it might take you an hour to go through the whole file raising volume in places, and normalizing screaming volume above the lines. Sometimes this is a tedious job, depends on the speaking habits of a person. Just try an make the minister sound the best they could be. You have full control over that. So it's up to you.

Transferring a cassette into the computer is done in real time. So if you have a 90 minute tape, it's going to take 90 minutes to play it all in. Then, save it to a *.WAV file and start editing it with Sony Sound Forge. When I say edit it, I start the message when the speaker starts to teach. I don't put any of the worship service on the front, unless some told me there was a "Word of the Lord" to the body, then yes, I'll try and make room for that, then start the speaker.

What I meant really about edit it is editing out the gaps over about 1 second long close them up a little, but don't make it sound to fast audio wise. Normal special for your speaker. My pastor said uh uh to much. I need time, so fixed him to sound better. NOTE: You can't get 90 minutes of recording to fit it on an 80 minute CD without taking out those gaps. Gaps occur where the speaker pauses for more than 1 second. Example: they might say, “turn to so and so scripture,” and then wait several seconds for the people to find the verse. Taking out those long gaps really helps those listening to an audio CD. Why make people wait 10 second or more before the speaker starts up again? You need to collect up those seconds of time to be able to burn it on to a single CD. You got to think about saving material costs too. We charge $4.00 a CD, and if it's becomes and A+B (two CD's of one service) then we charge $6.00 for a set. But if you take out those gaps, most of the time you can get the whole message on one CD.

Next, you need to filter your file. When transferring from cassette to your computer, there is always going to be some hiss between the speaking. Not because of the transfer, but usually because of the cassette. Especially if it's just a copy of the original master. It's best to transfer from an original master, but that might not be always available to you. Ministers who came to me asking me to help them with a few transfers never brought me the original master, but it was usually a copy.

Cassette duplicators help to raise the volume in copies made, so if there is any background noise in the master it's also raised even more in the copy. DC8 will take all this out in their continuous noise filter. It's really amazing and does it a huge file in about a minute.

In viewing your audio file you'll notice that there is a thin line between the speaking. The line might appear to look darker, thick or spotty. That indicates noise in the audio. Hiss filters are really not the best for taking everything out for noise reduction. I have upgraded to their new DC8. Wow what an update this is. This program was good before, not it's better. They got an updated continuous noise filter and much more.

DC8 can be ordered from www.Tracertek.com. They have a free software demo to download. The demo allows only about 10 minutes of recording to just try the program out. This program will be able to fix ANY audio problems. While the full version manual is like 400 pages, all I did was read the first three chapters and I was out of the gate producing quality masters. The manual is now in the program, but you can still order a physical manual too. I like the printed manual as it's nice to sit and read. This work is not hard. You will be amazed and excited.

The "continuous noise" filter and ANY of their filters works like this: highlight a half second of the audo to sample the noise. Turn your computer speakers up and listen. Preview the noise, and then check the box to make it compare what your original sounds like and what DC8 can produce for you. If you love that. Just double click on the whole file and run this filter. DC8 then automatic makes a destination file copy. Now you have two saved files. The original one and also the new filtered file at the same time on your screen. But later if you don't like it, you always have the original to go back to also.

For microphone pops run DC8 Ezclean filter. It's a labor of love to take time and make the master as perfect as possible. This is not about how fast you can do it. However you will get your steps down after just a few cassette transfers.

I have a saying. "Choose a job you love, never work another day". When it's something you love to do, then you don't mine putting in the extra hours. Many hobbies can even turn into a part or full time business. If I was not working here, I know I could make this a business too. I've had business services before. So if you don't have a pastor, then just by sending a form letter out to pastors in the area and pray and see if you get work that way. The only one stopping you, is YOU!

But I got an endless job here. And I know this is where I'm called to work. I want to be found faithful. This is such a big need, so I want to teach others to help their pastors too.

There is over 2,200 cassette masters in this library and while I've played in hundreds since I started this in 2004 I got lots more to do. Plus there is over 1,500 reel to reels of my pastors life work in those years when he traveled with the Full Gospel Business Mans Fellowship International and recorded those regional conventions form 1965 to 1976. These are the beginnings of Derek Prince, Don Basham, Bob Mumford, Chuck Flynn, and to so many more I could list. These are real treasures on tape all worth taking the time to transfer to CD.

