Help Requested for an Audio Contest

A friend of mine, runs a web site dedicated to the animated rock n roll toon "JEM and the Holograms". To coincide with the DVD release of this toon, they are organising a contest where participants sing any "JEM" song and send it in.

1. A 3 minute song would be very large as a .wav file to email in as an attachment. Even if it's zipped it'll be still a bit too large for most users. Is there any other format that is very compact and advisable for this project?

2. One idea I had was to ask them to convert it to .ra
(real audio) before sending it in. This would require participants to download a freeware .wav to .ra convertor (they're not large d/ls )

Is this a good idea? Isn't .ra the most compact audio format? Quality wise, for entries .ra is fine besides, wouldn't other file formats require bulky file format convertor downloads at the senders end?


3. Most average participants would record their voices using Windows Sound recorder which as I understand limits file sizes to 60 secs in length. Is there a way around this or should I ask them to use a sound recorder that comes with their sound card or download a freeware sound recorder that will allow files longer than 60 secs

I hope I haven't bothered you people, but if you could advise me on the above three points, i'd be really grateful. Thanks!

Michael

 

I posted a reply over at fanworks. Mp3 is the way to go though.

Keith

 

You can stop right befire the 60 secs are up, then get another 60 when you start recording again. The only problem is you have to coordinate so when start recordeing again it sounds like there's been no skip.