Sermon Audio Help

FAQ

What is the difference between streaming and download?

Streaming is playing the audio directly from the internet instead of downloading to your computer and then playing it there. Check out the article below about Streaming and Downloading.

I clicked on a download link but my media player popped up and played it instead, why did that happen?

Sometimes, the browser will try and “help” when you click on a link to media content by going ahead an launching the media player. If you really want to download the content and play it later then RIGHT+CLICK (or CTRL+CLICK on a Macintosh with a single button mouse) on the link to bring up the context menu and select “Download as…” or “Save as…” (depending on which option your browser gives you) to save the file.

There are several links for the same sermon, which one should I choose?

It depends on what kind of media player you have on your computer. Check out the articles below about Media Formats and Media Players.

I downloaded a sermon but it seems to be damaged (it cuts off at a strange spot). What should I do?

Occasionally, when a file is downloading from the internet, it gets interrupted. The short answer is to download the file again but before you do that check out the article below about Browser Cache.

Is there an easy way to get all of the sermons at once?

The church office has MP3 CD's and DVD's available for a nominal fee. The CD's contain all the sermons for an entire year. Currently we have a DVD available with all of the sermons as a complete set. For more information about MP3 CD's and DVD's check out the article below about MP3 Media.

How can I burn my own CD's from your audio files?

Once you download an audio file to your computer you might want to burn a CD so that you can play it on a regular CD player (or give it to a friend). You can check out the article below about Burning CD's.

Streaming and Downloading

Calvary Bible Church audio files (sermons and class sessions) are all available to download from our website. Once an audio file is downloaded onto your computer, you can play it any time you want and even create CD's for your home or car stereo (check out the article about Burning CD's for more details).

Downloading a large audio file can take some time though (5-15 minutes on a DSL connection - much longer on a dialup line) and having to wait until it is done before you can begin listening to it can be a little frustrating. So, most media players offer the ability to listen to the content directly from the website. This is known as streaming.

There are two kinds of streaming on the web today, real time streaming and pseudo-streaming. Real time streaming uses special servers that coordinate their action with your media player. This allows the server to change the content sent to your player based on how fast your internet connection is (if you have a faster internet connection it will send you higher quality content). Pseudo-streaming is just a regular web server but your media player plays the content at the same time it's downloading.

Calvary's website uses pseudo-streaming. This is helpful in that we can keep a single set of audio files on our servers and use them for both downloading and streaming. Also, depending on which media player you are using, you can save the file to your computer after you stream it. However, there may be devices that can only play our content with real time streaming (e.g. mobile devices with limits on the type of audio they can play).

Media Formats

One thing you may notice about Calvary's sermon collection is that we offer a number of different audio formats. There are several reasons we choose to create more than just MP3 files. The primary reason is Universal Access. People from all over the world (179 countries at last count) visit the Calvary Bible Church web site. People may be using systems that Americans would consider outdated or just unusual (something other than Windows or Macintosh). Their internet access may be very low bandwidth. So, if we can easily create different audio formats from our recordings and they serve to give someone access to content that they would not otherwise be able to get we will try and support it.

Windows Media

We keep this one at the top of the list because the majority of our visitors have Windows machines. The Windows Media 9 CODEC provides good speech quality in a small size. It is also available for Windows Media Players all the way back to version 6 (for people running older versions of Windows). Unfortunately, the Windows Media Player is not available on other platforms (even support for the Macintosh is being removed) so it won't work for everyone.

Real Media

The Real Media format also has good quality for speech. As an independant developer, Real makes their player available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux x86 platforms. However, because their technology is proprietary, there are some platforms (e.g. Linux PPC) that they do not develop for. Again, it won't work for everyone.

MP3

The MP3 format has become almost universal. If you want to play your content on something other than your computer (a portable player, MP3 CD or DVD, etc.) this is the supported format. However, MP3 is a proprietary format as well so some platforms do not support it (e.g. pure GPL based open source systems like Redhat/Fedora). Additionally, MP3 was really designed for music, not speech so the files tend to be larger than we would like.

AAC (M4A)

The AAC format is primarily for iTunes and iPod users (which make up a significant portion of our visitors). It has better capabilities for speech encoding than MP3 and we are also able to embed transcript information into the files (visible in the Lyrics when you play these on your iPod). We are currently backfilling our library with AAC so expect more support as time goes on.

Speex

The Speex format has a number of advantages over the other formats. It is designed specifically for speech content so the quality of the audio is very good. Additionally, it is not a proprietary format so, potentially, it could be made available for any device. However, it is also relatively new and support for it has not spread far, yet.

GSM/WAV

The GSM/WAV format doesn't sound very good (like an old AM transistor radio if you are old enough to remember what those sound like). However, it produces very small files and is available in a surprisingly large number of devices (commonly used for voice-memo recording).

3GPP AMR

The 3GPP AMR format is designed for mobile devices. It is currently the smallest format we produce (about 1/7 the size of an MP3 file).