I'm only using just a few of these great filters, but from time to time I run into a different audio problem. Like the echo effect when a minister is speaking in a great hall, or convention. The DC8 “Ping Pong” filter takes the echo out in speech. Got a file that sounds muffled? Click on the DC8 10 channel graphic equalizer and sample a few seconds of audio. Choose the filter for raising Treble. All muffled sound will now sound so nice and clear. DC8 also has a 20 channel graphic equalizer for enhancing your music too. Wireless microphones have a problem with the speech sounding too sharp. Use a warming a filter to make it sound better. There are hundreds of filters in DC8.

Want a better way to transcribe an audio message to make a booklet? With DC8 you can run "Stretch & Squish". It's a speed change filter. Its primary purpose is for Forensics applications in which a spoken word recording needs to be slowed down for transcription to the written word. ....Just a little hint after writing this. When we started writing books for others, I.E. Earline Moody, Jack Harris, etc. These we're originally just audio tapes that we transcribed.

Lots of folks don't know how to write a book, but if they can speak and don't repeat themselves then this can be the beginning of a booklet. Printing a big book can be very expensive. How about making just chapters into little booklets instead. You can save a lot more money just printing your books in your home. All you need is a laser printer that does duplex printing (double sided printing) and Microsoft Publisher. Now you can just print as many copies as you need. You can pick up a hand operated saddle stapler to put three staples in the center. Now for web publishing your book. You can buy e-book authoring software. I'm looking now at a ebook maker for the Apple iPad 2. This is another way to get media out to the masses. To be able to download a whole booklet to some ones phone is nothing short of amazing to me.

Want to restore an old record that is terribly scratched. When you play it into your computer, and save to a *.WAV file, just run the scratch filter and all those scratch sounds will be totally gone. Sweet!

Also, don't go to the limit of your 80 minute CD, try to make your .WAV file under 79 minutes. You're going to need some space to add what you want to say in the beginning of the file as a header. The speaker’s name, date, where given, etc. Also at the end of the message add, "This is the end of this CD or message." Try and keep your file as close as you can to 79 minutes for your 90 minute cassette, or you'll end up having to make two CD's of one tape. It does happen, but not if I can help it.

For making these little .WAV files for my heads, I just open Windows word pad and type what I want to say and record a little .WAV file and save it as "EndOfThisMessage.WAV", etc. Then I just copy/paste this to end of every CD master I make. Make another file for a start head. A head is what we say in front of every audio file. Make a message to say who is speaking, where the date, etc.

Also, or if you have to split one big file into two files to have an A & B set of CD's because the message went over 80 minutes and it's even to big after taking the gaps out. Make a saved audio file that says. "This is the end of Part A of this CD, please play Part B, thank you". Then on the B CD in the front, make a head you can quickly copy paste that says, "This is now the conclusion of this message from Part A. What I like to do is copy just a few seconds off the end of Part A and copy/paste it to CD Part B, that way no one is going to feel like their missing anything.

I need to also explain something - If you burn Apple MP3 files to a CD, they really NEED to be saved back first into the Microsoft WAV format first only. Why? Because, if you just hand a CD that is still in mp3 format to someone who just has a stand alone stereo player, like a boom box type with a carry handle. Most CD stereo players still won't play mp3 unless it clearly states it on the player itself that it's mp3 compatible. But all stereo CD players will always play in *.WAV format. So know that! Any computer CD player will play BOTH mp3 and WAV files. But not everyone has a computer still these days. So remember that so you don't run into problems.

Also, don't delete your original finished *.WAV file once you burn a master copy. Instead save it in a compressed Windows Media file format on your hard drive. Example a 700 meg file can be compressed down to 50 meg, using Sound Forge and saving in Windows Media v9 or v11 at 128kbps 44,100 Hz Stereo. I have a second external drive for just storing my masters. They can be loaded and saved back to a bigger *.WAV keeping the original quality in your finished restoration.

I accidentally dropped one of my masters and scratched it, and when I put it in our CD duplicator it gave me an error – No longer able to copy! I'm so glad I'm saving my masters on my second hard drive. Get yourself a USB backup hard drive and make sure you don't just store your masters only on your computer's internal hard drive. These drives can be unplugged and stored in a safe place till you need it again to back up of another new file you just finished.

On older Home computer which was a Pentium 4 computer at the time. I had a 7200 RPM drive. Still it took 2-4 minutes to run certain filters in DC6. For the campgrounds edit work station we bought a 60 gig Western Digital 10,000 rpm SATA drive. That speeded processing up even more. Today multi-core CPU's and SSD C: drives are turning those minutes of waiting into just seconds. Another way of speeding up a hard drive is buying two drives and configuring your system for RAID 0 for extra performance in filtering or video rendering. RAID 1 is for mirroring for data protection - But that makes a computer run slower! That's why I like External plug in drives, I need to keep the computer running as fast as possible.

