ProPresenter 4.0 training

[JoeTech]

I am new to Macs period. And I hate them lol. I have been forced into using ProPresenter 4 for our services. I have been using Media Shout for the past 6 years. We used PP for the first time this past sunday, and it is going to take some getting used to for sure. Anyone else made this transition and felt it was worth it in the long run? It was time for a computer upgrade, and the elders wanted me to go to a Mac instead of a PC and MS that I was used to. I am just weighing not only the learning curve, but how easy/hard it will be to train volunteers. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks

[petereit]

The thing I love most about ProPresenter4 is that training requires absolutely NONE of my time. I simply email this link to new volunteers and ask them to let me know when they have completed the tutorials.

They come to their first technical rehearsal already familiar with the program and ready to jump in. I love it!

[Ace in the hole]

Personally I love macs. Very easy to use and learn. I don't think you will have much trouble in making the switch. That said, if you are the one in charge of the presentation end of the service I would think you should be the one making the decisions / recommendations on what you need for computer and software and not the elders, but that's just my opinion.

[petereit]

Actually, now that I think back through the years, I was at one time in exactly the same boat you're in now. There was a two-month time period where it seemed like all my pastor's time (and lots of my volunteers' time) was being spent swapping dead drives, rebuilding PCs, reinstalling Windows, reinstalling services packs, downloading security updates, yada yada yada, when suddenly my pastor just blew his top and issued the decree: WE WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER PC AGAIN! The next day he ordered our church's first Intel-based iMac.

Since then, every time a PC has failed, we have replaced it with a Mac. Our last PC was the one we used for EasyWorship. My pastor is VERY spontaneous and can change his entire direction on a dime. One of EasyWorship's greatest strengths is its scripture lookup. For speedily retrieving and displaying a verse on the fly, you just can't beat it. That one feature kept us on EasyWorship until ProPresenter4 was released. PP4's scripture lookup is much improved (still not as slick as EasyWorship's, but good enough) so when PP4 was released, we made the final leap and shut down our last PC.

PP4 has been a bit quirky. I think they should have kept it beta for a few more months. The last few updates seem to have stabilized it quite a bit. Since we completely switched over, we have only had one incident when ProPresenter glitched during a service, but it was minor, didn't disrupt the service at all, and was back up in less than a minute.

We've NEVER had to reboot a Mac in the middle of a service -- something that, while not frequent, was quite disruptive when we were running everything on PCs. Now we have four Macs in our sound booth -- two running ProPresenter (we have 4 projectors in our sanctuary), one running our lights and one capturing video. In total, I think we have 5 21" iMacs, 2 24" iMacs, one 27" iMac, three Mac Books, two Mac Book Pros, three Mac minis, three AppleTVs, three iPads, two AirPort Extremes, and one big honkin' 8-core Mac Pro for video.

In the last 5 years, we only had two issues with our Macs. One of our Mac Book Pros had a hinge issue (Apple replaced with brand new Mac Book Pro) and one of the video boards in the Mac Pro quit working (we had mistakenly ordered it with an extra video board so that was a non-issue). We have only had to pop the cover off our Mac Pro, and that was only to swap the video cards and add three 2TB hard drives. Other than that, all of our Apple gear has been completely maintenance-free.

I say all of that for this purpose: there IS life after PCs. Once you get over the learning curve, it's all feet-up and WEE!! the rest of the way.

[[Director] Joseph B]

I will concede that the first six months of my MAC conversion the laptop was nicknamed "Stupid Mac".
It does take a little getting used to but I prefer it now to the PC platform for most things.
I do have windows on my MAC for using 3 programs (MS is one of them). Bootdisk lets you boot up in a windows configuration with no problems.
MAC and Windows - best of both worlds.

[jksbc]

Originally Posted by petereit

Now we have four Macs in our sound booth -- two running ProPresenter (we have 4 projectors in our sanctuary), one running our lights and one capturing video. In total, I think we have 5 21" iMacs, 2 24" iMacs, one 27" iMac, three Mac Books, two Mac Book Pros, three Mac minis, three AppleTVs, three iPads, two AirPort Extremes, and one big honkin' 8-core Mac Pro for video.

Okay, so now I'm jealous!

[petereit]

Take comfort (you PC-to-Mac switchers) that you are definitely not alone.

[JoeTech]

Thanks for the encouragement bro, really. I have been really battling this and just need to let it go and learn it. What is the easiest way to create the service at home (on my macpro) and transfer it to church on sunday morning (to run on a new i5 macbookpro)?

[petereit]

I set everything up in ProPresenter at home, then option-drag the files (from the Documents > ProPresenter4 director) to my DropBox folder (internet file storage).

Hint: If you only drag the files, DropBox will move them, deleting them from the source directory. Option-drag copies the files leaving your source files in tact.

At church, I then option-drag it from my DropBox folder into the Documents > ProPresenter4 folder.

Here's a link to DropBox if you'd like to set up an account. The free accounts give you more than enough storage for swapping ProPresenter files.