This week was an awesome time at The Bridge.  From a production side, I had a lot of fun.  We had a worship and baptism service for the first time ever!  Four people took the step of getting baptized as a profession to our church of their faith!  What this meant from a production and music side was the ability to do things a little different.  We went with a new “off-center” setup which seemed to work really well.  This was done so that we could have the baptism just outside our meeting area (so we did not get water all over the floors).  What made this particularly possible was our use of live video for the first time.  We switched to ProPresenter just over a month ago which gives us the ability to use plug-and-play live video feed right through the normal software.  Genius!  The leadership team was skeptical of this at first but soon realized that this was a great solution to our space problem.  I have had multiple good comments on the live feed and during the service many people were keyed into it.  We are not the most technologically advanced church but when we can we try and take advantage of its ability to help our people dive into community and worship.

The baptism was surrounded on either side by musical worship.  We also tried something new this week with our space during this time.  Instead of having everyone stay at their tables and chairs, we encouraged a movement to the center front.  We found this to be a great way to hear the person next to you singing and cultivate a communal worship.  The hope is that this type of joining in worship will begin to show itself much more in the future.  The song set used is below.  We have found that two songs in this set (Cannons & From the Inside Out) have been particularly impacting within our community.  They both do not sacrifice lyricism but are extremely singable.  The ability to rise and fall dynamically is particularly evident in them which allows for great passion to arise in singing.  Hopefully something within this set can help you where you are!

Cannons- Phil Wickham

Everlasting God- Brenton Brown

From The Inside Out- Hillsong

Mighty to Save- Hillsong

Marvelous Light- Charlie Hall (if you have never tried going half-time at the end of this song…do it!)

Till next week…

kyle

The following was posted by Twila on another post as a comment.  I’m not the Mac/ProPresenter expert, so I figured I’d bring it to the foreground here if anyone can help out.

I have recently become involved in a church that uses ProPresenter. In the past I have used MediaShout or SongshowPlus. One problem we are having with ProPresenter is that the pastor likes to have his sermon information in a powerpoint presentation which he controls from the pulpit. Unfortunately, once we start PowerPoint, if we do anything on the mac (including moving the mouse, etc.) it locks up PowerPoint. Is this common or does anyone know of a solution?

This past Sunday was a busy day.

At 7:15am, I got a call from Pastor David Crawford, who needed a piece of tech gear I had so that he could get his MacBook Pro hooked up for using his new ProPresenter during their morning worship service at Bellevue Grace. That is the church that allows us to meet in their building on Sunday nights.

So, I got up, showered and headed out to make the delivery. I left my lovely wife, Pam, at home resting because she was experiencing a bit of jet lag. She had been with Beth Moore at a Living Proof Live event in New Orleans on Friday and Saturday. (See photo highlights HERE)

So, I met Pastor David and then headed to Starbucks to do some study on my own message. At 10am, I headed to Bellevue Grace to catch the ProPresenter in action. What a great piece of presentation software! It really enhanced the worship experience.

That afternoon, I got my own copy of ProPresenter and did a crash course to learn how it works for our service. I got it done, and we used PP at our evening service – AWESOME!!

I still have more to learn, but totally look forward to it and what it will do to supplement our presentation of the Gospel each Sunday evening.

The message this past Sunday was our last installment in the series, “True-ish”…”As Long As I’m Sincere”. We learned how people can sincerely believe something, but be sincerely wrong!

Watch the message below…

I have a great camera and I love the fact that I get to use it every week for church and sometimes during the week. Ok, not enough on projects that would benefit me – but hey I have a greater purpose in mind.
Basically every Sunday we setup the camera in order to feed it and ProPresenter content through to the Creche area. Here are the Settings that we use:

Audio Input:

Balanced 3pin XLR from the sound desk into both input channels. As for levels I find it difficult to find the right level because there is a control on the sound desk that does not seem to provide a consistent level since there is a huge dynamic range between the volume of a speaker and the music. Also I have level settings to adjust on the laptop for the built in input – line in. I just make sure that there is no clipping and that the level does not get too low.

