ProPresenter Overview I

This information comes from ProPresenter’s website.

What is ProPresenter?
ProPresenter has been the preferred lyric presentation system for churches and ministries around the world for years. Now with a fresh new look and incredible new video engine, ProPresenter has never been easier or more spectacular. ProPresenter 3 has been completely re-written from the ground up and is now a Universal binary which means it fully supports both PowerPC as well as Intel processor Macs natively. Thus, it’s very fast and very responsive. The whole program is scalable to adjust to any size display and allows for slides and backgrounds to grow or shrink easily. This looks beautiful on all those new Macs with high-resolution displays and comes in very handy when you want to see a lot of slides or clips at one time.

Dynamic Scripture Look-up                

Quickly search your favorite version of the Bible for one or more verses for nearly instant display. So when your Pastor makes an unexpected call for a verse, you’ll be ready with the built-in database of bibles. You can also save sets of looked up scriptures as well as format found verses into a sequence of slides by paragraph, verse, or custom delineation.

Video Playback

Video playback has never been better as we’ve incorporated the video playback engine of ProVideoPlayer into ProPresenter 3. Now you get gorgeous, high-quality cross-dissolves between backgrounds while text is displayed over them. Whether you’re using background video loops or foreground presentation videos (i.e. a sermon), you’ll find ProPresenter’s video playback functionality outstanding. Most any video you can play in QuickTime Player can be played smoothly and reliably within ProPresenter. Unlike some of our competitors, you can switch video backgrounds as often as you wish within a song, and even switch them dynamically on the fly!

Plus, when playing back foreground presentation videos, the operator has accurate elapsed and remaining time indicators to make the smoothest transition possible to the next cue of your program. Foreground videos are different than background videos in that they may contain an audio track, will remove any text overlay, and don’t loop. They are depicted by the movie camera icon in the top left of the slide.

Song Automation

Now you can add an audio track to a song and sequence the slides of that song to the attached audio track! A new audio tab has been created where all audio clips will be stored. As an added bonus, sound effects can also be stored and triggered here to create foley functionality (such as funny noises, laughter, applause, door slam, etc. - as denoted by the pink speaker icon vs. the green tune icon).

This is a fantastic solution for any environment without a band, such as a children’s program, a small church, or traveling ministry. After connecting your Mac to your sound system, ProPresenter becomes your all-in-one audio, lyric, and video playback tool!

For those without ProPresenter try using iTunes to simplify the audio aspect of your service.

ProPresenter Overview II has even more information about this amazing software.

Introduction to Music Loops in Worship

This article was originally published on The Worship Community.

If you are part of the growing community of worship leaders, there is a good chance that you are at least mildly acquainted with loops. Loops have, to varying degrees, become an important tool to many modern worship leaders. From simple drum loops to full-song sequences, artists such as Steve Fee, Chris Tomlin and the David Crowder Band have integrated loops into their songs.

From the standpoint of a worship band, loops can be very useful as they can be used to compensate for a lack of musicians (a very real and prominent issue in many churches). This can mean recording in a real instrument (such as a lead guitar part) or sequencing out an instrument using any one of a number of virtual instruments (such as those found in Reason or Kontakt). Using these tools will also allow for the use of non-traditional instruments such as vintage synths, a glockenspiel or various types of percussive instruments.

Further, the use of loops allows a worship band to more accurately perform another artist’s song - some songs, like Steve Fee’s “We Shine” would likely sound lackluster without a loop behind it.

Many worship leaders avoid the use of loops for a number of reasons, one being the perception that running loops requires sophisticated know-how and equipment. The reality is, running loops is relatively simple and specialized equipment is not necessarily required. If need be, loops can easily be played from an iPod, for instance. While many loops must be set to a click track to be used (therefore requiring in-ear monitoring and a metronome), most percussive loops do not require a click track to be used, and can be monitored using a stage monitor.

Writing loops, however, requires a greater investment of both time and money. The worship music community has latched onto two particular programs to serve their loop writing needs: Ableton Live and Propellerheads’ Reason. Both are capable of loop-creation, but have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Ableton Live, as the name suggests, shines through in the live situation - it is stable and efficient in its ability to trigger loops, trigger the metronome and running softsynths live. Ableton Live 7 has a strong set of instruments and effects, giving the user a relatively large set of tools to write and perform with.

Reason, on the other hand, is more finely-tuned as a writing and sequencing environment. Not only does it have a large selection of instruments, but its advanced instrument and effect routing allows for the creation of very unique sounds. Reason, in contrast to Ableton Live, provides very few provisions to those wanting to run loops and sequences in a live situation.

As an emerging trend, we are beginning to see loops and sequences finding their way into modern worship. Not only are loops able to enhance the sound of most worship bands, but they are able to give smaller, struggling worship bands the kind of relief and assistance they are looking for.

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