[Worship Leader's Toolkit] ProPresenter
[This is a post from my worship leader's toolkit blog series. You can read the series intro and find links to the other posts here.]
Okay so today’s post is covering a resource that is pretty new to me but I am convinced that ProPresenter is the best choice out there when it comes to projection and managing the visual side of Sunday morning.
We have been using other software for the past 5 years and had become frustrated with the number of band-aids and “just do this” quick fixes we were having to do to make sure that we could pull off our projection on Sunday morning. Once our presentations started freezing for no good reason and the software was crashing on a pretty new computer, we knew it was time to make a change.
There are way too many features to recap in this blog post and honestly one of the best features of ProPresenter is the amount of support provided by developers and the user community. Just have a look at how some of the features of ProPresenter 5 are laid out on this page and how each one is given lots of explanation - http://www.renewedvision.com/propresenter.php?page=pro5
I’m ready to assume that if you’re in the market for projection software and ProPresenter is an option for you, you know what you’re doing when it comes to media, videos, motion backgrounds, etc so there’s not much value in me explaining the basics but let me hilight three features in ProPresenter 5 that I am loving and which I think you will find really helpful.
Song Arrangements
We have rehearsal on Thursday night and one of the things we do is work out song arrangements – get a good feel of how we’re going to do verses, choruses, bridges for each of our songs. These aren’t set in stone and there is always freedom to go outside of the arrangement on Sunday morning but doing this gets everyone – singers, band, projection – on the same page with where we’re going next.
With the song arrangement feature, all it takes is a bit of drag-and-drop to get the arrangement in place for that service. The slides in the song will adjust themselves according to the arrangement that you’ve laid out. If anything, you’ll come back Sunday morning after your rehearsal and will remember how the arrangement of that song went during rehearsal. Awesome!
Fill in Blank & Bullets
One of the factors in wanting to move away from our previous software solution was that we had to import Powerpoint into the presentation for our pastor’s message slides. This meant another workflow for formatting, another level of file management and another piece of software that our projection volunteers had to know. Enter ProPresenter with a solution to allow us to get rid of Powerpoint!
Filling in blanks and creating bullet slides are really the only uses we had for Powerpoint and in ProPresenter 5 those are taken care of. By moving to this new software we are simplifying our preparation workflow and keeping our entire presentation local to one software solution. This is good!
Planning Center Online Integration
If you’ve been reading this series from the beginning, you know that I am a big fan of Planning Center Online and ProPresenter 5 takes it to the next level by integrating my PCO plans right into their software. If you are a PCO user, you have got to see how easy this is to implement. Talk about making your Sunday morning preparation easier – all of your planning, scheduling and managing your service and visual media in one place!
Watch this video to get an idea of how easy this is:
Again, the feature list on ProPresenter is huge and if you’ve placed a priority on the visual aspect of Sunday morning at your church you’ll definitely want to have it on your list as a possible solution.
You can find lots more info on ProPresenter and order directly from their website – www.propresenter.com
Thanks for stopping by the blog. I'm currently on sabbatical this summer - you can read more about my sabbatical here: Personal Update - What's Next
Since I'm away from the blog I've decided to close comments. I love the interaction and discussion that happens with readers and since I'm not able to do that this summer, I'll be very much looking forward to that when I return in August.