Audio Output:

I am really just passing the sound desk audio through to the laptop as Stereo RCA.

Video Output:

The Video component of the RCA is really a fail safe. Otherwise the the firewire output is used for the live video for ProPresenter.

Focus: 91/92 for a distance of about 35 meters
Iris: Defendant on the lighting but usually it is completely open during worship and about F4.0 with the stand illumination on the speaker.
Shutter: Default 1/50 unless I have to film the projector screen then it is 1/60
Zoom: Dynamic and try to keep as many congregation heads out of the shot.

Issues

Audio: Dynamic Range between the audio and speaker cause the volume to be either too high or too low until the operator can adjust it.

Video: Usually the lighting effects used during worship results in inadequate lighting for the camera and sometimes means I have to digitally enhance the image by increasing the image gain to 3db. I don’t go higher least I introduce too much noise into the picture.

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Before I going into the explanation of what I use to compress the videos for ProPresenter, here are some preliminaries:

• Projector Resolution: 1024 x 786
• Compression Software: Apple Compressor 3
• Presentation Software: ProPresenter3 from Renewed Vision
• The Final Cut Pro Project  is 720p hence the 72 top and bottom padding that I use in Geometry setting.

Creating the Compressor Setting

Open Compressor and ensure that you can see the Settings window (press Command 3 if you can’t). To create a new setting it will be best to start off with a working setting similar to what you want and then edit and save it under a name that you can easily identify.

Enter ‘h.264‘ in the search field and select the H.264 entry in the results list. Duplicate this entry by clicking the duplicate button just left of the search field. After this you will need to clear the search field and navigate to the H.264 copy in the Custom folder.

I use h.264 because the not only it is very scalable in that it can be used for mobile, web or broadcast, it results in a very small files that keep their high quality.

Double Click the H.264 Copy and save it with a name that you would find reasonable.

The Inspector that opens has 6 buttons; Summary, Encoder, Frame Controls, Filters, Geometry, Actions.

Encoder(Video Settings):

• Compression Type: H.264
• Frame Rate: Current
• Quality: Best
• Encoding: Best quality(multi-pass)

Encoder(Audio Settings):

• Format: Lossless
• Channels: Stereo(L,R)
• Render Settings: Best

Frame Controls: On

1. Resize Filter: Better(Linear Filter)
2. Output Fields: Same as source
3. Deinterlace: Fast (Line averaging)
4. Rate Conversion: Fast (Nearest Frame)

Geometry

• Dimensions: Frame Size: 1024 x 786
• Output Image Inset (Padding): Top: 72, Bottom: 72 [I need this to conform the image]

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Almost every Sunday we setup the video for Church. What do we setup, why and for who? Here I give a few snapshots with as little text as possible in describing what we have done and the motivation behind it. Bear in mind, while you read and see, that we still have a long way to go – and budget has a huge role to play (otherwise I would be describing setting up a few HD cameras, projectors and IMAG, but alas)

In the morning; 06:30am to be precise, the Video and Lighting team arrive to setup. This is a 3 person team for:

• Lighting Controller
• Camera
• Assistant

All three work together; according to a schedule, to setup the following:

• Lights
• Projector
• Screen
• CG Computer
• Camera
• Creche TV and Creche CG

I will just be focusing on the last two here.

Video Camera

Panasonic AG-DVX100BE

Audio In: XLR from the Sound Desk

Video Out: FW400

Audio Out: Stereo Channel RCA

Creche CG Computer

Originally, filming the service was for recording purposes with the idea of supporting a Creche environment during the holidays when there was only one service. There was also thought of capturing straight to disk. But filming – by what ever means – lost it’s importance over time in favour of just supporting a permanent Creche Environment. Essentially we want to offer parents in the Creche the same CG – verses – video experience as the main service. Currently I am experimenting with this on top of using slides and verse overlays on top of live video. Ultimately this will translate to the main service when the time is right.

