# Projection Software for a church



## Catwalker (Jan 17, 2016)

At the church I work at, they have asked me to spec out a new laptop for projection. Coming with that is the question of software. We currently run EasyWorship 2009 to put lyrics and verses up on-screen. The pastor likes to use PowerPoint for sermons, because he can control it with a remote. My question is, are there better options out there? What do you use? 


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## MNicolai (Jan 17, 2016)

I don't know much about it but I've seen MediaShout used at more than a couple churches.


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## rphilip (Jan 17, 2016)

Check out ProPresenter.


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## ematson5897 (Jan 18, 2016)

I'll second ProPresenter. My church uses it, and it is very expandable if you ever need to add extra functionality, such as MIDI triggering or extra screens. Just be sure to run it on a Mac. It manages to bring everything but the greatest of Windows computers to a screeching halt


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## Drew Schmidt (Jan 18, 2016)

ProPresenter is better than anything else. Hands down. Don't believe me? Simply look at the aesthetics of the interface, that's often a tell of the quality of the actual program. 

The only hard part is stepping into it from PowerPoint; especially for volunteers. If you're already using EasyWorship, you'll be fine.

As far as PowerPoint, you can insert the slides into ProPresenter and still use the remote. Alternatively, I like to set ProPresenter as _not_ the top-most window. This allows you to run PowerPoint on top of ProPresenter ... in those few instances where you need to. ProPresenter doesn't hand't PowerPoint's animations terribly well.


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## ratthepoodle (Jan 18, 2016)

I have seen lots of ProPresenter and Mediashout in local churches. My church uses Mediashout 4, because 5 seemed buggy (may have been straightened out with v. 6). So, from what I hear, I would go with ProPresenter.


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## brianberg73 (Jan 21, 2016)

We use EasyWorship 2009 also. We tried EW6 but it was still buggy. Our volunteers aren't very technical and I'd be afraid they'd get lost in ProPresenter. It's more powerful, but also has a steeper learning curve. EW2009 works fine for us and we plan on staying with it until something easier comes out. When EW6 is running smoothly we'll probably switch to that. The computer cannot run Windows 10 since EW won't support it any longer. 

We're considering this programmable presentation remote for our Pastor to control the slides of her presentations. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ronics_VP4910_VP4910_Remotepoint_Jade_RF.html


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## Jonathan D. (Jan 30, 2016)

Our Church uses ProPresenter for all our sites and student camps. Ultimately there will be a learning curve moving from anything else, but really it is pretty easy. 
In our case we have a staff person who sets up the songs and talk slides then they are exported into a bundle which packages any media together. This means the volunteers just need to import the bundle then run it like almost any slide show without needing to know the intricacies of program (though we do try to teach and empower our volunteers so they can make changes if needed). 
There is a phone remote program that can be linked to the computer to allow your pastor to continue to be the one in charge of when slides advance. 
ProPresenter will import PowerPoint files fairly well with the exception of animations. We still have a lot of teachers who use PowerPoint and we import them each week, though they have all been warned not to use any animations.
There are a lot of great features if you want to use them. We have confidence monitors for the musicians which will show the next slide and ignores any backgrounds to create a simple white words on a black background. 
We also have an communications module that lets us use DMX from the lighting console over ACN to trigger backgrounds so our lighting and backgrounds change in sync. We also have a midi setup to allow Ableton Live to trigger a video on the same backgrounds machine so a special video is in sync with audio tracks the band uses. The advantage there is even if the video system died, the band would still have tracks and click so they could continue (in the past we had a video accidentally stopped by the TD with a stray hand which brought the service to a crashing halt).


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## MarshallPope (Jan 31, 2016)

Another vote for ProPresenter. It is by-far the best option I have come across, especially when it comes to putting together a service on the fly. I've used MediaShout quite a bit as well, and while it is more powerful if you need specific, timed cues, it has a much more clunky interface and isn't the best for volunteers.


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## GreyWyvern (Feb 1, 2016)

About nine years ago, when I started working at a church, they were using MediaShout. Man, it was a pain in the butt! A church I was working at previously was using Easy Worship and it was only a tiny bit better. I would say that at that time, PowerPoint was easier to use than either of those. Keeping in mind that I was using those programs nearly 10 years ago and they have likely gotten much better, I still would recommend against using either of them. You can not go wrong with ProPresenter. The switch from MediaShout to ProPresenter was so painless that my volunteer techs were asking why we weren't using it all along. The only learning curve for any of them was switching from Windows OS to MacOS. Once they were inside of the program they didn't have any trouble.


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## blindbuttkicker (Feb 1, 2016)

brianberg73 said:


> We're considering this programmable presentation remote for our Pastor to control the slides of her presentations. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...ronics_VP4910_VP4910_Remotepoint_Jade_RF.html


We have this remote and for our campus it works well, so it has my vote (think size wise of near 130+ feet and even with a lot of people in the pews it works wonders.)


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