Question:
Our church uses Media Shout on a (borrowed) laptop computer to display lyrics via an overhead projector. The laptop we're using is adequate, but I'm looking to permanently replace it with a fairly powerful machine where I could throw a 30 second video clip behind the song lyrics with no worries of delays and 'freeze ups'.
Although a desktop model would be beneficial, I would prefer to obtain a laptop computer for allow greater portability when we need to do a presentation in any of our church's worship centers, like our youth building or gymnasium.
Do any of you have recommendations of what to look for in laptop computers that would fit the bill? I know that gobs of memory is always a good thing: I was thinking of getting a machine with 2 GB of memory. But what other things regarding processor type, speed, video card, etc. should I be looking for?
Thanks!
Rick <><
Answer:
2gb is a good starting place. couple of questions:
1) price range (with 2gb, we are looking at not less than $800, of not $900)
2) needed resolution (screen size)
3) how much storage (i'm guessing round 80-100gb)
answer these and we can start helping...
my church is using a dell (ugh) inspiration it is running a pentium m process, 1gb RAM, x200 or intel's basic graphics chip, xp pro, and it doesn't frees up... when you flip sides it lags barely*, but that is the projectors fault.
media shout it a program that grabs files for other place on the computer and sends them to screen... there is some random info...
-Pennell
Answer:
Unfortunately, Media Shout doesn't have a mac version, because I would tell you to get a mac.
However, I agree with the above specifications. A kick-ass video card and a ton of RAM are always a good thing.
Answer:
One other very important thing to know- Media Shout does NOT run on Vista. You will need to specify XP when you buy a new laptop, and that option will be going away soon. Our church bought a new Media Shout laptop, and I had to blow away the Vista install and install XP from scratch. It was a real pain, since many of the hardware bits on a laptop have special drivers.
OTOH, a new Vista machine will have the fast graphics, big RAM/disk and dual processors that will make Media Shout really sing. You just need to wait until Media Shout has a Vista capable version, or put XP on it.
Answer:
Originally Posted by psalm63adam Unfortunately, Media Shout doesn't have a mac version, because I would tell you to get a mac.
However, I agree with the above specifications. A kick-ass video card and a ton of RAM are always a good thing.
Media Shout does not have a Mac version, but Mac's do have ProPresenter (www.renewedvision.com), which is considered by many to be far superior to Media Shout anyway...including me. Media Shout has too much of a learning curve for what it is. The cutesy names for the different areas of the program (Lyra, Bob, etc. etc.) and the ways in which you use each one are rather inconvenient in my opinion. ProPresenter does these things in a much more logical manner. One thing it does not have is the nice scripture capabilities built-in like Media Shout.
There is also LiveWorship (www.liveworship.com) for Macs, which I recently found and have started liking it even a bit better than ProPresenter. It's also about $100 cheaper, which is a good thing obviously. LiveWorship does include a scripture interface. If your church uses CCLI SongSelect, it is also integrated into LiveWorship so you can enter a CCLI number and automatically import the lyrics into the program. ProPresenter will have this functionality (as well as the scripture thing I think) when the final release of version 3 is released in the next month or so. Right now there are public preview versions available for download. Both LW and PP have fully-featured demo versions you can download on their sites. LW is a 30 day demo and PP is an unlimited demo with a watermark on every slide.
For what it's worth, if you've ever been to a Passion event, a Crowder, Tomlin, Charlie Hall, Matt Redman etc. etc. concert then what you saw on screen was created by ProPresenter. If it was an extra wide screen or multiple screens used together as one they were also probably incorporating Pro Video Player from the same company.
Answer:
i agree with brent that media shout has a big learning curve. i get lost sometime with all the headings, it took a couple of weeks. I think Ricky C wants to stick to what he knows which is media shout.
Answer:
Originally Posted by RainCaster One other very important thing to know- Media Shout does NOT run on Vista. You will need to specify XP when you buy a new laptop, and that option will be going away soon. Our church bought a new Media Shout laptop, and I had to blow away the Vista install and install XP from scratch. It was a real pain, since many of the hardware bits on a laptop have special drivers.
