Ok. So have you ever looked back on college and laughed? I just did that. This is my Senior Research Project for my Electronic Media degree. I entitled it:
The Revolution will be visualized: a research study of media in church worship.
Although, I didn’t write well (probably still don’t), the content in there is really interesting…especially for you visual worship guys. Enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »
Ed Lockett came to visit us at Rock Bridge a few weeks ago. This is his story.
*photography by Jeremy Owens from our recent mission trip to Haiti
We recently did a ProPresenter 4 training for about 40 people here at Rock Bridge Community Church. Between the three campuses and various ministries, we have 22 machines currently running ProPresenter 3. In order to upgrade (which you should totally do if you haven’t already) we needed a large scale training to get people comfortable with the basics of the new program.
Most of the content of the training was provided by Stephen Proctor (@worshipvj www.worshipvj.com) so I won’t get into content too much on this post, but I do want to talk about setup.
Thanks to a little help from Renewed Vision, we were able to use an HD projector on a 16’ x 9’ screen in the center of the stage mirroring the laptop display while simultaneously using two 8’ x 6’ screens on the sides of the stage showing the output of ProPresenter. It was fun.
I used the USB-DVI device that Renewed Vision sells to mirror the laptop display and used the internal graphics card (MiniDisplayPort) to run ProPresenter’s output. Here’s the setup process (assuming you’ve never run the USB-DVI before).
That should do it. You should be able to see everything you do on the laptop and still be able to see the results of that on the side screens. For the number of people we had at the training it really couldn’t have been better. I would also highly recommend bringing in Stephen Proctor to train your team. It fueled some great discussions on making good decisions with content not just how to use the software – which is where every good team needs to go.
A few notes:
The USB-DVI frame rate is around 20fps – noticeably slower than the built-in video card. That’s why I chose to use the USB-DVI device as the mirror instead of the main out. If you switch those you’ll likely run into performance problems playing video through ProPresenter – and nobody likes performance problems.
Always make sure the outputs/displays are working properly before you open ProPresenter. Troubleshooting is a pain if you don’t know whether it’s a system or a software problem.
I wouldn’t suggest doing this setup for anything live (why would you?) as it’s stable but just tricky enough to make me nervous in a live setting, but in my 2hr training we had no problems whatsoever.
I’d just like to add that Renewed Vision went the extra mile to test this out before I ever ordered the equipment. I sent a tweet out to fellow CTDRT members asking if anyone had ever tried to do this and got an unsolicited call from Renewed Vision’s @chriswheat offering his assistance. I told him what I thought would work and he ran off to test it calling me back to confirm.
If you end up using this setup or need any help with it, tweet it to me at @brian_holt, I’d love to see how you do it.
I love to read. I read a lot. Something happens when you sit down to read someone else’s ideas and synthesize that with your own ideas and your own experiences.
I wrote a tweet last week about reading Sherlock Holmes on my Kindle. I got a few responses from that and thought it might be interesting to share what else is on my Kindle right now (which I absolutely love – my backpack got 5 pounds lighter overnight).
Less Clutter, Less Noise by Kem Meyer*
Sherlock Holmes, the complete collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship by William Dyrness*
Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully Engaged Members by Searcy & Henson
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
High-Tech Worship? by Quentin Schultze
Art and the Bible: Two Essays by Francis Schaeffer
Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes your Faith by Shane Hipps
Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival by Norman Ollestad
Tribes by Seth Godin
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
*denotes a book I’m currently reading.
Lots of wisdom up there.
What are you reading and how is it helping you grow?
I’ve lived most of my professional career operating under the following guideline:
‘Our methods may change, but our message never will.’
It really sounds good doesn’t it? Being able to say with conviction that we’ll use exciting new methods while keeping our theological heritage intact. It’s a great way to say something we all think.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it true.