Video In: FireWire400

Audio In: The Stereo Out from the Camera coverted to the mini input jack

Video Out: DVI to S-Video/RCA converter (I am using the RCA one)

Audio Out: Headphone mini jack to RCA stereo.

Ok the question may be begging: Why not use a Mixer? The Answer: I wish. The budget just does not allow it – so I have to make do.
There is also an inherent problem – or should I say nuisance – with this setup. With the Audio feed coming from the camera, how do I pass the Audio through from the input jack directly to the output. Well, I am glad you asked (pauha) – I make use of a Free application called LineIn from Rogue Amoeba that allows me to do this. But here is the problem – I also use videos played from the computer (using ProPresenter3) – so I need to switch Pass Thru on and off as needed. Hmmmm.

A big reason why I follow this approach is that, while I need the live audio for the Worship and Sermon, I cannot use it for the videos because there is no way that I can play a video in sync (at the moment) with the main presentation.

We just do not have a need for live video and/or IMAG in the main service so I can just tap off the main CG computer’s output. Also, if I did, I do not have a Mixer so there is a bit of a lag as the video struggles to keep in pace with the audio.

In upcoming posts I will go into detail how I use ProPresenter3, the overlays and the videos, as well as what compression I use to prepare the videos

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I am not really sure how many of you have actually been faced with this kind of problem. Ok our Church is not hitting huge attendance numbers but I have this feeling – you know – that we are about to hit that tipping point, especially with this intermediate step we are taking to hold services in a new location. 

So I wrote a few posts and asked many questions. In the end, myself and Ron reckon that we can start off with just ProPresenter3 – a per normal. The size of the venue and the numbers don’t really motivate for a mixer, maybe there will be a call for one in the near future, but for now there are other needs that need to be budgeted for.

The only case for a mixer is our KidStuf environment – there we could send a FireWire feed for live video to be set to the Projector with/without text overlays. Maybe there is something cheaper than a mixer that could help out in that area.

I added some good replies as comments that I received via email in response to the question of using an Edirol V8 for IMAG and source switching. There is good advise there.

http://www.condron.us/  - testing

Date: January 11, 2009
Teaching Series: LIVE | SERVE | GROW
Key Passages: Acts 2:42-47 (specifically vs 44 & 45), Ephesians 2:8-10, 1 Timothy 4:12, 2 Corinthians 9:6
Service Length: 67 minutes
Attendance: up 25% over the same time last year, up 14% over previous service

Worship Set: Sing, Sing, Sing, We Shine, Heart of Worship, Enough
Communion Song: East to West
Offering Song: Point of Difference

Message Summary: The early church understood that transformation doesn’t just happen in the mind. Holy transformation in an entire body/life/soul experience. The church not only sold their possessions, but gave of their lives. It’s so easy to write a check and mark service off of your to do list. When we give of our lives, we not only serve others but experience transformation from the inside out.

Student Involvement: Students made up the band, ran audio, propresenter, guest check-in, and student check-in.
Fun Stuff/Special Elements: We began our message by utilizing our table groups to write thank you notes to their favorite teacher. The idea was to say thank you to someone already serving them. Those who read from their Bibles out loud received a free Babe Ruth candy bar. We also launched our “hour of service” sign-ups.

I’m excited to try out Apple’s Keynote Remote tomorrow morning during our student worship services. Since starting our second hour, I’ve been looking for a way to relieve the pro presenter person so they can attend a small group. Hopefully this is the ticket! I’ll type up a review tomorrow for anyone interested. The trick will be if I can run my sermon from my iPhone without looking at it….

I got my mac Wednesday and I’ve been experiencing a learning curve.  One of the biggest changes, is the mac doesn’t have a right click.  I’m used to right clicking all the time.  This is by far the fastest computer I’ve ever had.  

