projection system: hardware, software, and more...

[lymz]

hihi ^_^

This thread is geared towards those that run video projection systems. ;-)

A little about myself before i get into Q&A. Me and Cosmin (aka skylineGTR_guy on royouth) are running the projectors in our church (Happy Valley) and will also continue once we move into our new church (yay!).
Hardware: Currently we have 2 projectors and a 42"? widescreen plasma. In the video booth, we have dual monitor display, the second one being the video output, which connects directly to our video mixer.
Software: We're using Microsoft (MS) PowerPoint for the songs and Theophilos for the bible verses.

Problem: We've got a hodgepodge of songs, written by different people, with all different type of backgrounds, fonts, styles, sizes, and transitions. For the short term, I've gone through and changed all the songs we use, about 120, (we also have them printed for our notebook) to a single background, font, style, size, and no transition. There are about another 400 or so songs that we don't use too often (and haven't changed their format much)

Software: As previously mentioned we use MS PowerPoint and Theophilos. We're somewhat content with PowerPoint, my biggest gripe is managing so many songs, and then printing out versions that will go in notebooks. So, we currently have all the songs in a .ppt and .doc format (yay for redundancy -_-) Theophilos works very well, but has a few drawbacks. We use Versiunea Dumitru Cornilescu (VDC) and KJV in compare mode. We can't change the font color and background, also NKJV nor NIV is not available. Anyone tried any other bible software that works well?

Widescreen: Our projectors are currently running on 4:3 with the option ot run 16:9 and our plasma already being widescreen. I ask of this because they plan on several more plasma widescreen's in the new church, with 2-3 projectors (not sure about this) How do you project in widescreen? Anyone know what software can run it properly? Or do i have it all wrong and i'm over complicating things?

Question: How is your video projection system set up? What hardware and software do you use? What have you tried in the past? Anything to look for or avoid?

Misc Question: MS Office Standard runs at a pricey $500. MS Office Student & Teacher Edition, runs at a more manageable $150. This edition is for "non-commercial use" does anyone know if this version can be used for churches?

That's about it for now, i'll be awaiting your comments and suggestions :-). Meanwhile, I'm going to try that OpenLP mentioned in another thread here (oss > all ;-) )

[SaintJoe69]

Neo, why don't you have any input in this thread, yet? You're our projection person... :lol2:

[skylineGTR_guy]

Widescreen: Our projectors are currently running on 4:3 with the option ot run 16:9 and our plasma already being widescreen. I ask of this because they plan on several more plasma widescreen's in the new church, with 2-3 projectors (not sure about this) How do you project in widescreen? Anyone know what software can run it properly? Or do i have it all wrong and i'm over complicating things?

The projector has a setting for widescreen (I think I read it in the manual) but if you display something (like a video) It will project the same as on the DVD player (widescreen or not)

[skylineGTR_guy]

Hey dragos I found this program:

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/merge/index.html

It will take files from text documents or spreadsheets and automatically put them into your slides (you can set up templates). So since we already have the songs in text format, it can do it for us (hopefully) I'll check out the demo and keep searching for more programs.

[-Neo-]

hihi ^_^

This thread is geared towards those that run video projection systems. ;-)

A little about myself before i get into Q&A. Me and Cosmin (aka skylineGTR_guy on royouth) are running the projectors in our church (Happy Valley) and will also continue once we move into our new church (yay!).
Hardware: Currently we have 2 projectors and a 42"? widescreen plasma. In the video booth, we have dual monitor display, the second one being the video output, which connects directly to our video mixer.
Software: We're using Microsoft (MS) PowerPoint for the songs and Theophilos for the bible verses.

Problem: We've got a hodgepodge of songs, written by different people, with all different type of backgrounds, fonts, styles, sizes, and transitions. For the short term, I've gone through and changed all the songs we use, about 120, (we also have them printed for our notebook) to a single background, font, style, size, and no transition. There are about another 400 or so songs that we don't use too often (and haven't changed their format much)

Software: As previously mentioned we use MS PowerPoint and Theophilos. We're somewhat content with PowerPoint, my biggest gripe is managing so many songs, and then printing out versions that will go in notebooks. So, we currently have all the songs in a .ppt and .doc format (yay for redundancy -_-) Theophilos works very well, but has a few drawbacks. We use Versiunea Dumitru Cornilescu (VDC) and KJV in compare mode. We can't change the font color and background, also NKJV nor NIV is not available. Anyone tried any other bible software that works well?

