Tips for a new Media Shout 3.0 user?

[kac4him]

with media shout (as well as some other worship software) you can run your power point slides with all the animations as long as they were created in the latest version of power point (2003) and you have power point installed on that computer

so their should be no reason to switch between programs just enter the point presentation into your media shout script and it will play it with animations now (you need to be sure to have the latest version and upgrade of power point as well as the latest upgrade to media shout)

As others have said their is a definite time savings to using media shout (or other worship software) with song lyrics (epically if you subscribe to ccli song select) and you can add a bible verse with a few clicks

As far as the demo goes if you run into problems and run out of time call media complete and tell them the problems you had and need more time they are very good working with ministry's

[Brent Bauman]

We do a lot of drama (and use a lot of video elements) in our services.

MediaShout does a great job of instant playback of audio cues during drama segments (and video for that matter).

Some of the drama's would not have had the impact they've had were it not for the instant audio cues.

[cbccraig]

Originally Posted by kac4Him

with media shout (as well as some other worship software) you can run your power point slides with all the animations as long as they were created in the latest version of power point (2003) and you have power point installed on that computer

so their should be no reason to switch between programs just enter the point presentation into your media shout script and it will play it with animations now (you need to be sure to have the latest version and upgrade of power point as well as the latest upgrade to media shout)

Thanks for the pointer Keith. I am still not able to make it work with the animations though. I have latest PPT and the build of MS that Phil mentioned earlier so that should be ok. In my Power Point presentation I have a chart with 6 seperate fly in test boxes. When I get to it is displays the entire slide along with the words that should fly in on subsequent key presses. There slide is a chart of the overview of John. The individual boxes should have borders, but those do not show up in MS. So when I fire that slide in MS I get the whole slide minus the borders. I then have to hit the space bar 6 times before it advances to the next slide. So for some reason what you say should work does not work for me. Any ideas?

[voyager529]

This topic seems to have forked a bit, but I'll try to add my 2 cents on both counts...

New User Tips:
1. UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE!!!
2. Despite what users of other software titles say, Mediashout, while it doesn't get the prettiness points that Sunday Plus does, is pretty intuitive. Pretty much if you want to get something into a script, if it's a valid media type, you can drag it into the script and you'll be good to go. If you want to alter just about any aspect of the cue, right-click--> properties should have the ability to change the property you want to change.
3. It's an annoyance that the Mediacomplete folks are aware of and are working on, but if you have a property window open and your mouse moves out of that property window, the window loses focus. if you're typing in a text cue, for example, and you nudge your mouse by accident while you're typing, if the mouse leaves the text entry window, whatever you type thereafter will not be entered into the cue. had that happen to me several times.
4. Philo doesn't follow the standard Windows Explorer path. For example, if I have the my music folder open in Philo, Philo recognizes the absolute path (C:\documents and settings\[user]\my documents\my music), and will go up a level in that order, seeing the root (C:\) as the end of the line, instead of the Desktop, like Windows does. be aware of that difference, 'cuz you'll forget if you need to add a cue in a hurry and see the philo isn't going where you intended it to.
4b. earlier builds of mediashout had the 'no cursor no focus' bug mentioned in point #3 in the crew tab section (the lower right where Bob/Ted/Philo/Audie, etc) hang out. I think they fixed it in build 478, but I haven't tried it in a while.
5. if you have a question about how to do something on MS or want to see if anyone else has had the same issues you've been having, go to the mediashout forums on their web site. chances are that there's someone else who's been where you are. additionally, there are tech support people who roam the boards day-in and day-out, answering many of those questions in addition to some knowledgable users who may also have your answer.
6. If your pastor is worried about going to MS 'cuz (s)he uses a remote, if you set MS to "slide show" mode (the drop-down next to the Panic button), MS will respond to left-click/page-down as "next cue" and page-up/right-click as "previous cue". chances are your remote sends either of these commands, so you should be fine. to remind your sunday morning volunteers, you may want to add a comment cue between your worship segment and your sermon segment.
7. as was previously stated, make your wallpaper black. Mediashout steals focus of the secondary monitor as long as it's running and not minimized. if you minimize it (intentionally or otherwise), it will appear as a black screen, as long as you get it up, no harm done. having wallpaper go up can be very distracting to your audience.


Why Mediashout is better than PowerPoint...