I’ve been playing with the ProPresenter demo.  It seems like a big step up from Powerpoint.  It allows you to play background loops while showing the words for the songs.  You can also skip around in the slides, when the worship leader decides to change it up.  Also, a countdown timer can be added in front of any background.  It also handles your background audio too.  I’m not sure we’ll be ready with it this Sunday, but we will likely incorporate ProPresenter soon.

Another anointed journey with the Lord.  This was my second WFX that I have had the honor of attending.  The first was last spring in Indianapolis where I was working for Third Place Consulting in helping to spread the vision of leveraging the real estate that the church already owns to create and utilize amazing third places to connect people, develop leaders and fund causes for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.  This time around I attended for be filled and taught for my new roll at Messiah.  The faith family at Messiah have some amazing challenges ahead with the vision for the global church and this venue allows for a direct connection to some of the best people in technology to aid in accomplishing that vision.

Upon arriving in Houston I met up with the original Church Bartender (Michael Trent).  Michael has been and continues to be an amazing mentor and friend.  We both have a deep passion to see the church be church and stop playing.  We visited a church body doing just that.  Ecclesia has positioned itself in the world but has set the done as Jesus called us to not be of the world.  They have an amazing building that is used for but not limited to a cafe, recording studio, worship area, local art gallery, neighborhood natural foods market.  If you ever make it to Houston, you need to place them on your list to see, they are being church.  While at Ecclesia we hung out with Daniel Park and where privileged to hear his story and the amazing plans that God has for him in Prague.  The pastor at Ecclesia has help to write a new translation of the New Testament soon to be released.  I am currently reading a segment of it called: The Voice of Acts: The Dust Off Their Feet: Lessons from the First Church.  This is the book of Acts retold and amazing.

As it turns out dinner always turns out to be an amazing time of spiritual growth.  I was blessed to have dinner with some old friends and new.  The seafood at McCormick & Schmicks was wonderful and the conversation was life changing… time to win the world for Christ people, if we do not do it, who will?

I spent considerable time in class and training as well.  The audio mix class with Armando Fullwood (Design 2020), Reed Hall (Lakewood) and Walter Silverberg (The Potter’s House) was out of this world to have that knowledge and experience base pouring in and training me.  The other classes that I attended were on Third Places Now & Next, Simple Steps to Streaming Live, Church in a Digital World, Creating Engaging Environments with Video Staging, and the 60 Minutes Church Website Makeover.  The keynote from by Dave Ferguson on building up leaders, launching them and growing the church was amazing.  What is your faith families Big Idea and are you accomplishing it?  After the talk I was privileged to hang out with Dave in the green room and learn and share what Christ is doing at CCC and Messiah.

By far the most powerful and impact-full discussions I had was on learning about Global Need.  I really still do not know how to put it into words for what the Lord is doing there.  Please go to Global Need and check it out, read up and get involved.

The expo floor is always interesting and filled with everyone from builders / architects, chair supplies, stain glass window manufactures to the highest end electronics vendors in the world and everything in between.  One has to enter the expo floor with filters on or you will be overwhelmed.  The three products that I will take away from my time on the floor are; ProPresenter and Tight Rope Media Server.

Thank you to all of the presenters, teachers and contributors that gave of their time to teach.  I close with this,  what is this vision that Christ has given to your faith family and are you accomplishing that vision?  We know the great commission, so are we truly living it out?

God Bless,
dl

I purchased ProPresenter this summer to test out for our church and ran it for our Summer/Fall camps that we put on. Obviously, I hadn’t had a tremendous amount of time on it since I was leading worship for our Summer/Fall camps. I did thoroughly enjoy setting it up and then seeing the finished project while playing. 

Last night we had our first Youth Worship Service of the season and I plugged my MBP in and ran it instead of our PC and MediaShout. Let me say: WOW! 

I loved it! I can’t believe how simple it was to incorporate video with audio with backgrounds with several songs with everything! It was so great. Everything just worked! The first time and correctly! Even plugging in my MCB to the splitter to send the video signal just worked! No reboot necessary. The program never glitched or skipped or bumped along the road. It took me all of 5 minutes to give my media person a crash course in the program.

