New computer

[petereit]

What kind of signal are you feeding into the Ocean Matrix?

[Gracetech]

Originally Posted by lisalou111

Are you able to run ProPresenter 5 on a Mac Mini taking advantage of the three displays?

Actually i would say it depends. What resolution are you wanting to work with? What types of files? The only time i recommend Mac Mini's is for digital signage. While you can now change out the graphics in the mini's with dedicated graphics it still isn't easy. Meaning that once the abilities of the software outreach the hardware you will need to upgrade to a new computer.

Now the iMacs and MacBook Pros are under the same limitations but they also offer alot higher end graphics cards. Review your options before sinking money you will never get back.

crt

[lisalou111]

The output from the computer to the Ocean matrix is VGA. The signal is then split to feed the two screens up front, the screen at the back of the church for the choir, and the confidence monitor on our desk. We are currently not using the feature of having a different feed to the back choir screen (stage monitor) as the computer does not have a third output.

My goal is to upgrade the computer and have the functionality of the different screen on the stage monitor. (Before replacing the projectors, we used to turn the feed to the front screens off through the Ocean Matrix when there was a solo within a song and then turn them back on when the congregation was to join in. Now, the projector feed does not turn back on as quickly. I am not sure why.)

The current computer is a Pentium D (not dual core) with 2 gig ram. It is glitching on us all the time, so I don't think that adding a third card is going be a solution. I was hoping to go to a Mac and run Media Shout, but Media Shout for Mac does not have the Stage monitor function available.
I believe that our projectors are high def. They are less than a year old. So, having the signal to them be in high def would be optimal.

Thank you for your input!

Lisa

[petereit]

Cool! Yes, a Mac Mini would serve your purposes very well! You would just need a Thunderbolt-to-VGA adapter (which might actually be included with a Mac Mini) to feed your Ocean Matrix.

Use the HDMI output for your Mac Mini monitor.

Get ProPresenter's USB to DVI/VGA/HDMI External Video Adapter to feed your confidence monitor...

- OR -

If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch available, you can use it wirelessly to feed the video to your stage display. You would just set the iPhone/iPad/iPod next to your display and plug it into your confidence monitor.

[Gracetech]

Lisa for your setup i'm wondering why you are heading in the Apple direction? You are using Media Shout and not ProPresenter right?

A fresh Windows PC with decent graphics card is going to outperform a comparably priced Apple PC.

Most of the churches i work with usually think it's windows that is causing the issues their PC when it's usually everything else. First off in presentation world you should refresh every 3 years. Also any changes should be made by a qualified tech. A good meaning member does not a good technician make.

Once the system is setup and running right lock it down or make an image copy of it. You would be surprised at the software i find installed on both platforms that people just installed for the sake of installing. With all the extra software running it would rob power from what the computer should be focusing on, and that is showing the presentation.

crt

[petereit]

Well, I guess that's where the Mac really shines. We're running ProPresenter on a 5-year-old iMac, driving a two-projector-wide edge blended screen and it still runs as fast as the day we bought it. And you don't need a "qualified tech" to set up a Mac. You just plug it in and it works!

[lisalou111]

That is a very good question. The reason that I was thinking of going the Mac direction is based on my experience with Macs vs. Windows machines. My experience has been what Mark has referred to...you just plug it in, and it works - no matter how old or how new it is. And it is far more intuitive in running programs than the Windows environment. Also, our pastor and his wife (who provides a great deal of the media to be shown on Sundays) have Macs. So, there are conversion issues (not insurmountable, just time consuming).

The major drawback to going Mac is converting to ProPresenter from Media Shout. Moving to a new program may be too much for the team. We just upgraded from Media Shout 3 to 4, and in the process upgraded "parts" of the old computer. It is still quite glitchy. (We have been asked to keep a log of error messages and that list is quite long.) And with having to work on a "temporary" computer while the old computer was being upgraded, losing songs in our database, breaking the links with backgrounds and media, etc etc. has put the entire team on edge.

