One of my roles at work is to run videos, animations, announcements, commercials and the like on the jumbotrons during our large festivals. Basically, anything that’s not live camera is my responsibility. I’ve been using Media Shout for this role, and I’ve been both impressed and frustrated. Persistent bugs, usability problems, and its poor .NET-based interface (.NET isn’t inherently bad, parts of the app are frustratingly unusable), I’ve given ProPresenter another look, since they went to version 3. The ground-up rewrite is quite impressive.
The developers are probably leveraging Apple’s Core Video & Core Image technologies as good as anything else out there. The video and compositing performance is outstanding. While I’d love to write a full review - I could find none on the new version online - I’ll get to the point: ProPresenter 3 is the best lyric and worship software I’ve seen to date. With my buddy Jason’s script-fu, I was able to get nearly a hundred songs with titles (and first-song-lines) imported, formatted, and ready for use with amazing speed. Want to change the font or size of every lyric in your library? 5 seconds, no problem.
I’m building a series of backgrounds to use at FaithQuest next weekend. I’ve asked for the software at work for use in our events, and should have it this week. It’s spendy at $400, but it’s a first-class Mac solution for playing videos, showing announcements and slides, and, most of all, empowering worship with responsive lyrics and smoooooth video backgrounds. It played and crossfaded my H.264-encoded videos (800x600 at 2.5 Mbit/sec) beautifully (why Apple’s own Keynote won’t, I have no idea). Commands when performing are instant, with no hesitation on my MacBook Pro Core Duo.
Speaking of instant: coming from Media Shout, the user interface philosophy caught me off-guard at first. With Media Shout and others, the usage pattern is select, then fire. This is more akin to the way the broadcast industry does things; you cue an element up, so the director (you, in this case) can see it, and then it’s switched to ("fired", or displayed for the masses to see). ProPresenter is the inverse of this, and it feels a bit dangerous: you click, you fire. There is no undo in a live show! This is, for certain, the fastest way to show an element in your presentation. It’s more closely related to the way VJ software might work, with an emphasis on speed and responsiveness. This, and the fact that manipulating elements without accidentally firing them requires a modifier key takes some getting used to. I can see the advantages, though, and it rewards the confident and seasoned operator.
One way I evaluate software by taking the overall view of the arc of its development: how well supported is it? What are the plans for the future? Are current users happy? Brad Weston, the president of Renewed Vision, Inc., was kind enough to call me in person and answer some pre-sales questions. While I didn’t agree with every development decision they made, he gave solid reasons for doing things the way they do, and in their target market - churches doing lyric projection - the design is quite good. They hinted at future plans and features that caught my attention - were they real plans, or just fantasy?
“We have five full-time engineers on staff, and we’re constantly refining it, adding new features, and integrating user feedback”, Brad replied. In my brief time working with them, I’ve found that to be true. I’ve observed several point updates in the space of a month or so, and the fact that they have built PP3 entirely on Apple’s Cocoa frameworks means that they’ll be poised to take advantage of features in Leopard, the next Mac OS update due in October. In particular, I’m hoping for native Keynote support (to play a Keynote file inside PP3, like Media Shout does with PowerPoint) and new Core Animation transitions, perhaps.
I also tried something crazy: I dropped a Quartz Composition in a background to see if it would respond to audio from a microphone. It worked! It couldn’t be looped properly in PP3, but that’s can be changed in the comp. This opens up a whole world of VJ-like possibilities. When I asked about my little experiment, instead of bemusement, he replied, “Oh yeah, we’ve tried that too. We’re hoping to expose the ‘hooks’ inside Quartz Compositions to external MIDI devices in the future.” What’s that mean? It means being able to control dynamic videos and animations with keyboards and other devices - bringing true dynamic media to worship and other events. Amazing.
Our next big Festival is Portland, Oregon on the Waterfront next August. Even with the features it has today, I would deploy ProPresenter 3 right now; by next August, it’s going to have taken the Mac worship software market by storm, and perhaps even some other markets, too. Want to take your worship experience to the next level? Check back after Labor Day for a report on how it performed for the the demanding worship schedule and media-savvy teenagers of FaithQuest 2007.
Posted in Tools, Toys, and Geekery, Work, Worship Media
