How To Convert CD Audio To A Podcast Or Audio For Use On Web Page

I frequently need to convert from CD audio to pod-cast/website audio. I manage a couple of web sites for my church and it's womens ministry and the CD recorded teachings from the services are posted to the respective web sites. This means having to go from an audio CD to an MP3 file. But the professional grade CD recorder being used limits tracks to 10 minutes each. So these tracks have to be knitted together to form one continuous audio stream before the final conversion to an MP3.

This procedure is assumes that you are using a Windows computer with a standard installation of Windows XP or newer. If you are using a Mac you probably have similar programs installed that will do the same things as the Windows based programs that are used here.

Software used in this procedure:

WinFF - http://winff.org/ - Free Software

Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - Free Software

LAME Encoder for Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&i=lame-mp3 - Free Software

STEP 1 - Rip the CD to the PC

I use Window Media Player (WMP), which came pre-installed on the PC. The default action for this installation of WMP is to rip the CD audio tracks. In the case of recorded CDs WMP will guess at some of the information such as 'contributing Artist' or 'Composer' and automatically fill in this information, it's always wrong!

By default WMP will save the ripped tracks to the 'My Music' or 'Music' folder of the currently logged in user. It will create a new folder named 'unknown'. If there is already a folder with this name WMP will create a folder similarly named but it will include the current date as part of the folder name.

When the files are ripped they will be in the format WMA.

STEP 2 - Rename the files to maintain order an easy searching

Folders and files used for the recordings of the spiritual teachings I use the naming convention:

{YYYYMMDD}-{HHMM}-{website, i.e. 'Table-Talk'}-{title of speaker i.e. 'Pastor'}-{name of speaker}

Where YYYY is a four digit year, MM a two digit month, DD a two digit day. The website name is shortened a bit and hyphens are used instead of spaces, and the same applies to the name of the speaker.

Example: 20110708-1900-Table-Talk-Pastor-Brenda-Lipator

This naming convention makes it easy to sort the recording files and folders chronologically as well as makes it easy to find all recording for 'Table Talk' as compared to 'Christian Temple' or find all recording for a specific speaker.

STEP 3 - Convert the WMA files to MP3 files

I use the program 'WinFF' to convert between various audio and video file formats. I find WinFF to be very intuitive and easy to use. You can download WinFF from http://winff.org/. Download this and install it in order to proceed.

1. start Winff
2. open the folder that contains the ripped tracks
3. 'Drag and Drop' the ripped files into WinFF
4. set the 'Convert to:' option to 'Audio'
5. set the 'Preset:' to MP3
6. set the 'Output folder:' to the same folder in which the tracks were ripped
7. in WinFF click the 'Convert' button

A 'DOS' window with black background and white lettering will open up and the conversions will start.

You will need to 'Press any key' in the 'DOS' window for it to close.

You can close WinFF

Now you can see in the folder were you ripped the CD tracks there is now a file for each of the tracks with the same name but now the file extension is "mp3".

Turning on file extension viewing

If you cannot see the file extension you can turn on display of file extensions from any 'My Computer' window. Just open 'My Computer' or use the keyboard shortcut keys {WinLogo}+{E}. This means while holding down the Windows logo key press the E key, and now 'My Computer' will open. The braces {}, are uses to denote a key on the keyboard, so when you see {WinLogo} look for the Windows Logo key, do not type 'WinLogo', not all keyboards have this key.

Viewing the My computer menu bar

The 'My Computer' menu bar has these items on it 'File', 'Edit', 'View', 'Tools', 'Help'. If you cannot see menu bar then press the {Alt} key to make the menu bar appear.

Back to turning on file extension viewing...

• on the 'My Computer' menu bar, click on 'Tools'
• click on 'Folder Options'
• click on 'View' tab
• uncheck the box for 'Hide extensions for known file types'
• click the 'OK' button
• you can now close the "My computer' window but if this is the one window showing/listing the ripped and converted files you may want to leave it open for now.

