Video Presentation Software for Church

[The DRis]

Hello all,

We will show videos from time to time in church. Either promos, trailers for movies, or clips that tie in with the sermon. Currently we are running an iMac with OSX 10.6 and using Quicktime. This has not shown to be the most efficient or professional way to show the clips.

My problems with Quicktime:
1) The controls are on the same screen as the video, so when the video is up on the projector the congregation can see the controls for a brief moment as you click play.
2) If there are multiple videos for the whole service, quicktime will only let one video go full screen, the others then have to be fit to screen. Again, this does not look professional.
3) When there are multiple videos, there is no easy way to go from one to the other.
4) I have not been able to find a setting that sets the secondary display as primary for playback.

Is there a program that will let me have a queue that is on the main display, but defaults all videos to the secondary display? Does VLC have this option? The church has a very strict firewall and I am unable to load VLC to the iMac and test.

 

[Pascaline]

Solved the issue?

Hi

I came across your post wondering is you have solved your issue with presentations.

An associate of mine is a Mac user and faces a similar problem, and I have no idea on how to help him.

 

[GGJstudios]

Hello all,

We will show videos from time to time in church. Either promos, trailers for movies, or clips that tie in with the sermon. Currently we are running an iMac with OSX 10.6 and using Quicktime. This has not shown to be the most efficient or professional way to show the clips.

My problems with Quicktime:
1) The controls are on the same screen as the video, so when the video is up on the projector the congregation can see the controls for a brief moment as you click play.
2) If there are multiple videos for the whole service, quicktime will only let one video go full screen, the others then have to be fit to screen. Again, this does not look professional.
3) When there are multiple videos, there is no easy way to go from one to the other.
4) I have not been able to find a setting that sets the secondary display as primary for playback.

Is there a program that will let me have a queue that is on the main display, but defaults all videos to the secondary display? Does VLC have this option? The church has a very strict firewall and I am unable to load VLC to the iMac and test.

You can create a playlist in VLC, so it goes from one video to the next. You can use the space bar to pause the video at the end, if a pause is needed before moving to the next video on the playlist. If you're projecting to an Apple TV, you could queue up the first video, then pause before anything shows on the screen until you're ready to proceed.

I've used this method successfully, but with a brief display of controls when shifting AirPlay control of the Apple TV from an iPad to the iMac. You may find an opportune time that this can be done when attention isn't on the screen.

 

[malachiman]

We use ProPresenter, and have done for over 4 years. Its excellent. It was designed for the Mac, although recently they have released a windows version. Its been great value for us. We are currently using version 4, although version 5 is out.

Basically this gives you an all in one - Lyrics during worship, video playback, Audio playback.

 

[MCAsan]

I would suggest upgrading the Mac to OS 10.9 and building Keynote presentations with embedded videos. I do that all the time for club meetings with a mixture of text slides, music, still photos, and videos. You can use an iPhone or iPad as the remote to start, stop or pause the presentation.

 

[GGJstudios]

I would suggest upgrading the Mac to OS 10.9 and building Keynote presentations with embedded videos. I do that all the time for club meetings with a mixture of text slides, music, still photos, and videos. You can use an iPhone or iPad as the remote to start, stop or pause the presentation.

We previously used Keynote for projection during sermons, but it wasn't as readable from a distance or as well-suited for churches as other apps that are designed for churches. We've used PlanningCenterOnline.com for lyrics, announcements, sermon materials and photos. We can present videos using that service, but the performance isn't as good, trying to project a video from the iPad. That's why we use VLC for videos only.