Widescreen: Our projectors are currently running on 4:3 with the option ot run 16:9 and our plasma already being widescreen. I ask of this because they plan on several more plasma widescreen's in the new church, with 2-3 projectors (not sure about this) How do you project in widescreen? Anyone know what software can run it properly? Or do i have it all wrong and i'm over complicating things?
Question: How is your video projection system set up? What hardware and software do you use? What have you tried in the past? Anything to look for or avoid?

Misc Question: MS Office Standard runs at a pricey $500. MS Office Student & Teacher Edition, runs at a more manageable $150. This edition is for "non-commercial use" does anyone know if this version can be used for churches?

That's about it for now, i'll be awaiting your comments and suggestions :-). Meanwhile, I'm going to try that OpenLP mentioned in another thread here (oss > all ;-) )

Hmmm so are you using actual plasma TV's or just huge projection screens?
my input on this will come i na little bit! thanks for your input sainjoe... and thanks for putting me on the spot.... greatly appreciated!


in the mean time, here is a thread that relates to this...
http://www.royouth.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4366

[skylineGTR_guy]

Hmmm so are you using actual plasma TV's or just huge projection screens?
my input on this will come i na little bit! thanks for your input sainjoe... and thanks for putting me on the spot.... greatly appreciated!


We have 2 projectors for the audience and 1 plasma facing the pastor but in the new church we are also going to have plasmas in the hallway (what was it again dragos? like five 60" plasmas or somethign crazy like that?)

[AlaturiDeIngeri]

thats gonna be pricy.. hopefully we'll get a discount being a church and all :D

[lymz]

as stated, this is for discussion for those that run their video/projection systems, sorry lil sis.

i recall seven (7) 65" plasma's for the hallways and such. this is for the new church so the hardware hasn't been bought yet.

[adidasboy4jc]

well.. i've been doing this for quite some time.. and i find that powerpoint is horribly impractical.. now, this program is a little bit of an investment, but it's awesome.. Song Show Plus (www.songshowplus.com)... i think you can get language packs for it too, but back when we got it, i don't think it was available in romanian.. so my friend actually used theophilos and replaced all the characters to fit the romanian font and replaced all the original KJV files with the same file names and it works in romanian (this took many long hours.. i know because i had to do a few of the books and it was tedious)...anyhow, we have it and it works great.. i'm willing to send you over the files and tell you how to replace them if you'd like.. the program is setup to run on dual monitor.. once you add the songs to the database you can choose any font, any background and it will be the same for the songs and bible text.. i'm not sure how you use theophilos to do the bible text.. it sounds kinda complicated.. but this program allows you to select and display as many verses you'd like at a time.. this makes it easy to keep it at a readable size, you know? it also is a great presentation program.. you can use it to present pictures, music, videos, and just regular slideshows..

currently our church is running a celeron 900 system we bought a few years back... it had an onboard video card and so i just opened it up, popped another AGP card in there and set it up for dual screen.. its hooked up to a projector (can't remember what kind.. 2700 lumens is all i remember) and we have an electronic drop down projection screen... (no no... its not romanian ghettofied where you can see all the wires... its actually built into the wall pretty nifty) the projector, however, is held down by a 2 inch steel galvanized (spelling?) pipe where all the wires run through... sounds pretty ghetto but doesn't look too bad.. anyhow, we have a pretty small church so one projector pretty much cuts it thus we don't need a video mixer or signal splitter...

about your ratio issue.. i duno if there's a cost effective solution.. i mean, i'm sure theres a way to get it done but i dunno if it's worth the money/hassle.. if you get this presentation software, the image maybe a bit fatter because the plasmas are setup for widescreen, but i don't think it will be bad to the point of annoyance.. obviously, as techies we'll know the difference but to the common "frate" it won't make a difference..

about MS Office.. i can give you a, uh, "downloaded" *wink*wink* copy of MS Office XP Pro.. or you can switch to Sun Microsystems slap in the face to MS open source office software called Open Office.. www.openoffice.org ... it's free and it works great.. The word processor is XML based which is pretty cool..