I asked a ton earlier and was a bit skeptical making the swap to ProPresenter, but with everything else Apple, I’m in all the way! Again, I feel like: How/why was I getting by without this for all this time! 

So yes, I’ve drank the Kool Aid again and am totally sold! Now, I’m searching for some more in depth tutorials to dig in with. I know I’m not using it to it’s complete capacity, plus I need to send them along to my video techs. Any suggestions?

I received my copy of the issue recently so I imagine there will be some new visitors to the site trickling in.  Unfortunately I haven’t posted in a long time as I’ve had some major events occur in my life that I hope to share some day in the future.  Needless to say God has been doing some big things in my life to further mold me into the person He wants me to be.

I created this site as a resource for those wanting to learn about sound boards and church audio, but a string of posts comparing MediaShout and ProPresenter became more popular than I could have anticipated and opened up the opportunity to work with Mike Sessler and Jay Delp to create the article that may have led you here.

Some of the postings here have more detail than I was able to include with the limitations of the magazine article.  And I’d be happy to interact and try to answer any questions if there was something the article couldn’t answer for you.  Just leave a comment here or find my contact info on the about page.  At the moment I can’t guarantee much in terms of response time, but I will make an effort to respond as quickly as I can.

Thanks for stopping by!

This post is by a fella who runs ProPresenter at Revolution Church. I highly recommend reading this. I love his grasp of what’s really important and his attitude.

Enjoy!

So, I asked for it and you guys really responded! I asked here on the blog and 2 other forums what you used for your computer, presentation software, and the media intensity of your church and here’s what you said: 

12 of you use Apple
12 of you use PC

18 of you use Pro Presenter
12 of you use Media Shout
6 of you use Easy Worship
3 of you use Song Show Plus
7 of you use something else

Here on the blog you guys who are claiming a 3 and 4 in the Media Intensity are exactly split between Apples and PCs. The 5s use Apple and the 1s use PC. 

I found this really interesting! I was actually a bit surprised by some of these results. I mean I really figured that the 1s would use PC and the 5s would use Apple but the split down the middle between the middle groups was actually surprising! While it was pretty unanimous between most of ya’ll that Apple is the way to go, ya’ll are making it work with what you’ve got. I found it also interesting that some of ya’ll are taking the stripped back approach with less media intensity in the worship service arena. 

I think we had churches represented from every region across America and even up in Canada (ay!) so I’m really pleased by that! Thanks everyone. 

I can’t figure out how to create a poll so please, PLEASE fill in the comments section about what your church uses:

1. Computer: Apple or PC?
2. Presentation software: ProPresenter or MediaShout or EasyWorship or what?
3. Media Intensity of your church?
   5 – Multiple background screens, camera cranes in the audiences, videos made in house, local news stations come to you when the power goes out to broadcast the 5:00 news
   4 -
   3 – Running some sort of lyric presentation for songs, dabbling in video loops for backgrounds but mainly doing a killer job of stellar still images
   2 -
   1 – Video presentation? Doesn’t everyone still use transparencies?

I think I know what the “right” answers are but I’ve become the droning white noise that gets ignored around our staff. I want to make sure I’m still thinking objectively and rationally and would LOVE to know what other churches are using and doing with their video resources.

For a perfect program run on a perfect computer, it sure is out to get me.  This past Sunday morning I was running sound/video for a volunteer orientation.  Part of that orientation was to show a video, which was given to me on a USB stick.  On the disk were two copies of the video, higher quality and lower quality.  I added the lower quality video to the playlist and tested it, video played in its entirety with no problem.

Later my boss came in (still before the event started) and asked if the higher quality video had worked and if I tested it.  I explained that I just worked with the lower quality and she requested that I try the higher quality.  By this time people were already gathered in the room and I had no video switcher to keep the video off the screens for people to see.  So she says just to try it out in Quicktime “because if it works in Quicktime, it will definitely work in ProPresenter”.

