Appropriate for Our Church

[Nickhamm]

Ok, this one gets a bit of background. I am the only one in our entire church who nows how to run any of the media, sound and video. Currently we have a "blended" service where half of the songs are traditional and played on an organ from a hymnal. The other half are currently contemporary music tracks from CDs until we get a live band. I project the lyrics for both types of songs on the screen. Between the songs I have a small slide with a picture and text on it saying what we are doing at that particular time (ex. Offering, Children's Moments, Morning Prayer, etc.)

To prepare this, I build a play list in Windows Media Player (used to be iTunes, but it was too resource hungry) with the contemporary tracks for the service. Then I build a PowerPoint 2007 presentation that has a blank slide, all the slides for the first song, a slide for Welcome and Announcements, the next song slide, a slide for the offering, a slide for the Morning Prayer, the slides for the next song, a slide for Children's moments, the slides for the Pastor's sermon, a slide for Sermon prayer, the slides for the last song, a slide for Benediction, and then the slides for our choral benediction, then a black slide. I also prepare a looping PowerPoint show for the announcements before and after church. To present each Sunday, I open Windows Media Player, the announcements presentation, then the service presentation. I start the announcements presentation in Dual Monitor presenter view and let it loop until a cue to start service. Then I exit the announcements slide show and flip over to the service slide show and start it to show lyrics for our opening song. If our opening song is a contemporary song, then I have to switch to Window s Media player in the middle of that and start playing that song. I have to keep flipping between PowerPoint and windows media player to play music.

The pastor's notes change every week, and they include a combination of scriptures, pictures, quotes, and general bullet point notes expressing certain points. They are usually prepared ahead of time in PowerPoint format so I can copy them into the presentation and then format them. The pastor also likes to use relevant scipture not included in his original presentation.

I am looking for something that would make this process much faster, easier, and is user friendly. I am the only one who runs everything in our church and would like to have some software that is easy to teach someone in a short amount of time. I have already listed what I do above and so you can gather some requirements from that. I am willing to go any platform, Windows, Macintosh, or Linux. Our current machine (which can be replaced) is as follows:

Dell Inspiron 6000
Windows XP Home
1.6GHz Pentium M Processor
ATI Radeon x300 128MB graphics
2GB DDR2-533 Memory
60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive
Everything else is factory standard

Thanks for your help.

[mandysmum]

We use Song Show Plus and it would do all that you mentioned. You can still use the powerpoint if you are more comfortable setting up your presentations or it comes with a Slide Show Builder that you can use. Music can also be played from within song show plus. Any slides that you would use week after week can be saved and then just add any new ones you need. I think the program is fairly easy to use. You can make it more complicated as time goes on with motion backgrounds, transitions, switching backgrounds on the fly during songs, and much more, but you dont have to start out with all that. Playing the program is as simple as clicking the mouse.
The system requirements for the newest version of SSP can be found at ssplash.com I'm not sure if they still offer a demonstration version or not but they used to and it was good for 60 days to get the feel for the program before you buy it.
I know others use different programs and not sure what all they can do but I think they are all pretty similar in what you can do with them.
At the top of this page I just noticed it is sponsored by go fish media. They are the ones who produce Song Show. Check them out.

[waynehoskins]

I'm pretty sure I'm leaving at least one out, but here are some of the choices today:
-Easyworship
-Mediashout
-Sunday Plus
-Liveworship
-Opensong
-Songshow Plus

They all use a database or library system for songs, so making a set is easy, and you don't inadvertently get an announcement slide in the middle of a song.

Of these, I have experience with Easyworship (EW), Liveworship, and Opensong.

Easyworship is Windows-only, and commercial, about $400. It should be able to do everything you're looking for .. I don't know about playing music, but that's easy. It will import Powerpoint files as a modular element (which it sounds like you need for your sermon notes and announcement loop). It also needs two video cards to run (well, two screen areas). You get a control screen on your local display, and you get program output on the extended screen.

Liveworship is Macintosh only, and mimics much of the functionality of EW, and is in the same price class. I don't recall if it'll handle Powerpoint or not. It also requires two screens.

Opensong is free, open-source, and cross-platform-ish (there are currently Windows and Macintosh builds, and rumor is the developers are working on a Linux build). It will work with one screen or two: if you have two screens you get the normal control screen and program; if you have only one, it uses keyboard shortcuts (C=chorus, 1=verse 1, ...) for easy navigation. It's the only one I know of that will work nicely with only one display, and I've used that many a time then we forgot to bring the EW computer and had to run everything off my single-screen Mac laptop. The catch is that it doesn't understand Powerpoint, so that's a drawback for your situation.

Easyworship and Liveworship have free short-term demos (30 days EW, 2 weeks LW) you can download and see if they do what you want before you take the plunge. Opensong is of course free.