First off, Mediashout doesn't replace powerpoint, it compliments it. while our youth services use mediashout every week, our pastor still does his messages in Powerpoint since it has the control you're speaking of in regard to animated text, etc. PPT is good for stuff like that, especially since it's in a linear progression (usually). depending on your worship pastor and team, spontaneity during worship may be frequent and is usually nightmarish for the volunteer in PowerPoint. many times, our youth team has done a common chorus that we simply didn't have scheduled, so we just left the screen blank. Mediashout shines in the spontaneity, allowing for unscheduled songs, text cues, and Bible verses in a way that powerpoint can't possibly match simply by its design.
Mediashout also handles multimedia content much better than powerpoint does. Powerpoint can technically play video, but it handles it very poorly and requires third-party plugins to get motion backdrops working (which again, is a pain at best [voice of experience]). video cues in mediashout are so much easier and more effective to work with than in powerpoint. In MS, you cue is up within a second. PPT can take 10 or more seconds to start...adding a lull that gets your pastor sweating (voice of experience again!). While you can add music to slides, PPT makes it a bit of an annoyance and doesn't give many options. Mediashout actually functions as a basic DJ console and is great if you want to use mediashout for pre and post service music, complete with crossfader.

tired of reading yet? feel free to PM me if you want and more details on anything here, or if you've got any questions...

Joey

[cbccraig]

Joey, thanks for taing the time to type in all those comments. Excellent and very helpful reply. Thanks to all you guys for you thoughts and opinions, you guys are the best. Everything I heard from you guys has at least convincd me to give MS a real good test drive. I can now see how helpful this program can be where before my first point I could not see any reason at all to even take the time to look at it. Joey I may take you up on asking some more questions if I run into something I can't get working. I'm still a bit baffeled about a few things but I'll look through the MS forums tonight and see what I glean from there. Thanks again guys!

[[Admin] osborn4]

And, of course, if Media Shout doesn't do quite what you are looking for, check out Easy Worship, SongShowPlus and/or Sunday Plus.

[Dan Rector]

Originally Posted by cbccraig

I am still not able to make it work with the animations though. I have latest PPT and the build of MS that Phil mentioned earlier so that should be ok. In my Power Point presentation I have a chart with 6 seperate fly in test boxes. When I get to it is displays the entire slide along with the words that should fly in on subsequent key presses. There slide is a chart of the overview of John. The individual boxes should have borders, but those do not show up in MS. So when I fire that slide in MS I get the whole slide minus the borders. I then have to hit the space bar 6 times before it advances to the next slide. So for some reason what you say should work does not work for me. Any ideas?

MS can use two different PPT 'engines', PPT2003 and the older PPT97 viewer. It may be that you are using the older viewer which does not support many of the newer animation features. It sounds like it is recognizing that the slide is built with animation just can't support it in the older version.

[voyager529]

Originally Posted by cbccraig

My pastor in talking to me remarked that he might be able to do his sermon presentations quicker in MS. I had my doubts about this so for his benifit I am looking into it so I can intelligently explain the differences to him and others who ask why we still use powerpoint.

The Mediashout text editor has slightly less functionality than Windows Notepad. I hate it, personally. In the event that God called me to be in front of the congregation instead of behind it, I'd be doing my sermon notes in Photoshop and using MS for Bible and Video cues only. I don't know what your Pastor's notes look like, but if they use clip art, line drawings, or anything else but plain old boring text, he's gonna be very dissapointed if he tries to make them just in Mediashout. Nonetheless, I'd encourage you to have him take a test drive for himself and see how he feels doing so...maybe he could learn me a thing or two on how to make an effective sermon note sequence in Mediashout. Still, idk if I could give up the patterns, gradients, and shadows in my photoshop documents that make them stand out. conversely, I think that teaching your pastor Photoshop may be a much bigger challenge than making sermon notes using the mediashout text editor, but your mileage may vary. does your pastor do graphic design in his spare time?

Joey

[cbccraig]

Originally Posted by voyager529

I don't know what your Pastor's notes look like, but if they use clip art, line drawings, or anything else but plain old boring text, he's gonna be very dissapointed if he tries to make them just in Mediashout.

I think that teaching your pastor Photoshop may be a much bigger challenge than making sermon notes using the mediashout text editor, but your mileage may vary. does your pastor do graphic design in his spare time?

Joey

No he doesn't use much clip art at all. Aside from a few charts and text fly in's it's pretty much text. He's pretty much graphic design and compter challenged so I really don't see him preparing his sermon in anything else but power point. He could probably learn something new but having the time to learn it would be his problem.

[dmot]

It might help to think of presentation software as media aggregator/presentor software. You have all kinds of media on your computer (ppt, mpg, swf, wmv, mp3, etc.). Worship software lets you pick the media you want and organize it for a worship service (developing a "script" in MS). When you fire a cue in the script MS just follows the path to the media and plays it. Powerpoint does this to a limited degree but isn't near as flexible or as easy as presentation software.

[gwalker]

A lot of people from Australia use Presenter 3 for their worship software and hot key to PowerPoint when appropriate. Presenter 3 does songs very well but not motion graphics.