Greg Atkinson

One thing I enjoy each year at the Catalyst Conference is the worship and their use of technology. My friend, Brad, the creator of ProPresenter is a big part of what goes on. He usually is the Video Director and they use his software to make it happen. With the combined use of ProPresenter and ProVideoPlayer, Catalyst is always on the cutting edge of media in worship. I just checked in with my software poll and ProPresenter is still in First Place, which surprised me - not because it’s not a great presentation software, I just didn’t realize how many churches had switched over to the Mac platform. If you haven’t voted yet, go HERE to vote.

Soon I’ll be reviewing SermonSpice’s new presentation software that they unveiled at Catalyst: SpiceRack.

We’ve all been there: from time to time, we need to convert a video piece from one format to another. I was helping our youth ministry last week convert a video they had created in Final Cut Pro to an AVI and/or MPEG1 so they could play it in PowerPoint. I told them to download the Xilisoft Video Converter, which is what I use. I also suggested they upgrade their QuickTime to QuickTime Pro.

My friend, Brian Davis (of Worship Tech Online), told me about a piece of software that he uses. Terry Storch actually told Brian and he was passing the tip on to me. It’s a software called Visual Hub and it allows you to import MPEG1 (and other formats) into Final Cut Pro for editing. I thought it was a pretty cool piece of software.

So, I ask you: What software package can you not live without? What have you found that works great for your situation?

UPDATE:

Remember my presentation software poll? It’s interesting that the 3 software companies that I stand behind/endorse and list on my “Charter Sponsors” page are the top 3 in the poll. If you haven’t voted yet, vote HERE.

This past Sunday’s worship experience and message was one of those weeks when I was pumped and proud to be a small part of my church. I don’t know when the message will be posted to the web, but it should be soon. Our pastor, Pete Briscoe, is such a solid, Biblical teacher. I was fired up the whole time he was speaking. He’s preparing our church for a new season as we move into our new worship center and lots of changes start taking place around campus. Below is a picture of our worship team this past Sunday (we were trying to fit around the giant door). The other picture is of me standing next to the door yesterday. I’m 6′5″ and I come up to the doorknob.

NOTE:

So far, ProPresenter is leading the pack in the software poll. Of no surprise to me is that the top 3 are the 3 that I endorse and stand behind (my Charter Sponsors). If you haven’t voted yet, you need to represent for your company.

If you haven’t voted for the worship presentation software you use, please do. It takes like 15 seconds to sign up with Squidoo. You can cast your vote HERE.

In meeting with the folks at MediaShout the other week, they mentioned that out of the list of the Top 25 Most Innovative Churches in the US, 19 of them used MediaShout. I found that interesting. I’m a regular user of EasyWorship, but also have a great respect for ProPresenter and MediaShout. I’m curious as to what you use at your church…SO, I created a Squidoo poll where you can vote. Please go HERE to place your vote or.

EXTRA:

Have you heard of Sermon Cinema? Might be worth checking out.

PERSONAL:

Yesterday was a great day. We did a funny drama, great music, our pastor was back from his sabbatical and we played an in-house video we did that was hilarious. Also, we had 4 people shadowing people on the Tech Arts team and watching what was going on behind the scenes. We just did a volunteer campaign called “iServe” and it produced some great new contacts.

Also, after our last service last night, I got to sneak over to Denton Bible and catch one of my favorite artists in concert: Shawn McDonald! I love him, his music and his testimony. Wow!

I’m back in good ‘ol Dallas (’till I fly to Atlanta tomorrow). Hopefully I’ll get to go to 7:22 tomorrow night at North Point. My worship pastor and I will be meeting with Clark ProMedia to go over our equipment list for our new worship center. It will be two days of meetings, then I’ll finally be back in Dallas for a while. I think the next thing I have on my calendar is Catalyst. I’m taking a break from conferences/traveling.

Nashville was great. I arrived Tuesday night and had dinner with Wayne (our church’s band director who was also in Nashville) and Gersh (formerly of WhiteHeart) - who Wayne was spending the week with. Gersh (who has written 20 #1 songs) works with churches and worship leaders, as well as writing, arranging and producing for a living in Nashville. I didn’t plan on it, but I ended up spending all day Wednesday with Wayne and Gersh. We started off the day eating brunch at the famous Loveless Cafe, which was amazing (see above).

Wednesday night, I took Wayne to see the legendary Wooten brothers, who play every Wednesday night in Nashville. This was my 5th time seeing them and I was as amazed as ever. I think Wayne was blown away, too. I met up with my best friend, Thomas Rose (worship leader at Mosaic Nashville) and followed him back to his new house, where I stayed the rest of the week.