All are a huge step forward from using Powerpoint for song lyrics.

My church had been on Easyworship for a couple of years, but that computer got the Internet AIDS, so when we replaced it this summer I built up a super-duper Intel machine, currently running Windows (ugh) and put Opensong on it. I'm a big fan of open-source and free, plus we lost our installer/serial numbers to EW before I was around. My goal is to, whenever the Linux build of Opensong is ready, to drop Windows and go Linux with that machine.

So there you go. My biases being what they are, I'd look first at Opensong, especially if you don't have a two-display machine. You can always jump back to PPT for announcement loops and sermon slides, or you can compose them as "slide" elements in Opensong.

Easyworship would be right behind it in my list. It will do PPT and on-the-fly scripture (Opensong will do scripture too, by the way), but you've got to have a two-display machine.

Hope that helps! I'm sure others will chime in shortly.

[macdwyer]

There are numerous presentation software on the market and most offer trial periods. There are some free presentation software (just google free worship presentation software, or go to openlp.org as an example or opensong) options that will probably not give you the options of a "paid" software, but they will be a step up from powerpoint. We use LiveWorship, which is a cross-platform program , at my church and MediaShout for my other job. However, both of those programs are pretty spendy. Song Show Plus is a good program, but I would encourage you to take your time and try a bunch of stuff out. I do have one question though, do you have any other way to play your audio source like another CD player, or an MP3 player. I would create the playlist on your computer, then burn it to a CD, or put on an mp3 player in the order in which you need to play it. Then run your lyric on some sort of presentation software (other than powerpoint). Don't know if that would be an option.

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by macdwyer

We use LiveWorship, which is a cross-platform program

My bad, I could have sworn it was Mac only. Well, that makes it an even-running candidate to Easyworship, but I think I prefer Easyworship to it a bit. Not trying to knock it or anything; it's just been a year since we tried it out for two weeks (or maybe it was a month?), and I've slept since then.

And I agree on the audio part. If you can get that away from the computer, it will make things from the video perspective easier.

[Nickhamm]

I had tried ShowShow Plus in the past and found it very robust, but complicated to use. I also gave EasyWorship a shot and I liked it, but it didn't have the built in Audio controls while showing lyrics and to go from PowerPoint to On-the-fly scripture to back to the PowerPoint where it left off (aka resume) I had to manually find the slide I was on to bring it back up. I was hoping for a bit more "smoothness" between the two. Also, price isn't a big issue as my church has a nice chunk of change since they have refused to upgrade a bunch of other stuff (getting them to spend it is the trick, but I have that mastered.)

[jameshorsley197]

I have used or tried most of the name software and most will do what you ask. Like those above I reccomend that you download the demo of each, probably best to do one at the time and give it a good try before you try the next. One thing I have done and this can now be done in Easy Worship also from their last upograde is play all my music from within the program. I know some folks don't agree with that but when you're tech people are computer illiterate you make it as easy as possible. All our music has been copied to the computer and in some software you can imbed a soundtrack with the lyrics and keep it permanently attached to be used over and over again. They are all good programs and have their quirks and weaknesses but are faitly easy to learn andd teach to others. Any would make your job a whole lot easier

[Lucas]

SongShow Plus will do what you want, easy to use/teach, but also very robust and customizable to your needs.

And with several updates every year often with new features in each update it's sure winner

(Yes, I'm a tad biased, but in a nice way )

Here's the promo video for SongShow plus

[iamgap]

I can only speak for Song Show Plus, as that is all I have used.

The most recent version allows you to attach audio to a song in the program list. It then plays that audio as soon as you display that song from your program. I am not sure if the other programs can do this. If they can't, it probably is on their short list of things to make available.

It is fairly easy to add songs, slides, images, videos, and such to the program. Once in the program, you can advance through the program with the + sign. The only variable to that is going from a slide show to another item requires holding down the Ctrl key, otherwise it will just advance to the next slide. Using the Ctrl/+ combo moves from item to item also, and helps when the MoM ends in the middle of a song.

gap

[gwalker]

Nick,
The link below has two short (7 minute) demonstration videos of EasyWorship.
http://www.onlinemmi.com/eyedrops/easyworship.htm

[Smob]

I would suggest that you download a free trial for as many of the programs mentioned as possible and try them. I have done that before and made a selection that best matched what it is that we do in our church. Try them out, see what is easy to learn and does what you want most closely and go with it. I think any of them will be simpler than what you are doing today.

[shayward]

Easy Worship includes a site license, meaning that as you are trying to recruit new media volunteers (do it well before you hit burn-out) then they can install Easy Worship at home and learn on it. Plus it's really easy to use.

The others are great choices too.