So I do, and the video stutters a little.  Then I open the lower quality video and play the whole thing in Quicktime, which works fine.  I add the video back to the playlist and the event starts.

It comes time to start the video, and it doesn’t start.  I click.  Nothing happens, I click a couple of times, finally the video starts.  And stutters, and pauses, and resumes and stutters.  It stopped for 1 second every 4 or 5 seconds.  I was so embarrassed, I tested this video in advance, even played it in Quicktime, there is no reason why this should have been happening.  I’m guessing the CPU was busy working on something else, but darned if I know what.  Do Macs have an equivalent to the Task Manager in Windows that lets you see all running processes and their CPU usage?

So that’s my story.  I don’t know what I could have done differently.  I was wrestling with whether or not to stop the video or try something else, but I didn’t have DVD backup or anything to fall back on, so I let it run through the whole 3 minutes that way.  I’m thinking I’m just going to use my own laptop and MediaShout for all future events.  At least until North Point kicks me out for defiling their equipment like that.

Since I’ve been in youth ministry, I think I’ve used all of the major media presentation softwares out there.

I used MediaShout when I worked with Youth Alive.

I used Easy Worship when I was at Grace Outreach Center.

I went back to using MediaShout the first year here at Hope Fellowship.

But we finally made the plunge to ProPresenter in our Student Ministries & Children’s Ministries, and we’re headed that way for our main services on the weekend.

So far, I love ProPresenter. Here’s what I love about it:

1. Seamless video transitions.

2. Ease of use.

3. It looks sexy.

4. The capability to use DVD clips from a DVD in the computer – brilliant.

5. The ability to change text, etc on the fly.

6. It’s sexy looking.

7. Much, much more.

But here’s what I don‘t love about it so far:

1. It doesn’t let me adjust the individual volume of a video. I liked out MediaShout would let us lower the gain of a specific video. Visual Reality videos seem to always be pretty loud, so it was great that we could bring it down to match the volume of other videos.

2. Choosing in and out points for videos. I also liked how MediaShout would let us create in and out points in a video – to shorten any black in front of a video, or stop it in a transition time. ProPresenter doesnt’ offer this. This would be helpful.

3. I still haven’t figured out how to drag a motion background to a file in the library and have it apply to every slide in it. I’m sure this is my fault for not figuring it out yet, but I’ve tried everything. You can drag motions and stills to individual slides, but what about when you have 50 slides in a file and want them all to be the same – is it possible to hold a few buttons down and click and drag a motion to apply it to every slide?

If anybody knows solutions or answers to any of these things I currently do not love about ProPresenter, please let me know.

(AA)

MediaShout and ProPresenter have some big differences in how they operate that are inherited from their platform. ProPresenter uses QuickTime, MediaShout uses DirectX, etc. But there’s also a big difference in the user interface that is by design and not just because of the computer the program runs on.

The person responsible for making MediaShout work uses tools such as Scripts and Cues. The ProPresenter operator relies on playlists and miniature versions of the actual slide as you would see it on the big screen. This isn’t a matter of one method being superior to the other, but they are completely different in how easy it is for a user to get results and be able to make last minute changes. And as the ongoing debates I participate in demonstrate, everyone has their own preference for which option is better.

As I said, MediaShout’s primary tool is called a script. This is because it can have all the same content as the actual script for your production. The content of your production is placed in order from top to bottom. Section headers can divide the script into different parts, such as “Announcements”, “Music”, “Sermon”, etc. The lyrics or notes can be seen like normal written text, or hidden away to only see titles. The user interface isn’t so much a preview of what you will get on the big screen, it is a detailed view of what is coming up and can give you enough information that you won’t need a copy of the script next to you. The contents of the full script appear from top to bottom much like a document.