OTOH, a new Vista machine will have the fast graphics, big RAM/disk and dual processors that will make Media Shout really sing. You just need to wait until Media Shout has a Vista capable version, or put XP on it.
The new update of Media Shout 3 is Vista compatible. However, it's pretty buggy so I would wait until the bugs are fixed.
Answer:
Brent, thank you for the Mac-based recommendations.
I'll be looking into those and looking forward to scrapping the Dell/Song Select system we're currently using within a year.
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ProPresenter should have more stable final versions out long before you make the upgrade then I would think. I have not had a chance to use LiveWorship extensively just yet. Mainly just entered a few songs for a concert we played and created the show for that and it worked very logically and without any issues. Haven't had a chance (or the need) to try the included Bible stuff with it yet or any of the other features. PP might have this also, but one thing I noticed in LW is that there is an option to have a live feed as your background for a slideshow. I haven't tried it yet, but when I clicked on it the message that a capture device wasn't plugged in came up, so I'm guessing if I were to plug my mini-DV camera into my laptop via firewire that I'd be able to take a live feed from that. Usually that kind of thing would require a video switcher and some chroma-keying in your presentation software to accomplish, but if that works with just the software and LiveWorship that's pretty stinkin' awesome.
Anyway, long and short of it is that with my somewhat limited use of both Mac programs, LiveWorship seems to me to be doing right the things that really annoyed me with ProPresenter. It could also be a matter of me not having PP set up quite to where I would like it for lack of knowing how just yet, but for less money LW seems to be a good bet.
Answer:
I'd require a dual core processor to keep things flowing with less chance for jitters. Doesn't have to be the latest fastest, just look for something on the higher end of the price/value curve.
Look for a hard disk of 7200rpm or faster. Since you're running a laptop you'll just have a single disk, if you go to a desktop I'd get two identical hard drives and run them in a mirrored set for redundancy's sake...you dont want a drive failure taking out your media section for a week.
We run MediaShout including full video backgrounds on 1GB of RAM on XP Pro and I've never come close to using all the RAM, but if you have the money for 2GB that would be a good choice.
Put all the rest of your budget into a good video card with lots of video RAM (256MB min). Make sure the laptop has a digital video output for the projector (DVI), the image quality will be well worth it over a standard VGA port.
MediaShout isn't really that hard to learn in my opinion, you just have to get used to the interface which doesnt take long. We've trained an entire new crew at our satellite church with a couple hours of shadowing and they took off with it.d
Answer:
One other thing, if you plan to play pre-post service music or video tracks with music from the laptop you can expect the AC adapter to make some horrendous noise polution.
Anytime I've used a laptop like this I've had to unplug the AC adapter and run off of batteries when any audio was being played out from the system.
Answer:
Thanks much to all for all the suggestions. I haven't made a purchase yet, but you've given me great ideas for consideration.
I'm a bit leery of Vista. I've heard a few 'horror' stories where folks have had problems getting peripherals to work correctly, printers and stuff like that. Hopefully there won't be any issues with the projector!
I will probably stay with Media Shout. I don't exactly love it, but I have figured out most of what I need it to do, and it does everything I need it to pretty well.
Not to get off on a Media Shout 'bashing', but one thing that annoys me is that you can't really change backgrounds within the same song! The only way I've figured out how to do this is to actually create multiple songs in the database, one for each verse/chorus that you want to switch backgrounds on. Or has someone figured out a better way?
At any rate, thanks again for all the help. You guys are great!
Rick <><
Answer:
You can with ProPresenter...and seamlessly fade from one background into the other...video backgrounds, too.
Answer:
Originally Posted by russellcframe One other thing, if you plan to play pre-post service music or video tracks with music from the laptop you can expect the AC adapter to make some horrendous noise polution.
Anytime I've used a laptop like this I've had to unplug the AC adapter and run off of batteries when any audio was being played out from the system.
What kind/model laptop are you using?
Answer:
My current laptop is a Dell Inspiron, but I've had the problem with others. In speaking with other audio tech's it is a pretty typical problem with the "cheap" ac adapters that come with most laptops.