Ballast Media

If you’ve worked with a sound system you have probably at one point heard a ground loop, but may not know it for what it is.  It usually manifests itself as a 60Hz buzzing sound.  Sometimes you hear this buzzing in the main speakers or monitors, or it may occur on your recording.  So what is it, and how can you avoid it?

A ground loop occurs under the following conditions.

1. Two electronic devices are plugged in to different electrical circuits.
2. The two devices are connected via an audio cable.
3. A difference in electrical potential exists between the two electrical grounds that the devices are plugged in to, which causes current to flow between the two devices through the audio cable.

So what can you do about it?  Probably the simplest solution is to use a “hum eliminator.”  These devices are actually just transformers that physically isolate the input and output.   A transformer is just two coils of wire that are wound closely together so that when a current is passed through one it induces a current to flow through the other wire, even though the two wires are not physically touching each other.  A perfect solution for physically isolating two audio devices that we want to connect together.

Musician’s Friend has a whole bunch of devices under thier Hum Eliminator category.  One thing to be aware of is that transformers have a frequency response characteristic.  Meaning, they can color the sound, or start to roll off (attenuate) higher frequencies.  So, some of the cheaper devices may not give you the best audio fidelity.  I’ve been pretty happy with the Ebtech brand for hum eliminators.

If you have more then 2GB of RAM in your computer, you may be surprised to learn that your Windows computer only allows a single process (program) to use a maximum of 2GB of RAM.  So, if for instance your computer has 4GB of RAM and you are trying to run a single application that would benefit from more RAM (After Effects), your out of luck, it’s limited to 2GB.  But there is a way to get around this.

If your using WinXP or older, you can put a switch statement in your boot.ini.  But, I’m using Vista so it’s a bit more complicated.  You need to run a command  at the command line with administrator privileges.  Enter the following: “BCDEDIT /set increaseuserva xxxx” where the x’s are the amount of ram you want to increase to.  Use 3072 for 3GB.

I tried increasing my laptop to 3GB and the system is still stable, although I’ve noticed that it slows down a bit more then usual when closing and launching applications.  This may be due to the OS running out of physical RAM to use, but that is just my speculation.  I’ve definitely notice a marked improvement in the performance and rendering time of After Effects!

Many churches record thier sermon’s to mp3.  Usually they record in one format, on a CD, as a wave file, or some other method, and then encode to mp3, in a two step process.  I’m always looking for ways to streamline and simplify the process, especially when volunteers are involved.  Here is a way that you can record direct to mp3.  Assuming all goes well, as soon as you press the stop button on the recording, your file is ready to be uploaded to your podcast or website.

I’ve been using the multi-track recording program REAPER for a while now and have been really impressed with it for the price, $60 for non-profits.  Two things make it perfect for the task of recording direct to mp3.

1. It can record direct to MP3.  Not all recording software will do this, usually they record to a native file format and then allow you to encode to mp3.  Sometimes the encoding process can be confusing for volunteers, using Reaper to record direct to mp3 eliminates this possibility.

2. It allows you to record the “output” of a channel.  What this means is that you can apply effects to a channel as it is recorded.  Again, most other multi-track recording programs require you to record the track dry and then in mixdown apply effects to the channel.  Another step eliminated as you can apply compression and EQ as the track is being recorded.

So all this sounds like something that would benefit you, here is how I’ve set it up.  All that is required is a Windows PC with some sort of audio I/O interface.  Just be aware that your computer will have different audio I/O then what is shown here.

1. Download and install REAPER from www.cockos.com/reaper

2. Download the Lame MP3 encoder from http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/.  Use the download entitled “For Audacity on Windows”.  Unzip the file and place the lame_enc.dll file in the program folder where you installed Reaper.  Most likely that is C:\Program Files\REAPER\.  The first time you try and create an MP3 it will prompt you for where the MP3 encoder is located.  Point it to this file.

3. Add a new track (Ctrl+T) and adjust the Record Mode settings.  You access the record mode settings by pressing the button at the very bottom, to the right of the track meter.  (Or you can right-click on the meter itself to get the same thing.)  Select “Monitor Input” and select “Record: output (stereo)” as shown below.  Also, where it says Stereo Input with an arrow to the right, select the audio inputs on your computer that you want to use.  Note that I’m recording the stereo input here so that all the audio information that is being sent to the computer gets recorded.  Later in the MP3 recording it will be converted to mono to reduce the file size, but here we want to record the stereo input.

4. Add any effects you would like to be applied to the recording.  For voice recordings, in this case of a sermon, I usually use compression to keep the volume level consistent.  You can also add EQ and any other of the variety of effects that are available.  (REAPER will use any VST plug-ins you may have.)  To add an effect to a track, click an open slot above the track and you will be prompted for what type of effect you want to insert.  In the image below you can see where I’ve inserted the Reaper Compressor and Reaper EQ.

To accomplish step 3-4 above you can also create a track template to make this easily repeatable.  Right click on the track number and select “Save the selected track as a track template.”  Now, instead of doing step 3-4 as described above you would just go to the track menu and select Insert Track from Template and select the template you just saved.  The track will be added with all of the settings and effects you’ve applied.