On the contrary, a preview is exactly what you get with ProPresenter. The operator selects what goes on the screen by clicking on a miniature picture of exactly how the output will appear. The Renewed Vision team wanted to give you a full “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWG) experience. So rather than see the lyrics in a paragraph format like you would find in a script, you see the individual lines inside boxes positioned exactly as they will appear on the projector once you click on them. Likewise, the background and foreground elements are divided so that you can click on different backgrounds for the same slide as you feel compelled to. All the background options appear on the bottom half of the screen and you can click on them at any time without affecting the foreground (the words or pictures being presented).

Generally speaking, MediaShout is geared more for the person who has planned the whole script in advance, while ProPresenter allows for more fluid on-the-fly options. The MediaShout operator can go through the whole production by hitting nothing more than the spacebar over and over because the whole script is already present and in order, while the ProPresenter operator will have to rely on the mouse to change songs or find the appropriate video clip or background graphic. On the other hand, the ProPresenter user will have an easier time switching between slides if last minute changes means you need to find a different slide than was already planned for a given segment.

I’m not saying the MediaShout operator can’t stray from the script or be more dynamic, it just isn’t the default mode. You can scroll up and down the script and double-click any entry that you want to switch to right away. And there’s a couple of additional windows MediaShout has that works much like ProPresenter, showing thumbnail views of different video clips, graphics, or even songs that you can have sitting on the side just in case.

I’m glad to see that Renewed Vision is actively adding to the feature list in ProPresenter. Mike’s recent posting inspired me to write about one of the features unique to MediaShout that I love to use.

Above is the screen you get when you insert a “Script Control” type cue into the MediaShout script. If you want to loop through a series of announcements (stills or videos, or any other type of cue), and then automatically start a video (opener or countdown) at a given time, you can do so with two script controls. The first control tells the system to loop, the second has the box marked “Start Action At:” with the appropriate start time.

This means that I can start the announcements and then go backstage to talk to the worship team or whatever, and even without my presence the announcements fade out and automatically begins the opening video (which then cues me that I have x minutes to get back to the booth).

Question for you ProPresenter fans out there:

On Wednesday nights there’s a group that meets in the room I volunteer at. They watch a 35 minute clip that’s on a DVD and then break out into small groups. I’m trying to simplify my life by capturing the DVD clips and converting them to H.264 format. This would be particularly useful next week because I will be absent, and they are showing 2 clips from 2 different DVD’s. So my preference would be to have the clips on the hard drive ready to go in ProPresenter rather than have my substitute mess with switching discs, etc.

So, last Wednesday, I tried running my H.264 clip. It was 640×480 and encoded at 1200 kbps. I figured this was a reasonable quality for a standard definition projector, not too high, not too low. I watched the first five minutes before hand, everything looked good. So the event starts, I click the video. And about 10 minutes in, the audio and video get out of sync. After a few more minutes it got so bad that people started coming up to the sound board to see if I noticed (Yes, I did, thanks). I ended up switching to the DVD mid clip.

What’s weird is that the video on the local computer display was fine, it was the projector feed that was horribly out of sync. I’m thinking it was just too high quality for feed for that computer. Am I right? How low can I go without noticeable loss? Any other recommendations?

When a program like ProPresenter or MediaShout runs the video in two different places at once (on the projector’s output and on the preview display), it takes quite a few computer resources to pull that off. That’s why MediaShout defaults to not showing the video on the local display, it only shows the thumbnail (along with Play/Pause, seek bar, etc), but there is an option to turn it on if you think your computer can handle it.

Does ProPresenter have any such option to turn off the local preview? Would it help in this case?

I was going to save Round 3 for another day, but Mike’s already commented on Round 2 and it seemed necessary to respond.

Round 3: Reliability

Winner: Nobody, it’s all a bloody mess. Mike has blogged about his horrible experience trying to play an AVI file in MediaShout. For me, I would have checked what codec was used on the AVI and (re)install or fix it. I probably could have had it working faster than the time he took to convert the video. I have mentioned the problems I’ve been having with ProPresenter on the computer I work with at North Point (and my “boss” there has gotten quite the earful on it). Likewise, the right Mac expert can probably fix that computer in no time. The fact is, all computers are prone to some kind of failure, whether it is a hard drive failure, bad memory chip, improperly installed software, malware, poorly written add-ons, etc.