Thursday, Thomas and I hung out at Rocketown (where Thomas also works) - Rocketown is a youth community center/skate park/concert venue founded by Michael W. Smith. Later that afternoon we went to a strategic planning meeting for Rocketown, which was held at one of the board members’ home (the owner of Purity milk and ice cream). I sat two chairs down from Michael W. Smith, who was listening to stories from teenagers that had been impacted by Rocketown’s ministry.

Friday, Thomas and I stopped by MediaShout to say “hello” and get a demo of their brand new MediaShout V3 Express. It was great to meet some new folks at MediaShout, as well as talk for a while with my friend, Paul Jackson, President of MediaShout. MediaShout Express is going to be an answer to prayer to many, many people. Every conference I do, I come across people that would love to leave PowerPoint, but can’t afford to pay $399 for something like MediaShout, EasyWorship or ProPresenter.
MediaShout Express is on sale for $199 - that’s right ONE ninety-nine. Express has all the main features of the full version (and is upgradable, if you want to go to the full version down the road), including text over motion backgrounds, a song database, Scripture, sample media and more. The retail price is $229 - tell them Greg said you could get it for $199. If you’re ready to take the next step, leave PowerPoint and start using a presentation software designed for worship, then this is definitely worth checking out.

Friday night we went to the Nashville Sounds baseball game (minor league team), where it was “Faith Night”. Rocketown was there in full force - with their skaters and bikers putting on a show outside the gates, plus one of Smitty’s new bands (from Rocketown Records) playing music - as well as Michael himself singing a song. Michael also sang the National Anthem and threw out the first pitch. It was great exposure for Rocketown. The B-Boys (a dance group from Rocketown that my friend, Thomas, oversees) danced on top of the dugouts in-between innings.

Saturday night, we got to visit LifeChurch.tv’s campus in North Nashville (Hendersonville). I’ve blogged about LifeChurch.tv many times, but had never been to this campus (they have 11). Thank you to Andrew and Charles, who invited me via this blog’s comments. Andrew is the campus pastor at the Hendersonville campus (read his words HERE). Charles works for MediaShout and is a part of their tech team at the church. LifeChurch.tv was on week one of their new series “30 Days to Live” - it was very moving and powerful. I love the move and work of God that I experience each time I visit one of their campuses. I’d encourage you to check out the service online. ALSO - don’t forget that you can use ALL their resources for each series for FREE via their Open website.

Sunday, I worshiped at Mosaic Nashville, where my friend Thomas leads worship. This was their second week in their new location (which is really cool). I had a great time there and then hit the road to head back to Big D.

I got back in time to see my kids last night. I’m hanging with the family all day today and then catching a 6:30 AM flight to Atlanta to begin the 2 day meeting. I’m not bringing my laptop with me, so I’ll blog again on Thursday.

Free DVD authoring software is hard to come by. Many of the FREE apps are buggy. SoThink Movie DVD Maker is among the best of the free solutions available for DVD authoring. The app converts most formats, including AVI, MPEG, WMV, MP4, RMVB, MOV, and 3GP to DVD. Basic video editing features like trimming clips and combining smaller clips into a larger movie are also supported. When your video is ready for DVD you can burn straight to disk. The default video format is PAL, so if you are authoring home movies created in the US, you’ll need to change the defaults for NTSC support. This is especially useful in combination with something like Windows Movie Maker for Windows XP, which includes no DVD burning support. While the app will work with Vista, the Vista DVD Maker application has a better burning engine and far more features for authoring DVDs. Check it out!

BONUS:

SermonSpice is offering FREE illustrations and video clips from Spider-Man 3 (which I’m going to see this afternoon).

I’ve mentioned Jake Ludington’s newsletter before. I always learn of some cool new media resources through his newsletter. Here are a few things that he mentioned and I’m going to give a try:

• Spin It Again: Transfer your old 45’s and 33’s to CD or to your new MP3 player or iPod. This dedicated record and tape conversion software makes it child’s play to record and edit your old albums. The wizard driven process guides you through connecting your hardware, getting the correct recording level, and splitting your recording into multiple tracks. The software automatically removes clicks and pops and that unwanted tape hum and hiss. Convert your recordings to MP3s or burn them on to an audio CD.
• Eyejot: I’m doing a little video experiment with an online video tool. Eyejot is a FREE video app that lets you record video messages in your browser and send them to a recipient via email or RSS. This would fall under Web 2.0 tools for ministry. Check it out!
• JPG Video: Time lapse video is something I’ve always found fascinating. Take a series of images from the same place over the course of a day, week, month, etc., and then build them into a video to express the time change in a matter of minutes or seconds. JPGVideo is a simple app designed to make a time lapse video from a series of stills. JPGVideo is billed as a tool for Webcam images, but JPG files from any camera source will work.
  
