ProPresenter file & media & library strategies

[Arlin]

I am thinking about purchasing ProPresenter 5 (Win), right now we use PowerPoint 2011 (Win).

How can PP5 be configured so that media, files, songs, playlists, etc. can all be synced and shared between the church computer(s) & home computers for those of us that build the presentation files at home?

Right now, we use a shared dropbox folder for all our PowerPoint files.
At the start of the week, the pastor and worship leader put songs (blank PPT files with only the words), video files, & sermon PPT files into the dropbox folder.
Our team of PPT volunteers then take what was placed in the dropbox folder & build the complete PPT presentation.
Sunday morning, we just fire up the worship computer, wait a bit for the sync to finish and run the PPT.
After the service, the files are deleted/archived and we start fresh for next week.
This works REALLY well. I LOVE DROPBOX!

I want to do something similar with PP5.
The sync feature looks like it is only intended for computers on the same LAN.
Maybe 'hot folders' could be used by locating those 'hot folders' in our shared dropbox folder?

I have a feeling that keeping all movie media for PP5 in the dropbox would fill our dropbox up quickly (using the free version). So, I was thinking our worship leader would maintain the complete media library on her local computer and copy the needed media for that week in the dropbox (that is essentially what we do now with PPT).
But, songs don't take up much space. So, I think the song library could probably be kept in the dropbox folder.

I am unfamiliar with how PP handles all its media files.

THANKS!

[csr]

Arlin,

You could still use the new sync feature in Pro5 with Dropbox, but don't sync your media files since that will take up the most space. Sync just uses an intermediate folder (start with a blank folder) to create sync folders for the different elements. When you sync up or down it puts things where they need to go. Pro5 can also sync the playlists so you can actually manage the playlists creation a little better now as well.

Hot Folders are for more temporary files like announcement graphics or sermon slides.

Since Dropbox creates a local cache of the files, you can technically keep your library in Dropbox, but you'll want to do some stability testing on it to make sure everything is kosher with your setup and you don't find any weird bugs with it.

You'll definitely want to have your media files stored locally on the projection computer whether you have them all there or just build up your files as things get imported through bundles. Bundled media is not added to the Video/Image Bin so you won't have immediately access to the files. Those files are placed in the media repository that is linked from Prefs>General.

[EricE]

Using ProPresenters Sync feature to sync your local library folder to dropbox is definitely the safest way to go, although there seem to be plenty of people working directly out of dropbox.

I wouldn't be comfortable doing that...