I am deeply convinced that going through the Bible in Chronological order in whatever media format you choose to do it (read, listen to, watch a video) will help disciples of Jesus grow in spiritual maturity and to help as many as possible do that, I finally figured out a way to put the weekly lessons as we go through the Bible into a new format—the audiogram—which is a video of the words of an audio file.
I did this because many current studies show people want to consume content in video format, but a huge percentage of the people who do that have the sound turned off, which is part of the reason for the increase in popularity of closed captions. I understand that as I do that frequently myself.
Also, somehow clicking on YouTube is so easy that I’ve found myself doing that with some podcasts I like and being able to see the words helps when I may not hear something correctly. Though I like doing that, I don’t think looking at someone reading into a microphone is especially helpful and so instead of that, for my audiograms you will get the content only against the Bible805 logo image.
Here is the first lesson I put into this format. Below the video is an explanation of how I did it in case you are interested.
The process of making an audiogram
The process to make an audiogram isn’t difficult, once you figure out the software you want to use, but it is time-consuming and takes a specialized program to do it.
Making audiograms of both podcasts and videos is a currently booming business and there are a number of software programs that do it. They are all over the map in terms of features, cost, and complexity. After taking weeks trying various ones, I settled on veed.io. Though they are one of the most expensive I looked at, they do exactly what I need in the length I need (some wouldn’t let you export audiograms longer than 10 minutes). Also, they seem very well organized (some of the newer software is chaotic in a constant change of staff, new features, etc., and I didnt’ trust them from the chaos of their public image). Veed, in contrast, instills confidence and their interface is clear and easy to use.
I should also mention that the software does a tremendous number of additional things other than simply creating audiograms including screen capture, a really great video teleprompter, and a number of other features I hope to try at some point—but the thing I needed the most now was the ability to create the audiogram.
Here is how it works
First, you need a finished audio file or you can record directly using Veed. My workflow for creating the initial audio file that goes along with the video I do for the lessons works well, so I used that.
You can also record directly into Veed and I may try that for some other projects, but I’m not sure how editing works in the program.
Regardless of how you get the audio file, you load an audio file into the software and Veed then takes the audio content of a podcast and first of all, makes a rough transcription of it. It is actually quite accurate in terms of the words and how they are spelled, but the format needs work (and a lot of it) for a finished audiogram.
What takes a lot of time and care is that you then need to go through the transcription line by line to correct odd word spacings, spellings (my name is always spelled oddly, as a some Biblical names) , and things like Bible references, which are correct in sound, but not in format, such as how it originally comes out in Veed as One Corinthians 1219 which you must correct to 1 Cor. 12:19.
If you were just downloading a transcription to be read as text, it wouldn’t be as important, but since you are creating a video of words to be the only thing on a screen for people to watch, especially with the sound turned off, it must not only look good but the breaks in phrases must make sense.
This took me a lot longer than expected to make certain every line was acceptable for reading on screen (and I probably missed quite a few this first time through), but I imagine I’ll get a lot faster doing it once I’ve done a few more.
You also have the option of styling your video, putting in your own background, choosing the typeface and style of the words, adding phrases, images, sound waves, progress bars, and all sorts of other items. You can make the videos in a variety of sizes and formats. I did the phone size for this one.
My goal is to not only do these for the lessons but many others on podcast topics, both very short and longer ones.
It’s an exciting new adventure in my goal of sharing the content of Bible 805 in as many forms as possible to be “all things to all people in order to win some.”
I’ll keep you updated in the newsletter on the new media content I create. Be sure you are signed up for the newsletter and if not, go to this link to sign up: BIBLE805 Newsletter sign up.