On your desktop machine you can listen to it with a QuickTime player (you may need to enable AMR in the QuickTime preferences). However, you probably need to download it first (RIGHT+CLICK and Save) and then play it instead of just clicking on the link.

Media Players

If you need a media player you can check out the following sources of free players:

• Windows Media Player (PC, Mac, Portable devices)
• Real Player (PC, Mac, Portable devices, Linux)
• iTunes (PC, Mac - MP3 and MP4/AAC formats)
• Winamp (PC - MP3, MP4/AAC, and WMA)
• Musicmatch (PC - MP3 format only)
• Quicktime (PC, Mac - MP3, MP4/AAC, and GSM/WAV formats)
• Speex (information on using Speex in other media players)

MP3 Media

If downloading sermons is not working out for you (perhaps your internet connection is not fast enough) the church office makes MP3 collections available on CD and DVD for Our CD's and DVD's are in standard ISO-9660 level-2 format. What that means is that we have tried to make our disks as universal as possible. As far as we know, if you have a device that can take a CD and knows what an MP3 file is, it should be able to play our disks (however DVD-MP3 compatibility is rare, usually only computers and a few DVD players). This includes just about any computer with a CD drive and MP3 player software, some regular CD players, many DVD players (for CD-MP3), and most modern video game consoles (I guess there is a certain irony playing sermons on a video game console…).

Sermon files are named for the date they were recorded (e.g. yers, many DVD players, and most modern video game consoles (I guess there is a certain irony playing sermons on a video game console…).

Sermon files are named for the date they were recorded (e.g. yyyymmdd.mp3) so that they will sort by date. This keeps them in order but may cause some confusion if you are looking for a particular title. The title information, speaker name, and series title are encoded into the file in the form of ID3 tags. Not all MP3 CD or DVD players will look at ID3 tags so your player might just display the short file name.

Browser Cache

When you are dealing with downloading content from the Internet it is sometimes helpful to understand a little about how your web browser works. One factor that sometimes causes confusion is web browsers keep a local copy of everything they download. The place where they keep these copies is called the cache. Whenever your browser is told to get something off the Internet it checks to see if it already has a copy of what it would be getting and, if so, uses the copy instead.

This can cause a problem if you were downloading a sermon and the transfer got interrupted - your browser may not try and download the complete file because it thinks it already has a local copy. If this is the case you can tell your browser to clear its cache and try it again. Unfortunately, we don't have instructions available on how to do this for every browser out there. What we can tell you is that Internet Explorer calls its cache “Temporary Internet Files” and that you can get to them by starting with the “Tools” menu and selecting “Internet Options”and look under the “General” tab. Other browsers tend to keep these controls under their “Preferences” (check under your “Edit” menu). If you have a different type of web browser try Googling “clear cache …” and add your browser name to it.

Burning CD's

If you have a CD (or DVD) burner on your computer, you can create CD's that will play in most other CD players from our audio files. Be aware, even today, burning CD's is one of the more challenging things to do on a computer. So, here are some pointers to make it easier.

First, you need to understand that, as far as audio files go, there are two kinds of CD's, “audio” and “data”. A data CD is like your hard disk, it contains files that your computer can use (in this case, audio files that your media player can play). You can put audio files on a data CD and move them to a different computer. If the audio files are MP3 format, there are some CD players that can play them (they are becoming more common but they aren't everywhere yet). However, generally you will want to burn audio CD's which should play on regular CD players.

That being said, most people burn audio CD's with their media player (e.g. Windows Media Player, Real Player, iTunes, etc.). One thing that all of the media players seem to have in common is that, in order to burn an audio CD, you need to create a “playlist” of the audio “tracks” you want included on the CD. Another thing that they all have in common is that playlists are made up of things that are in your “library”. So, if you want to burn a CD from one of our audio files:

• You have to get it into your media player's library.
  • Download the audio file to your computer (remember to RIGHT+CLICK on the download link so you can choose where to save it).
  • Import the audio file into your media player library (the Import is usually under the File menu).
• You have to create a playlist. The way to do this depends on which media player you are using but it's usually obvious in that your playlists are listed when you are looking at your library and “create a new playlist” is somewhere around there.
• You have to add that audio track into the playlist (it should be the only track in the playlist since our tracks usually take up a single CD all by themselves). This is usually just a matter of dragging the track into the playlist.
• You then tell your media player to burn a CD based on the playlist you just made. Where this is also depends on your media player. If it is not listed under the menus then there is usually a large button somewhere around the frame of the player that says “Burn” or something like that.

One final note on blank CD's. There are different quality blank CD's and, depending on the quality, some CD players might not recognize the CD you made. Typically, using blank CD's that are identified as “Music” will be helpful. Alternatively, you can look on the Internet for comparisons on brands to help you select the best blank CD's to purchase. We are not including any specific information here because this sort of thing changes from time to time (as different manufacturers "reformulate" there production process) and, depending on where you are in the world, you may have access to brands that we don't have (and vice versa).