Staging Backgrounds

At our church, we don't usually have a single background slide for all slides. At times, we will change up the backgrounds to match the songs.

When I first started with ProPresenter, I would assign a background to a particular slide so all I had to do was cycle through the slides as the worship progressed. But this turned into a painful exercise because after the service, I would have to remove the backgrounds for the song because we didn't want the backgrounds to be stale always playing the same ones.

So now what I do is I create a new Library folder where I will drag the different types of pictures and moving clips that I want to use for that service and keep that media folder available. This is really useful now that when you click on a background slide, the arrow keys still advance the lyrics. 

(In older versions of ProPresenter, when you clicked on a background slide, the arrow keys would then advance the backgrounds instead of the lyrics.)

Now, after a service, I no longer have to delete the backgrounds slides - only the new library folder I created.

And just for fun, sometimes I will change a background while on the same slide for lyrics so that the background matches the words. If done right, it can really help with the visual of what is being sung. If I do this, it is usually at the end of a song where the same words are being sung again.

But remember the golden rule - less is more!

Transitioning from Song to Keynote/PowerPoint

I was recently asked how do I transition between using ProPresenter (or whatever music tool you're using) and Keynote or PowerPoint for the speaker's slides so there isn't a hard transition?

(I don't advocate importing PowerPoint slides into other programs - I've seen too many problems with that although some may have found a working model. I find it's better to let those speaker presentation programs do their jobs and let the song presentation software do it's job. The philosophical approach to song presentation is usually quite different than screen support for a speaker.)

What I usually do is to create a theme graphic that I use as the desktop screen image as well as in ProPresenter and Keynote/PowerPoint. That way, as I switch from one application to the next, or just have nothing displayed, the theme graphic appears on screen. The theme graphic should follow the theme of the message or series for continuity. Even with that theme background, I may still use certain pictures and backgrounds during the worship singing but only for punctuated effect and return to the theme graphic so that connection is never lost.

The DVD Spin Down Problem

If you ever had the problem of having to play a clip off a DVD during a service but when you get to that moment, the DVD player has passed out and needs time to wake up, don't be ashamed, you're not the first nor are the last. The problem with this is DVD spin down.

In many cases, it can be 20-30 minutes between the time you cue up a DVD to play a segment and the time in the service when you need to play it. Unfortunately, most DVD players will have gone into some form of sleep mode that can require an uncomfortable pause before it spins back up, loads the buffer, and begins to play. Or if you have it in a PC, sometimes you can't recover at all if the PC went to sleep or it takes an eternity to spin up, causing the audience to get restless and the murmur of congregational talk rises . If you have a Mac, it still can take a few seconds before the DVD spins up again and is ready to play. But at least with a Mac, you get a decent DVD player that is designed to work with the system, not a cheap third-party add-on commonly found in PC's that I haven't found to be as stable in a dynamic environment.

In the past, what I have often done is used Handbrake (a free download) to rip a chapter off a DVD into a QuickTime file and then use QuickTime's Pro features to trip off what I don't need. I would then drop this QuickTime file into ProPresenter onto a slide so I could flow right into it right after a song or announcement, making a very smooth transition. The problem with this is that not all DVD's can be ripped, you need time to do this (I figure 2.5 minutes of ripping for every minute of video), and there is some quality loss, although most people would probably never notice it.

With the newest version of ProPresenter, there is an option to prevent DVD spin down. So you can cue up a DVD in ProPresenter's DVD player, play your songs and smoothly transition in and out of the DVD clip.

So why not use a standard DVD player? Well, to make sure your DVD player is ready to go, you need a separate monitor and a multiple input/output switch so that you can preview it offline and then bring it up on the main screen. Hopefully, in the rush to keep things moving, you don't mess up the switch. Second, it adds another layer of devices, cables, etc.

The other issue is one of using multiple screens. Some PC's have trouble keeping the dual screen settings when it loses the video output. So when you switch to another device and return to the PC, it has to re-initialize the dual screen setting.

In larger churches, this may not be an issue but in small churches where you have a lone ranger at the media station, this is much more critical. The Mac operating system has the ability to recognize most projectors by name and keep those settings if you use a switchbox between sources. And if there is a reason that you need to turn on/off dual screen support, that can be done with a single mouse click. No jumping into menus three levels deep and a bunch of mouse clicks to set resolution and dual monitor support as on a PC.

With a tool such as ProPresenter, you can deliver a seamless approach to moving between service elements.

ProPresenter Rocks!

I just did two back to back youth conferences using ProPresenter for the first time and the software really rocked! As the main guy to switch between Keynote, DVD, and ProPresenter, everything worked smoothly as it should have. The only glitches were operator error and experience will fix some of those. But both venues reported a much improved lyric presentation and asked me back for next year.

One of those conferences involved over 3,000 students with By the Tree, who led them in a weekend of worship. The band often just followed the Spirit in the songs that they often sung and at one point, I was switching between the choruses of two different songs that they were singing in an amazing mashup! And it was cool because the video guys used a luma key so I could present the lyrics in the bottom third of the screen over live IMAG video.

One funny story is that I had a DVD cued up in ProPresenter to play halfway into a service. The video started to play just fine along with the audio but after a minute, my wakeup software that automatically launches and plays iTunes came on and took over the audio. I had incorrectly set my alarm time so it was my fault completely. It's one of those caveats of using a computer that isn't totally dedicated for presentations.

Song Presentation Software

I've been looking at some song presentation software to use at different events and I decided to invest in ProPresenter by Renewed Vision. I like it because it's focused on song presentation and doing that one thing very well. Some of the other programs I tried seemed to be trying to do too much and as a result, don't do any one thing well.

The other reason is stability. ProPresenter just seemed to be rock solid whereas some of the other ones crashed on me when I tried to push them. That is my anecdotal evidence, not the final word.

But I'm very happy with it, particularly being able to tie slide timings along with an audio track and the way it just smoothly handles video. I found it easy to use even though the help files were quite short. I never got comfortable with some of the other options.

But ProPresenter is Mac only. And for good reason. It's easy to support. Apple inserts some of the best tools for visual presentations. Macs have supported multiple monitors for years (compared to the problems that Windows has suffered with video drivers for a single monitor) and has the most experience with video playback. It also seamlessly integrates with the iLife programs so you can drag and drop in pictures, movies, and audio clips from QuickTime, iTunes, and iPhoto.

And if your church is growing in complexity is using media in services, you might find that switching to the Mac platform, while initially requires work, will turn out to be a great thing. You can do a lot of the same things on a PC but the workflow will likely be more cumbersome. And when the heat is on in the middle of a service when a change needs to be made, that can mean all the difference between something that goes off smoothly and something that becomes a distraction.