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.

Digital Hotcakes

In a previous post on Animated Backgrounds: there was a brief mention of a free demo from Digital Hotcakes. After receiving the demo, I was pleased to find the 25% coupon that accompanied the dvd. The demo itself only had about 5 motion backgrounds, with each lasting from 2-15 seconds. Considering it was free, you don’t have to pay shipping, this is defiantly something to be thankful for. These animated background can be used for Powerpoint, Media Shout, Pro Presenter, and a host of other presentation software. Using animated backgrounds adds professionalism to your service, and offers a visual connection to the words of the song.

You can purchase a single worship volume of Digital Hotcakes dvds starting at $49. If you are looking for a deal they currently are offering all 12 worship volumes for $397. This is a savings of $200.

The only downside to Digital Hotcakes is the inability to modify the backgrounds. Digital Juice offers high quality backgrounds with the option to modify. The software program Juicer is available for free from the Digital Juice website, and Jumpbacks from start at $49 per volume as well.