This is the second of two posts. To read the first, on audio engineering, click here.
Bundles provide you with a lot of flexibility in presentation, so care must be taken to put your best foot forward. Encoding media content that looks professional can be achieved by paying attention to the following key things:
File naming — names should have a standard formatting across all of your songs. If they’re meant to be played in order, include a number at the beginning of the filename. There’s no need to replace spaces with underscores. Something like “01 – Artist Name – Song Name.mp3” is good.
File Metadata — Include proper tags in your MP3 files so that the artist and song names appear correctly. They should match the filename as closely as possible. If you have cover art, embed it in the MP3 tags so that it will appear on all devices.
File Structure — Don’t wrap all of your files in a .zip unless you’re wrapping up numerous small images. You don’t save any space by zipping compressed audio/video, and the BitTorrent protocol already ensures that your content arrives intact.
Encoding — Encode all files with the same settings. Use a format that is widely supported, such as MP3 (for audio) and MP4/H.264 (for video).
Encoding Applications
Encoding applications are often a very personal choice. Finding a user interface that is both intuitive and gives you the power you need can be a challenge. I’ve done some legwork to find some (free) tools that will allow proper encoding and complete metadata generation.
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