Worship Presentation Made Easy
In celebration of the newly released ProPresenter version 4, I wanted to take a few minutes and introduce everyone to the incredibly powerful and user-friendly lyric presentation software that’s being used in churches and ministries around the nation. However, in order to understand the ease of use and power behind ProPresenter, it’s important to know what the alternative could be or has been, and how ProPresenter has solved many of the problems of the past.
Printouts, dual computer systems, and a ton of mistakes. . .
For the past seven years I’ve been involved in lyric presentations for worship in some way, shape, or form. I started in the early 2000’s helping with XLT, a weekly prayer gathering for teenagers from parishes all over the Diocese. Way back then (when AOL was still cool) we were using Microsoft Powerpoint. At that time, Powerpoint hadn’t begun to utilize ‘Presenter Mode’ yet and when you were in the middle of a presentation, you weren’t able to see forward or back to know what lyric slide was coming next. This made operating the presentation and being accurate nearly impossible. Not only would you have to know each song being sung inside and out, but you’d have to be familiar enough with the lyric slides to know how much of the next line, verse, chorus, etc. was on the next slide. Timing was difficult and mistakes were abundant.
Before I came on to help, the initial solution for this problem was to save a final copy of the full presentation and print out all of the slides in Powerpoint. There was also a master excel spreadsheet – in alphabetical order – with the corresponding slide numbers that would need to be referenced initially and then the first slide number inputted to jump to that slide. The only way to know which slide you were on was to number them in a color just lighter than the background and to reference that against the book-sized printout of slides to know what was coming next. For the tools given to them, the guys running the lyrics presentation did an excellent job. That being said, it was a cumbersome and frustrating process that allowed for very little flexibility to include or delete any of the slides during the presentation. We finally upgraded our process about six months later. Instead of printouts and spreadsheets, we included a second laptop that had an identical lyric presentation file saved to it. Instead of cross-referencing the spreadsheet and following along on the printout, we were able to use the secondary computer as a guide for the primary. This increased accuracy and timing, but it didn’t fix everything. This continued to be our mode of operation for the next couple of years, but we weren’t able to progress much further using Powerpoint as our main presentation software.
A breath of fresh air.
Many of you are most likely familiar with the Passion movement in the Christian church (and if you’re not, check out www.268generation.com for details). If you’re familiar with the Passion movement and the Passion conferences, then you’re most likely also aware of their progressive and technically advanced worship presentations. Many ministries follow the lead of Passion in ministry and worship presentation – including several that I’ve been a part of. In 2006, I was able to attend one of their conferences in Nashville and was introduced to ProPresenter and ProVideoPlayer by Renewed Vision and in 2007, it became the primary presentation software for the Matt Maher band. Impressed by it’s quick learning curve, multiple features, and powerful performance, we immediately knew that it would become the fore runner of worship presentations around the country and were excited to get to know the program.
Over the past 3 years, I’ve used ProPresenter on over 500 occasions, in both small (20 people) and large (100,000+ people) formats, and for concerts, talks, presentations and more. ProPresenter is incredibly versatile and has virtually endless possibilities. With that being said, let’s take a look at a few of the key features:
Getting Started
*Note: For the sake of this blog, I’ll be referencing ProPresenter 3, but if you’re interested in what’s new about ProPresenter 4, check it out here.*
Getting to know the user interface is the biggest change from a Powerpoint or Keynote type platform. Because ProPresenter is used solely as a lyric presenter, the interface doesn’t have different views, just different frames with the varying parts of the program.
As you can see, the layout is quite different. In the top left is the Program Screen. Across the top half is the Foreground Element window and below that the Background Element window. It is important to think of these two windows as layers in your presentation. The foreground element will ALWAYS be layered over your background element. Lyrics will always be in the foreground and the background is reserved for pictures, videos, or graphic loops to liven up the presentation.
Click to Enlarge
Following the windows clockwise, you’ll see a notifications window where messages can be typed in at any time and shown at any time if necessary. *Note: this message will ALWAYS supersede the other elements. If lyrics are being presented, the notification message will layer over the top anyway.* Above the notifications is the Playlist Window and above that is the Lyrics Library. As song are added into your library, you can drag and drop them into a playlist to create a specific list of songs to pick from. Much like a playlist on iTunes, this creates a filtered list of songs to select from, keeping you from having to search through the entire library to find your songs.
To Be Continued
I could continue to open up and explain ProPresenter, but the truth is there’s just TOO much for one post! Next time We’ll focus on the process necessary to open the program, load the library, load the background elements, and create playlists. If you’d like to follow along, I believe you can still demo Version 3 through Renewed Vision’s website: http://www.renewedvision.com/downloads/ProPresenter3.5.5.dmg. The demo is fully functional, with the exception of a watermark that exists on the Program screen. This will go away if you decide to purchase the software. Also available for download is the brand new version 4 here: http://www.renewedvision.com/downloads/ProPresenter4_b3479.dmg.
