# Mac ProPresenter to iPad for Visually Impaired



## macsound (Feb 13, 2020)

Looking for a simple solution for a congregation member who has trouble reading from the front screens, but says he would be able to read it from up close on his iPad.

Their first solution was to export a PDF and email it to him so he could follow along, but that's clunky and didn't look forward to the future of having a solution for the masses, should the need arise.
First I was looking into NDI because I was just messing around with it in another scenario. My understanding is shaky, but I think if I had multople receivers all receiving the same video, there would be multiple streams of video, so multicast, not broadcast. Sounds wrong in my head but not sure.

Then I figured Pro Presenter must have a feature. They do and it looks good for actual text, but looks horrendous for pictures. This wouldn't be an issue except the sermon notes are made in powerpoint and exported as jpgs, so the entire sermon isn't actual text.

Then I ventured down the AirPlay path. This could work but I didn't spend enough time to make sure - the aspect ratio is different on an iMac than it is on an iPad. My test showed that when AirPlay was enabled, the output resolution changed, but I was testing using a MacMini, not an iMac, so I only had 1 display connected vs the "2" when an iMac is also outputting video.

Any thoughts?


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## chausman (Feb 13, 2020)

Airplay is going to be miserable. Any connect/disconnect of a display is going to cause the Mac to refresh its displays, regardless of Mac mini vs iMac or physical vs AirPlay. And ProPresenter doesn't always follow those changes while running well.

I might take a look at some of the different streaming solutions for live streaming the entire service. Even if you don't use Live Video cues, the rest of the presentation should show up quite well. Biggest concern might be either internet bandwidth (depending on how the stream was setup) or lag. Spoken word, slide shows, and most lyrics shouldn't be a problem, but it'd be something you'd have to see how bad it is in your particular installation.


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## macsound (Feb 17, 2020)

They currently do livestream the entire service, but in order to compensate for internet issues, there's a builtin 10 second delay, so not so good for words to a song or reading notes along during the sermon. Good idea though. 
Now I've been looking at a box that might be able to be a purpose built airplay transmitter? Like what miracast used to be. Or clickshare. But where the receiver is an app.


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## LesWilson (Feb 18, 2020)

The paid ProPresenter Remote App shows slides on an IOS device. When on the REMOTE tab of the app, you see the current slide and the next. Motion backgrounds do not animate. The problem is that while the iOS device will follow your ProPresentor operator, if the person with the iPad accidently clicks on the next slide, it will advance ProPresenter to the next slide.


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## Amiers (Feb 18, 2020)

LesWilson said:


> The paid ProPresenter Remote App shows slides on an IOS device. When on the REMOTE tab of the app, you see the current slide and the next. Motion backgrounds do not animate. The problem is that while the iOS device will follow your ProPresentor operator, if the person with the iPad accidently clicks on the next slide, it will advance ProPresenter to the next slide.



If you can get him to turn off the touch he can’t touch anything. 

Or 

If you got the money you can just provide him an iPad already set up to be ready to go.


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## Jay Ashworth (Feb 18, 2020)

NOTE to ProPresenter: 

Just bake this in allready, willya?


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## macsound (Feb 18, 2020)

I think they figured out how to disable control on the PP Viewer iPad App from within the mac, but the issue they had was JPGs were drastically scaled, to the point where text wasn't clear because of the amount of compression artifacts.


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## Jay Ashworth (Feb 18, 2020)

macsound said:


> I think they figured out how to disable control on the PP Viewer iPad App from within the mac, but the issue they had was JPGs were drastically scaled, to the point where text wasn't clear because of the amount of compression artifacts.


Is the person generating the JPGs not building them at 1080p? Or is this a pathological process inside PP? (Taking 1080p graphics, scaling them to 320p, and then back, or something equally foolish.)


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## chausman (Feb 18, 2020)

Jay Ashworth said:


> Is the person generating the JPGs not building them at 1080p? Or is this a pathological process inside PP? (Taking 1080p graphics, scaling them to 320p, and then back, or something equally foolish.)



The app is intended for a presenter to control the deck, and do so very quickly. It does not transmit high quality graphics.


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## Jay Ashworth (Feb 19, 2020)

So, *for the purposes we're discussing here*, its pathological. Got it.


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## macsound (Feb 20, 2020)

Jay Ashworth said:


> Is the person generating the JPGs not building them at 1080p? Or is this a pathological process inside PP? (Taking 1080p graphics, scaling them to 320p, and then back, or something equally foolish.)


Ha I've wondered the same thing. But when viewed within pro presenter and on all the displays connected, they look fine. I assume pro presenter intentionally downscales with a fast and dirty converter that deals well with vector text but horrifically with raster text.


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## Jay Ashworth (Feb 20, 2020)

chaus nailes this, above. "That's not what that channel's for".

I may take this up with the PP people.

The alternative, I think, is some hardware device that takes in HDMI and casts it out over your network to compatible software on people's devices; I wonder if anyone makes that yet.


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## sk8rsdad (Feb 20, 2020)

ZeeVee Zyper among others. We have a ZvPro but not the ZvPro i-Series which provides MPEG video streaming.


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## Jay Ashworth (Feb 20, 2020)

macsound said:


> Looking for a simple solution for a congregation member who has trouble reading from the front screens, but says he would be able to read it from up close on his iPad.



A touch more information is necessary, I find on rereading this thread.

Your goal is to put the main screens on a smaller accessibility device?

*Everything* that goes on the main screen? Or just ProPresenter?

If it's everything, what's being used to assemble that program? ATEM, OBS, vMIX, etc?

What is the feed to the big screens? NDI? SDI? HDMI?


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## Jay Ashworth (Feb 20, 2020)

sk8rsdad said:


> ZeeVee Zyper among others.


Those look very spiffy, and I'll dig into them later... but they won't talk to *something that's already on people's devices*, will they?

It didn't even look like they had a receiver app they'd talk to, but I didn't dig deep enough yet; maybe I missed it.


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