Being able to run the third view (stage monitor) is really running our decision. If that functionality was available with Media Shout on the Mac, we would have already made the purchase. I have been hoping to wait until Media Shout has that function available for the Mac, but that does not look as though it is on the horizon.

So, my thought has been to buy a new Windows computer through Media Shout and have them set it up before it is even shipped out with the third video output. Or we limp along until Media Shout comes along with the Stage Monitor function for the Mac.

[ECC Media]

We too used to use MediaShout 3, 4 & 4.5 on a Windows based machine - the biggest issue we found was the video codec issue. We could play 90% of all video formats but every once in a while it decided to 'hang' the machine as it attempted to play a file and this would cause us grief during a service to wait for the machine to restart, Our hardware was sound (we have a Computer & Networking Microsoft Certified Expert on our media team) but the program was not as glitch-free as we had hoped.
In a Windows environment, there's just way too many variables to deal with in terms of hardware, software versions and drivers. One of the church staff decided it was time to upgrade his Mac G5 computer and go with a MacBook Pro - so we got the hand-me-down G5, put a solid state drive into it, added some more RAM to it and switched to ProPresenter. From a video background viewpoint alone, this setup is BY FAR better than our experience with MediaShout.

MediaShout had its place, but being that we are a very visual media driven church, the motion backgrounds behind our lyrics and the ability to change the properties of the motion backgrounds on the fly (ie. change hue, brightness, loop speed) made ProPresenter a no-brainer for us.

The latest version of ProPresenter manages the video and stills WAY better than both the previous version and the MediaShout program. In the ProPresenter 5, you just drop videos and pictures into a folder somewhere on your drive and tellProPresenter to monitor that specific folder - then whenever you open ProPresenter, all of your latest files are automatically added to your media library WITHOUT NEEDING AN IMPORT!!!
Similarly, if you delete a video from your video library while in Finder (Windows Explorer equivalent) that video will no longer appear in ProPresenter the next time you open it! NO MORE BROKEN LINKS.

If you have any other questions regarding MediaShout vs ProPresenter - from a team that has used both software products extensively, feel free to ask me anything.

Hope this helps!

[petereit]

I also love ProPresenter's tight integration with CCLI's SongSelect. It takes about 30 seconds to get a new song in and formatted. We sometimes have old-time guest ministers and it's awesome when they start singing some old song out of nowhere that no one has heard of and by the end of the first verse we have lyrics up on the screens.

So for the obvious question, "How do we convert that huge library of songs we already have in MediaShout," my answer is, "Don't."

[Gracetech]

Originally Posted by petereit

Well, I guess that's where the Mac really shines. We're running ProPresenter on a 5-year-old iMac, driving a two-projector-wide edge blended screen and it still runs as fast as the day we bought it. And you don't need a "qualified tech" to set up a Mac. You just plug it in and it works!

I'm going to have to call you on this one. First off your not using hard data that amounts to anything. Resolution is what is important. I can easily run 2048X768 off of 10 year old hardware. Pushing 3 megapixels or more will take more recently made hardware.

Macs always need qualified techs. Why do you think they are the only ones that make Macs? How many people do you know that go out and pick up a new graphics card for their new mac and install it themselves? Why do you think "Genius" Stores were created? I get call from all my Apple friends all the time.

I don't care what computer you are using. Get a qualified technician to look at it and it will always run better.

Any one can fix a car but would you trust anyone to?

crt

[petereit]

We've been running Macs for 6 years. We've never had to put a new graphics card in one.

[Ace in the hole]

The mac pro is the only mac than is really upgradeable as far as graphics cards go. iMacs and mac minis and all the laptops have the graphics built into the motherboard. Anyone with good mechanical skills CAN work on a mac and replace parts like hard drives and memory. There are a lot of tutorials on the web that will walk you through the steps to do upgrades but for the most part they require very little service. I have had macs for 15+ years and they have always served me well with almost no issues. Are macs perfect? no, they can have problems just like pc's but I have to agree that for the most part they just work and will work 5 years down the road just like the day you bought it.