Screen monkey, freepath, others???

[buggyboy]

I've run into the same problem every other small (or tiny) church has had when beginning to incorporate multimedia into services. Namely, having to drag video players onto the projector, maximize them, and hit play.

We are running xp pro, open song, and open office.
(Read, free, free, and free).
No internet access at the church.

I'm open to other software for lyric display, but that's not my primary concern here. I want to be able to:
1. que up multiple video files (photos would also be a plus)
2. display those clips on the projector without any flickering or unsightly frames
3. select punch in and punch out points on each video clip.

I've downloaded screen monkey 3.4 and played with it. It would seem to be quite useful, but so far I've been unable to send the output to my secondary display. also, it refuses to play or que video files. the dvd feature refuses to que to a selected place, instead it starts at the beginning every time. (this bug is know according to the screen monkey forum).

I find the layers functionality to be overkill. I don't anticipate using motion backgrounds.


I also downloaded the freepath demo. it is, if possible even clunkier that screen monkey.


So, my question is... what do you use?

I'm often a one man A/V department. There are a few others that can run open song, but i need a simple solution to play video clips.

Thanks,
David

[Arlin]

Sounds like you are using a dual display configuration, right?

On many video drivers, there is an option to automatically play videos full-screen on the secondary display. So, you can keep the video player and its controls handy on the one screen where it can stay windowed. But on the other screen, the video is shown full-screen.
I think the setting is called "full screen video mode" or "Theatre mode"
I found this on a quick search: http://www.ssplash.com/Support/Knowl...c/Default.aspx

I am not sitting at a dual screen setup right now, so I cannot verify this stuff....

[petereit]

I have used Screen Monkey exactly as you described. It's an awesome little app once you get to know how to use it. You'll have far more success if you rip your DVD clips to .mov or .mp4 files first (which is true for just about ANY worship software, so you may as well get in the habit now.)

[buggyboy]

It is a duel display using an nivida geforce 6200.
I've heard of this theatre mode idea before. If you have experience with it, I have a question. How does it work? That is, can you preview/cue the video clip on your primary monitor before sending the video output to the projector?

That would be ideal. I've looked up the gefore product pages and such, and so far I've found no way (that I understand) of setting that up.

If, on the other hand, you are not able to preview on your primary monitor... that would be a deal breaker. In that case I'd have to have an editing capability to trim the clips to the correct portions.

Thanks for your input.

If anybody knows the way to set up the geforce 6200, I'd love to hear from them.

Or any other solutions to this problem.

Thanks

[jameshorsley197]

Personally have tried all those plus a lot of the other free stuff. In the long term the more you get into multimedia the more you are gonna want to do more . Spend the money and buy a good worship software program. All the top 3 or 4 are very good and do almost anything a church could want. I have tried the way you are looking at trying and found out it can be very frustrating. By the way I do not work for any worship software company. Just a little church preacher trying to give my little church the best that I can.

[six5tring]

As already mentioned I would edit any video clips before hand.

Screen monkey works fine. I use it quite regularly for awards shows with 'disco' afterward. Makes use of the otherwise boring static screen for 4 hours!

Of anything that I have come across screen monkey is probably the best free windows ap for what you are trying to create.

Freepath is no longer free I had great hope for it but at $100 a year it went from a good program to off the radar for me.

Don't know if there are any free v-jay software that may work?

Ben

[buggyboy]

I totally agree with James. The "right" answer is to shell out some money and do this right.

But (you could see this coming, right?) that's not going to happen. If you could see the medieval sound gear we have, and the pico sized congregation, you'd understand that anything with dollar signs attached is out of the running before the race starts.

I had really high hopes for screen monkey since the developer designed for just the purpose. I've just had poor results when testing on my laptop. I'll probably give it a shot in the main projector computer eventually, but with no internet access at the church and screen monkey needing .NET 3.5 (which isn't installed) I'll need to cart the computer home to update and install.

I'm cool with ripping dvds prior to use. any recommendations for programs for that?

I still would like to try the "theatre mode" if anyone can walk me through that on the geforce 6200.

thanks for the help.

[superfly]

We use OpenLP in our church (the new version that is still under development) as it can display videos and images in addition to songs and Bible verses. It doesn't do DVD yet, but I know that is on the developers' radar.

[LaneLester]

Since both OpenSong and OpenOffice are available for Linux, I wonder if part of your solution might be there. I have an older nVidia card and in Ubuntu Linux I can set up a two-monitor configuration that is quite flexible.

I'm not currently using any of the above other than OpenOffice, so I can't comment on the total suitability of that arrangement. OTOH, if you have space on your hard drive, you could add Linux without losing Windows and give it a try.

Lane

[buggyboy]

That sound interesting Lane, would you mind describing what you mean by "quite flexible? I've been following Linux for years, and it just keeps getting better. I'm quite sure it will become a force to be reckoned with in time. (that is, normal pc users having an easy time using it).

@superfly, I'll go check them out. I've heard their name tossed around in these forums before.

Thanks

[jameshorsley197]

Have you looked at Easislides. It is also free and is a worship software program.

[buggyboy]

I did take a quick look, but all the tutorial videos are in Spanish.

Ha anyone on here tried more than one so they could truly compare them? that would be useful.