[lymz]

well.. i've been doing this for quite some time.. and i find that powerpoint is horribly impractical.. now, this program is a little bit of an investment, but it's awesome.. Song Show Plus (www.songshowplus.com)...

yea, i've been doing this for a little over 2 months and i realize that it's just not working very well. lol. hmm, that's two people at least vouching for song show plus. _personally_ i would not shell out $500, that's just way too much. _but_ we played with the idea with the main audio/video guy (he's the one responsible for everything, ie. finances, setup, equipment, etc.) and said that he doesn't care how much it costs, if it's considerably better than what we have. i will have to dl and play with the trial version there (i'm on linux, and can't test it out or play with the different video settings.)

i think you can get language packs for it too, but back when we got it, i don't think it was available in romanian.. so my friend actually used theophilos and replaced all the characters to fit the romanian font and replaced all the original KJV files with the same file names and it works in romanian (this took many long hours.. i know because i had to do a few of the books and it was tedious)...anyhow, we have it and it works great.. i'm willing to send you over the files and tell you how to replace them if you'd like.. the program is setup to run on dual monitor.. once you add the songs to the database you can choose any font, any background and it will be the same for the songs and bible text.. i'm not sure how you use theophilos to do the bible text.. it sounds kinda complicated.. but this program allows you to select and display as many verses you'd like at a time.. this makes it easy to keep it at a readable size, you know? it also is a great presentation program.. you can use it to present pictures, music, videos, and just regular slideshows..

huh? i don't understand the first half of this. maybe once i play with the demo it'll make more sence...

currently our church is running a celeron 900 system we bought a few years back... it had an onboard video card and so i just opened it up, popped another AGP card in there and set it up for dual screen.. its hooked up to a projector (can't remember what kind.. 2700 lumens is all i remember) and we have an electronic drop down projection screen... (no no... its not romanian ghettofied where you can see all the wires... its actually built into the wall pretty nifty) the projector, however, is held down by a 2 inch steel galvanized (spelling?) pipe where all the wires run through... sounds pretty ghetto but doesn't look too bad.. anyhow, we have a pretty small church so one projector pretty much cuts it thus we don't need a video mixer or signal splitter...

i think i'll need to get pictures of our setup and stuff :-P

about your ratio issue.. i duno if there's a cost effective solution.. i mean, i'm sure theres a way to get it done but i dunno if it's worth the money/hassle.. if you get this presentation software, the image maybe a bit fatter because the plasmas are setup for widescreen, but i don't think it will be bad to the point of annoyance.. obviously, as techies we'll know the difference but to the common "frate" it won't make a difference..

i was just curious how things on a regular computer monitor would project on widescreen and if we can get the proportions correct and other fun stuff. (ie no stretching of the sides) i guess we can tinker more with these later.

yea, i can get OCD (obsessive compulsive) about certain things, especially partaining to computers. certain things just drive me up the wall :-P

about MS Office.. i can give you a, uh, "downloaded" *wink*wink* copy of MS Office XP Pro.. or you can switch to Sun Microsystems slap in the face to MS open source office software called Open Office.. www.openoffice.org ... it's free and it works great.. The word processor is XML based which is pretty cool..

i have (had? can't currently find it) Office XP. I'd be interested in office 2003 ;-) Sun make Star Office, which is largely identical to OpenOffice.org (OO.o) i'm glad there are other OO.o users out there :-) i've been using it myself for a good year now. but there is a small degree of re-learnign certian things (like saving files as .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc) the other things is, it doesn't do files 100% exactly, it come pretty close though ;-)

[amplemedia]

hey if you want some help with your video install drop me a line.. i do church installs for a livin email me at my gmail account.

[Mia]

Anyone knows how to get the Verse screen to go on the projector?
For example in Powerpoint, once you hit F5 to run slide show, the show starts on the projector. In Theophilos I can't get the verse screen to go over to the projector, seems to be locked, looks like the window can't be maximized. Any help would be appreciated, thanks. :help: