February 20th, 2008
Graphics In Our New Worship Center
Posted by Church Video Ideas under Church Media, Church video, Churches, Communication, Companies, Continuing Education, FREE, Greg's Favorites, HD, Holidays, Ideas, Intros and Announcements, Media ministry, Products, Random Thoughts, Reviews, Software, Worship resourcesMany have asked what we’re doing as far as media in our new worship center. As I mentioned before, we are using EasyWorship as our presentation software. We are also slowly changing over our entire campus (all venues) to EasyWorship, which has a universal site license (other products such as MediaShout and ProPresenter charge extra to use their software on multiple computers). We have 7 venues that will be using EasyWorship, so the universal site license was a win for us.
My friends at EasyWorship were great during the crazy weeks and days leading up to our first worship service. Either we (Bent Tree) are the first church to use EasyWorship in an HD setting or we are one of the first - either way: we won’t be the last. I’ve heard rumors of confusion about whether or not EasyWorship can do HD. Let me set the record straight: it does and we’re doing it.
The trouble that we were having leading up to the first service was due to having the wrong video card. I went locally and purchased a new video card (NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS) and we were up and running in a matter of minutes. If you have any other questions about the initial setup of EasyWorship and the codecs I purchased/downloaded, just email me.
Here’s what’s up as far as the HD backgrounds we used. We’ve had 3 Sundays in our new worship center. The first Sunday we used all Igniter Backs Vol. 3 backgrounds (loops and stills). The next week we used more Igniter Backs and some brand new backgrounds from FortyOneTwenty. This past Sunday we used new HD backgrounds from SermonVideos.com.
I’d like to point out that I still encourage our volunteers that pick the backgrounds each week to use at least one still background for a song. As I’ve said before, motion backgrounds are most powerful in contrast to still backgrounds. You can read more on my philosophy of this in my “Less Is More” article.
EXTRA:
Still looking for FREE worship backgrounds? Check out HERE.
BONUS:
Yesterday we found our opening video to kick off our Easter service. It’s available at BlueFish.tv, it’s pretty sweet and it’s $1.99! Check it out HERE.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Question: was the card you were trying to use before, an HD card? Can you tell a difference in the speed of EW with the new card?
February 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am
ProPresenter has a site license. I’m not sure what the cost of EasyWorship’s site lisc. compared to ProPresenter, but we made the switch back in July, and 4 of our rooms are actively using it at any given time.
ProVideoPlayer however does not have a site license, and believe you me, we’ve tried.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
John - you might of misunderstood what I was saying. ProPresenter (and MediaShout) have a site license that you can purchase for extra. EasyWorship includes that for FREE in the original price.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Yeah, I did a little investigation after I posted, and was on my way back here to correct my comment. I had never really looked at EasyWorship until reading your blog. It looks fairly straightforward. We were using MediaShout for a while but our volunteers hated it, so they went back to power point. When Rick and I made the push to ProPresenter, we had some push back initally, but now all of our volunteers in the Worship Center, Children’s, and Students LOVE using it.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I think we all have our favortie programs that fit our abilities and we get comfortable with them. At our Church we use Sunday Plus. Not a lot of frills but it gets the job done and plays embedded Power Point presentations. Not many of the volunteers we have are comfortable with Power Point (I am rather deficient with it also) but seem to grasp how to program using Sunday Plus. Meida Shout looks to be good but it does not have a very quick learning curve if you are not proficient with Power Point.
On the subject of free backgrounds…one of the companies I use from time to time is ImageVine.com. When you sign up for their newletter you can get a real nice set of freebies (powerpoint slides and jpegs). The newsletters are relatively short and usually have a link for a freebie. Check them out here…
http://www.imagevine.com/christian/free-backgrounds.aspx
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:10 am
Just wondering what you standard specs on for the computer you use for presenting on Sundays with Easy Worship? Also what kind of standards do you use for font type and font size? Just curious as we are stuck in the PowerPoint ways, but I’m pushing for a move to Easy Worship.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
what was the cost of the card? wonder what they would have cost vs. just getting the mediashout/propresenter site license.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Not sure what card you’re talking about. ProPresenter and EasyWorship are both $399, MediaShout is $409. EasyWorship includes a site license for that same cost. ProPresenter and MediaShout both have an extra license that you can buy on top of the original cost.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
How much did you spend on that HD card?
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:20 am
this card:
I went locally and purchased a new video card (NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS) and we were up and running in a matter of minutes.
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
also a bit surpised you wouldn’t want the alpha key that ProPresenter has. How are you keying now? Luma?
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
It’s basically just a really nice gaming card. You can use it even if you’re not doing HD. It was $399.
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Joe - we chroma key.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:15 am
On the topic of free worship backgrounds, we have a volume of 399 images for free on our website, http://www.awakeimages.com. They are designed for use in triptyhs, but can be used however you like, of course. Stop by and grab Volume 1 and enjoy!
Paul
http://www.awakeimages.com
February 29th, 2008 at 9:19 am
That great! Also check out these totally free HD motion backgrounds at IgniteMotion.com. there is a cloud one on there that looks awesome!