Okay, maybe the statistics say that Pro/Macs win this round too. But I’m not going to repeat everything I said in Round 1. I once heard a quote, I think it was C.S. Lewis but could be wrong…something to the effect, “That which has the greatest potential for good also has the greatest potential for evil”, or possibly the inverse. Point is, a PC has a lot of open doors which could be really really bad, or really really good, equal potential in either direction. A Mac has the same relationship. A functional properly installed/maintained PC has great potential and can do more than the Mac will allow. A messed up PC will be so much worse than a messed up Mac.

So if you are reading these posts trying to make up your mind about which platform to go with or what software…re-read Round 1 and go with whatever you have the best support for. If your IT dept (or IT volunteers as the case may be) are better at working with Macs, go with ProPresenter. And if you have a shortage of IT volunteers, then Mac/Pro is probably the safer option as well. (Notice I said safer, I can’t bring myself to say “better”, there’ll be a lot of features you miss out on, I’ll get to those in future rounds.)

MediaShout:

• Laptop with good amount of video memory, and decent processor: $600

• Cost of software: $429

ProPresenter:

• Check out the Renewed Vision store if you want to see who wins this round.

Disclaimer:

Okay, so the Macs that Renewed Vision sells have a 2.0 GHz processor vs the 1.7 I saw at TigerDirect. But the point is PC’s are a lot cheaper. You can still buy a 2 GHz PC for a lot less than $1140. And a 1.7 dual core is more than adequate for most applications. My last event that I ran Mediashout at was a Men’s Retreat for the Covenant Southeast Conference. I was using my personal laptop for recording, and using my wife’s laptop (which was my laptop years ago) for MediaShout. That computer is a 1.4 GHz *single* core processor with 768 MB RAM. Granted, it was simple as far as video clips and such go, but it handled the job just fine without any complications. I even played AVI’s, FLV’s, and SWF files on it. MediaShout will play anything as long as you have the proper codec installed.

Based on my conversations with people who have decided on MediaShout or ProPresenter, the PC vs Mac debate is really at heart of the issue.  Some of the other issues like “Ease of use” are really just side issues based on which platform you are more used to or can handle.

So Round 1 has to come out in favor of ProPresenter.  Macs are easier to use, easier to train volunteers on, and generally speaking (though I’ve seen exceptions first hand) are more reliable.

But, I still choose PC’s and Mediashout for the same reasons.  Macs are easier to use and more reliable because they leave you with fewer choices.  Businesses default to the PC platform not because they are easier to use, but because they are easier to customize.  Their potential is greater because the PC platform is generally open to any form of customizing you want to do and you can make a PC do something you want it to even if Microsoft didn’t think of it first.

I’m generalizing here, but the opposite is true for a Mac.  If Steve Jobs & Co didn’t think of it first (or Renewed Vision in this discussion), there’s little you can do to add the feature yourself.  This is why Macs are more reliable, people aren’t customizing it with conflicting options or accidentally changing something they didn’t intend to.  Developers can’t write code that has the same access to the core of the system the way they can on a PC.  This is great if the only developers you interact with write viruses, but bad if you run a business and want to hire developers who can automate your business.

The catch to it all is, you have to know what you are doing.  This means that the PC user needs more training, and generally speaking the average user won’t get to utilize the benefits unless they go into advanced training and learn to develop their own software solutions.  ProPresenter and Macs in general take much less training to get a new volunteer used to using it, and it’s difficult for them to mess anything up because their aren’t nearly as many options to mess up.

The bottom line is that if you give me a good computer with MediaShout installed, I can usually accomplish more and spend less money than anyone using ProPresenter.  But I know what I’m doing, and I will freely admit it’s harder to get a volunteer to start doing what I do.