STEP 4 - Stitch the MP3 files Together

For this, and a lot of other audio related editing I prefer Audacity. If you don't have Audacity you will need to download it and install it to follow these procedure. You will also need to have installed he MP3 encoder 'LAME" for audacity. See 'LAME" link above for instructions.

NOTE: You can drag and drop all of the tracks at once, but I don't recommend this, just do one track at a time!

1. start/open Audacity
2. 'Drag and Drop' converted ripped track #1, the MP3 file, into the Audacity Window
3. 'Drag and Drop' converted ripped track #2, the MP3 file, into the Audacity Window below track #1
4. click on Track #2
5. move the cursor to the start of the track by pressing the {J} key.
6. select the entire track by pressing {Shift}+{K}, this means hold down the shift key and press the K key momentarily then release both keys, it doesn't mean to press the plus key (+).
7. to 'Copy' the selection to the Windows clipboard press {Ctrl}+{C}
8. click on track #1
9. press {K} to move to the end of track #1
10. press {Ctrl}+{V} to paste the 'Copied' track #2 into the end of track #1
11. click the 'X' button in the header of track #2 to delete track #2 from this project
12. repeat steps 3 through 11 for each track, MP3 file, that was ripped and converted.

Save the Audacity project

In Audacity click on 'File' then click on 'Save Project As', give the project a meaningful name, in this example I used the folder name as the name of the project, '20110708-1900-Table-Talk-Pastor-Brenda-Lipator'.

Also, instead of saving after you have stitched all the MP3 files together you may want to do this after every track has been stitched just 'in case'.

STEP 5 - Edit the Project

Now that the entire audio has been stitched into one continuous project it's time to edit the project. When recording a live presentation it is always best to start recording before you think the speaker is going to start speaking. You don't know what is going to be said and exactly when so starting the recording early helps to ensure that you don't miss anything. The same applies to stopping the recording, even though you think the presenter is finished let the recording go for a bit longer just in case the speaker 'remember' something else he wants share with the group.

So now it is time to remove any parts of the audio project from the beginning or end that have no audio or are not relevant to the lecture or teaching that was given.

This is done by placing the cursor either before or after the audio that you want to remove and pressing {Shift}+{J} to select from the cursor to the beginning of the project or pressing {Shift}+{K} to select to the end of the project. Do not press {Delete} as this doesn't delete the selection it silences that selected region of audio. To remove the audio from the project press {Ctrl}+{K} or on the menu click on 'Edit' then click on 'Delete'.

In these times of lawsuits for 'slips of the tongue' you may need to 'silence' or 'remove' any other audio that might get your group or organization into any legal trouble.

There maybe other things you need to do to the audio such as increasing the volume, perhaps the speaker spoke to softly at different times, you can use the 'Normalize' function of Audacity to improve the recording to make the volume more consistent so that when a listener plays the recording they do not have to keep adjusting the volume.

STEP 6 - Save the Final Edited Project

How to do this as already been covered above.

STEP 7 - Export the file as MP3

The project is currently in an Audacity format, which is not used for web audio or pod-casts.

For this example the project will be converted to an MP3 file that can be downloaded from a web site and listened to at the listener's leisure.

You do have to have installed the LAME MP3 encoder for Audacity before trying to do this.

In the menu click on 'File' then click on 'Export'. Set the 'Save as type:' to MP3 files, change the name if you want to then click the save button. A window will appear for you to enter 'meta' information about the MP3 file. I use this to but in the speakers name, a name for the lecture or teaching, the name of the group or organizations and other information. I use the 'Comments' field as a place to put in the website, if the group as a website.

After you have entered the 'meta' information then click the 'OK' button to start the conversion to MP3.

If you need the file in another format other than MP3 you can use the drop down list to select a different format.

You can also use WinFF to convert from MP3 to another format that may not be supported in Audacity.

To summarize:

Rip the audio tracks to your computer, stitch them together in the proper order using an audio mastering program, save the edited audio project, export/convert the project into the final form that you need for your web site or podcast.

Happy Pod-casting!