5. Set the output recording format to MP3.  You do this through the Project Settings, which you can access through the File menu, or simply by pressing Alt+Enter.  Below you can see the settings that I’ve used.  The important one being of course the “Audio format for new recordings” set to MP3 (lame).  I’ve found that 32kbps works pretty well for a 30-45 minute sermon.  It may sound a bit digitized, but it results in an 8-10MB file which is a pretty reasonable download.

That’s it!  You’re set to record.  Just click the record button or press CTRL+R to begin recording.  There is however one setting adjustment that I’ve found useful if not mandatory to change for long recording times.  You need to turn off the waveform generation.  The waveform that is drawn on the screen during recording is stored in RAM.  If you make long recordings, this can use up a lot of RAM and start to slow down your computer, even leading to drop outs in the recording.  To make this adjustment, go to the Options menu and click on Preferences at the very bottom of the menu.  Alternatively you can just press CTRL+P to bring up the preferences dialog.

Go to the Recording page and uncheck the Show Preview of Recordings checkbox.  Also select build peaks manually.  You can see these settings below.

That’s it!  Happy recording!

Working for a church, I love open source (free) software that works really well and makes my life easier.  Super is one of those programs.  If you do any kind of media/video work on a PC, you should become familiar with Super.  It will encode video from one format to another.  While sometimes it can be a bit finicky, especially if your source video is of strange codec origins, usually a bit of trial and error will produce satisfactory results.  If you don’t have Adobe’s flash encoder, Super is a great way to encode flash video.  In fact, I use Super as the last step in generating my tutorials to create the flash file that you view online.

Check it out, Super.

(Just a word of warning, the Super website is a pain, you’ve got to click through several pages to get to the actual download page.)

Have you ever been given a ppt file that was created on a 4:3 monitor, but you want to project it on a widescreen projector?  Usually when you project this type of file, there are black bars on the left and right sides of the screens and the content is still 4:3.

Here is how you can make the file widescreen.  Go to File – Page Setup, in the width and height boxes enter 16 for width and 9 for height.  Click ok and now your slides are widescreen.

I’m giving away some of the worship backgrounds that I’ve made and used recently.  Enjoy!  Soon I’ll show you how to make backgrounds like this in a tutorial.

I only ask one thing in return.  If you download and use these backgrounds, leave me a comment below, tell me which ones you’ve used and where you used them, what church, etc.

You can also search this blog for ‘free worship backgrounds’ to find all the other media I’ve given away.

My first screen capture tutorial that teaches you how to create an animated transition in Song Show Plus has been posted!  Hey, it’s taken longer than I wanted, but I’ve finally gotten the process for recording, editing and posting these screen capture tutorials to a point that I’m happy with.  So look forward to more coming soon.

UPDATE: I’ve created a tutorial that shows you how to set this up in Song Show Plus.  You can view it here.

Have you ever wanted to create an animation between elements in your lyric presentation software?  In this blog post I’m going to show you how.  The specifics of what I’m going to describe apply to Song Show Plus, but the concept could be applied to any worship software package.

First of all, SongShow has a few limitations that make this concept not work as simply as it should.  There is no way to set a video clip that is placed as an element in the program to automatically transition to the next program element after it has completed play back.  If this were possible we’d simply add our first song to the program with the first background, add the transition video, then add the second song with the second background image.  But, it’s not the simple…

First, let’s understand what we are trying to accomplish.  We start with Background 1, as seen in the example diagram above, this could be the background used for your first song.  We want to have a video seamlessly transition to Background 2 which would be the background used for your second song.  In order to do this we create the video transition where the first frame of the video is Background 1, and the last frame of the video is Background 2.

 Here is what I did…  

1. Render the animation in After Effects at the same screen resolution you are using for projection.  In my case that is 1280×720.
2. Create your starting image (Background 1) from the first frame of your animation and your ending image (Background 2) from the last frame of your animation.  In AE under the composition menu there is a “Save Frame As…” option which lets you render a frame out as a photoshop file.
3. In SongShow set the background image of your first song to the first image
4. Create a SlideShow using the video sequence builder.  Add the transition video as the first element of the slideshow and the second background image as the next element in the slideshow. 
5. Now add another song and set it’s background to the second image.

 Now here is how it works.  When you move from the first song to the video sequence the transition video begins playing and creates the seamless transition.  Once it completes playback it will transition to the second image that is in the slide show video sequence and hold on that image until you advance the program.  When you advance you are in to your next song which has the same background the video sequence ended on.  You now have an animated transition between two different backgrounds!

I’ve been using the X360 font a lot recently.  You can download it here for free from dafont.com.  It has enough style that it doesn’t look plain or common, but it’s clear and very readable.

The answer is, farther than you probably think.  While the IEEE1394 standard only specifies cables up to 15ft (4.5m) there are ways that you can extend that length.

I’ve succesfully run firewire up to 198ft using two in line repeater amps like this and three cables like this. You need to use high quality 6 pin firewire cables throughout because  Pin 5 & 6 carry power to the repeaters.  You also need to be plugged in to a device that can provide power on the line.

I ran this setup for years connecting a couple Canon XL1s cameras to a datavideo SE-800 mixer.  (Note that the mixer does not provide power on it’s DV inputs, so there was a firewire hub between the mixer and the first long cable.)