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[Noah D Mitchell]

Looking to upgrade from PowerPoint into something a little easier to handle for our volunteers.


What do you use, and why? %99 of our stuff is just text, but certain special events/services we use video and images.


It seems like most of the contenders in the space share a price range ($300 plus) and feature set, so what would make me choose a particular program?


Do any/most of these allow the option of a remote control for slide advancement? (thinking teaching seminars/etc where the speaker has control).


Thanks in advance!


Jonathan

[andrew cupples]

Hi Jonathan, we use Zionworx, which has the benefit of being free... It's quite easy to use, and there is some discussion in the forums about using a remote control. Worth downloading to have a play with if nothing else.
Andrew

[Noah D Mitchell]

Along with the original question, another:


Does anyone here use software that presents chords/music to the band? I've noticed several of these programs provide a 'stage screen' output that you can use to display music to the band synced with what the congregation is seeing.


The one I'm demoing at the moment, Worship Live, is pretty intuitive. You can import a song with chords, and only the lyrics go to the projection, while a 'stripped down' output with lyrics and chords goes to the stage. I'm testing with three monitors and it seems to work as billed.


Pros/cons? Other than the cost of the equipment (which isn't an issue as we've got the hardware we need) are there other significant problems with something like this?

[Fred Dorado]

We use http://www.liveworship.com/

to be honest, the only reason I started using it because I wanted to use something other than powerpoint and it was already here.

It is really not the most powerful program, but it works pretty well and it's biggest benefit is that it is pretty easy to use and simple to understand.

for the $299 it costs I would go a different way, most likely pro presenter based on reputation.

two things holding me back.
1. I don't have anyone who would understand how to make use of the features and switching would create problems and not help
2. the cost, though not expensive compared to others it does nothing for me now

[Mike Spitzer]

We use ProPresenter. There are a lot of features that you won't use at first, but you're unlikely to grow out of it, so to speak. The documentation is really good and it shouldn't take that long to get up to speed on handling a basic service.

I've also helped at several churches recently that used EasyWorship. It's not as featureful or as good looking (in my opinion) as ProPresenter, but it works very well and would be easier to learn I think.

As for the music presentation, I've never done it myself, but I've seen it done using ProPresenter at another church. The guy running it basically had his laptop set up with 3 screens. The laptop was the control, screen 2 was what the congregation saw and screen 3 was the music display for the band. I'm almost positive that EasyWorship can do the same. If you like Worship Live and it's working for you, I'd say stick with it. I don't know about pros and cons since I just mix FOH and it doesn't affect me. The worship band seemed to like it, though, and it wasn't really extra work for the guy running video.

-mS

[Michael Galica]

I started out using MediaShout and absolutely love that piece of software, but for the church I'm at now I've been using openLP.  It has the distinct bonus of being free, and fairly intuitive at least to my brain.  It supports dual-monitor, and a new version is in beta but not 100% usable for Sunday Morning.

[Jordan Wolf]

I greatly prefer EasyWorship.  Powerpoint presentations integrate very nicely; video and image files are easily found, added, and used.  They have a good music database and there are a number of scripture versions available for use.  It's nice to be able to compact all the files together for easy transport.  Plus, you get a free demo.

[John Fiorello]

+1 for Media Shout.

IMO, less confusing initially than ProPre, and now it works on the mac, so no excuses   It's not the cheapest option, but it's the best integration of on-the-fly presenting and script building I've used so far...

my 2 cents, anyway...


JF

[Taylor Phillips]

+1 for Media Shout.

IMO, less confusing initially than ProPre, and now it works on the mac, so no excuses   It's not the cheapest option, but it's the best integration of on-the-fly presenting and script building I've used so far...

my 2 cents, anyway...


JF

I found the exact opposite to be true.  I found ProPresenter to be very intuitive, and was able to edit things without too much trouble.  I found MediaShout to be very confusing and unintuitive.  It's taken me much longer to just get the lyrics on the right slides in Media Shout as it did for me to put together the whole service in ProPresenter.  I think ProPresenter should be available for Windows now, so no excuses here either!  Of course, I haven't used the newest version of Media Shout, so maybe it's better, but it crashes the computer every time it's turned on at one church I help at, so they still use the old one.

[Matthias Heitzer]

Our church uses "songbeamer". Really easy to use, tidy GUI.
Compatible with powerpoint (uses the powerpoint viewer as a plugin. that's handy if microsoft decides to change the file formats), xps and of course can import ccli songs directly.
The software can run from a stick and has really low system requirements.
It offers a lot of automations for font size, picture size, video size, etc.. but advanced users still can tweak their custom settings.

It's very flexible and fast and easy to learn.

[ProSoundWeb Community]