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Audio

From Showit Manual

Showit supports audio that will play inside of Flash in the MP3 format with extension ".mp3". Please use the Music Player at this time to play the audio files.

Audio must be encoded into MP3 format to be used inside of a Showit website. It is recommended that you compress your MP3 files to a reasonable size for the web. Audio cannot be added directly to a page but needs to be added to a Music Player.

Compressing an MP3 File

A free easy solution for PC and Mac to compress an MP3 is to use iTunes. Go to Preferences and in the General tab. Go down to the second section and click on the "Import Settings..." button, then on the "Import Using" drop down and choose "MP3 Encoder". For the Setting drop down, choose "Custom".

On the Custom pop up, you have a few different choices:

  • Stereo Bit Rate: This is going to be the major factor in how big the file size is, the bigger this number, the bigger the final MP3 file. Choose a Bit rate with the trade off of a lower number is going to be less quality with a faster download speed. For the web, somewhere between 48 and 96 kbps is typically OK, 64 kbps works out to 32 kbps mono and is a decent compromise.
  • Sample Rate: The sample rate affects the sound quality and a CD plays at 44 kHz but it can typically be set to "22.05 kHz" for the web
  • Channels: For web quality, you can use stereo but typically "Mono" is great and will cut your file size way down.
  • Filtering: Leave the bottom two check boxes checked.

Now, go to your playlist, right click on the song you want to use, it can't be a purchased downloaded song that isn't in the plus format, and then choose "Convert Selection to MP3". This will duplicate the song in the playlist and convert it. Right click on the new file and choose, "Show Song File". This will open up a finder window and show you the mp3 file that it generated.

Keep in mind, if you are going to rip songs later from CDs for your personal use, go back to that original import setting and choose a better setting for importing, whatever your preferences are. Also, this creates highly compressed audio but is acceptable for web.

Here is a picture of those settings windows:

File:Itunes.jpg

Keep in mind this will not work for music purchased through the old DRM(Digital Rights Management) protected iTunes store, as it has copy protection in the file and is not meant to be copied. This will work for music that was purchased from the old iTunes Plus music store and anything purchase more recently now that the iTunes music store is all DRM free, as well as music that is already in MP3 format or that you have on a CD. If you secure the rights to use a song that you purchased through DRM protected iTunes, you can use iTunes to burn the song to a CD, then use the method from above to convert the song to MP3 from the burned CD.

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