We have one work station in the office that we bought in 2004 running XP PRO. Other then the first software update we don't hook it to the internet. It's only used to edit CD masters, and print CD labels on it's CD printer. It's amazing that this computer is still just as fast as when we bought it. Probably because it's not continually getting endless Microsoft updates to slow it down over time. I tell people I'm running Microsoft QUILT. Because of all the patches. :-) It's nice to have speed to be more productive. Audio filters should only take seconds, not minutes to run. But I guess I need to learn some patience too.

For better quality, I've save my original .WAV file to MP3 in 128 kbps, 44,100 Hz Stereo for CD quality audio. An uncompressed *.wav file is about 700 megabytes depending on it's length. Saving to high quality MP3 at 128 kbps or even 96 kbps won't sound much different, so if you need to put a few more on one CD, that will help you. But compressing anymore for resale purposes you will notice that you'll start to lose a persons tone in their speech. Filtering can bring some of this back too. These higher quality files become around 40 to 60 megs depending on length of the message, so you can see you can get a lot of them on one CD/R.

By the way, uncompressed *.wav files you get 80 minutes. Really it's 81 minutes, but I don't use all of it. I try my best to keep my time at 79 minutes. Sometimes when I get ready to burn a CD, even if it's closer to 80 minutes I get an error and it won't burn it because it's also looking at space and it's over 800 meg.

When your make MP3 disks in jukebox mode, the next max file size is 700 megs, not 800 for a single standard *.WAV file.

I can get a whole 3 day camp meeting, of many full services are on just one MP3 CD. We offer that for a $10.00 donation. I'm just save my original *.WAV files to MP3 at 44,100 Hz Stereo and I can not tell any difference if I stay at 128 kbps, or slightly lower at 96 kbps. But for just speech 128 kbps or 96 kbps, Your not going to notice any difference in quality for just teaching. Music would be different but we're not recording in anything but two track.

But you need to filter out ALL his before making MP3's. Because at a higher compression rate with just a little hiss that sound is going to be magnified.

Generally I can get 9 full messages on one CD in MP3 format. Providing the speaker stays under time, or I'll have to make an A & B message of that one service normally. So sometimes I can only get 6 full messages on one MP3 CD. But I have gotten as many as 10 full messages on one MP3 CD too.

Making a whole camp meeting just one or two CD's is a HUGE savings to a customer.

Shipping costs more in many single CD's. Plus it's saves in cost of materials too. Anyone with a home computer can play a CD in MP3 format. MP3 is also the same audio quality in 128kbps 44,100 Hz Stereo format but a smaller file size around 50 meg allowing for several full messages to be burned on a single CD in juke box mode. It's not just for music. I like this small size for saving all my files in both *MP3 and *WMA at 128 kbps 44,100 Hz.

NOTE: If you're starting out helping your pastor and trying to catalog his cassette library, and now making CD masters and cataloging them too, let me share how we catalog everything we list here online.

Maybe you can use what we're doing as a logical guideline.

Take for example: 82LHCD6-23 - Norman Parish - TO THEM THAT LOVE GOD

82LHCD6-23 - What this catalog number means is: "82" is the year the speaker spoke it.
"LH" means, "it was recorded here at Lake Hamilton, "CD" is a CD.
Now if it was ONLY listed an "LH" then it would only be a listing for a "cassette tape" someone would be ordering online.
"6 means it come from the "Summer Family Camp Meeting". and "23" is the number of the service during that camp meeting.

Try it! Do a search here on our online-catalog.
Look at the left side of the page and scroll down to where you see "Advanced Search"
type in "82LHCD6-23 see what comes up!
Now do the same and leave out the CD, and you'll see it's a cassette tape.

We already had a giant physical catalog we used to hand out.

But converting all this to be posted online took Patti and I months starting out.

Your part is just as great as the person who spoke this originally. Learn how to fix and save these messages, then duplicate yourself and teach others how to do it. Get behind your pastor, teacher, or layman who is called of God to minister. Put your computer to work for the Kingdom of God and be a blessing and you will find a wonderful niche service, as you serve the Lord in the Ministry of Helps.

Questions email me at: Kevink@cablelynx.com