• Windows Media Player Plug-in for Firefox: This plug-in allows you to use Windows Media Player inside of Firefox. It is designed to support the following Windows platforms: Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.
• Registry Booster: They claim to be the safest and most trusted solution to clean and optimise your system, free it from registry errors and fragmented entries. Through Advanced Error Detection Technology, Register Booster automatically identifies missing, corrupt or invalid items in your Windows registry and dramatically enhances performance and general stability. * This I actually downloaded and used to clean up my computer. So far, I’m very pleased with it. *
  

NEW PRODUCER:

Check out Erwin Brothers Pictures, a new producer, available at their website or at WorshipHouse Media.

While at Passion in Atlanta, I was only back with my laptop at like 2am and was too tired to blog. I thought I’d take a moment to share what God did at Passion ‘07. From worship leaders like Chris Tomlin, Charlie Hall, Matt Redman and David Crowder to speakers like John Piper, Beth Moore, Louie Giglio and my new favorite speaker: Francis Chan - it was one God-moment after another. God touched my heart, challenged me, encouraged me, stretched me, ministered to me and got my eyes back on what matters most through the words and music of the above mentioned servants.

As I mentioned before, this was my 3rd year serving with the Passion staff. It is an indescribable thing to see God moving among 22,000 college students. These students literally invade the host city and leave it changed for the better. This year, each student brought socks and towels which were given to Atlanta’s homeless. I go each year because God moves in my heart and it encourages me to see the next generation so fired up for Christ and making His name known among the nations. Students gathered from all 50 states and several countries around the world. As happens each year, many students committed their life to Christ for the first time and many dedicated their lives to missions and have committed to as Louie said “pack up the American dream” and move to a nation and work with a people group that has never heard of Jesus.

Personally, I always look forward to seeing what the Passion tech team does with media/video - they are always pushing the boundaries and taking things to the next level. This year was no different. Technology was utilized and pushed to the extremes especially this year, as for the first time, all the students couldn’t fit into one arena (like they had the last 2 years). This year there were about 18,000 college students packed into Phillips Arena (which is downtown, right beside the Georgia Dome). Another 5000 people were packed into the Georgia World Congress Center, which was across the street from Phillips Arena. The students rotated and each had time in Phillips and the GWCC. Each venue had LIVE worship led by the amazing Passion worship leaders. Regardless of what venue you were in, you would worship LIVE with your worship team, then you would join (through the gift of technology) with the students and worship leaders in the other venue and all sing together. Your worship leader would lead the other venue in worship (you watching live and they watching on the video screens), then they would switch and you would watch and worship with the other venue’s worship leader via LIVE video.

Louie Giglio would come out at the GWCC early on and do a welcome, which was seen via video in Phillips Arena. They would then go to a split screen and show Louie in one venue talking to the worship leader in the other venue - and they would talk back and forth and have their venue raise up a shout. After Louie’s welcome, the worship leaders in each venue would continue on leading worship for their crowd, while keeping their eye on a countdown clock which was on the ground in front of the worship leader. Both worship leaders wrapped up their set when the countdown clock told them it was time. Now it was time for the message, and Louie had walked across the street and came on to the stage in Phillips Arena, so the people in the GWCC watched him on the screen. As I said, they pushed the boundaries of technology and did it in a very professional and worshipful way, that wasn’t distracting.

I’ve been emailing back and forth with the Video Director in the main venue (Phillips Arena). He’s been telling me how they pulled some of the things off. I’ll write more about that in a future blog. For the record, they were using ProPresenter, which I blogged about 2 weeks ago and is my newest Charter Sponsor.

Freebie 1:

Get a cool FREE motion background from RevoStock.com HERE.

Freebie 2:

Get Christian Audio’s FREE monthly download HERE. This month they are giving away Andrew Murray’s timeless classic, Absolute Surrender. This is a powerful book! Listen to it as a way to start 2007 with a fresh commitment to being totally surrendered to God’s will in your life.
Use the coupon code, JAN2007 to redeem this audiobook.

Freebie 3:

WorshipHouse Media just switched their monthly FREE download - it’s a powerful and dramatic interpretation of the woman at the well, and her desire to be loved for who she is.

Freebie 4:

SermonSpice is offering a new FREE download - it’s a sermon illustration from 36 Parables entitled “Spilt Milk”.

Freebie 5:

SermonVideos.com is offering a new FREE looping background entitled “Hands to Heaven”.

What is ProPresenter and what’s new about version 3.0? Well, first you should now that I stand behind 4 presentation software companies. These are the 4 that I mention at each conference or seminar I do. The 4 are EasyWorship, LiveWorship, MediaShout and ProPresenter. ProPresenter is for those in Mac world. It’s a solid program used by groups like Passion and 7:22/Louie Giglio & Chris Tomlin.

Now with a fresh new look and incredible new video engine, ProPresenter 3 has never been easier or more spectacular. ProPresenter 3 has been completely re-written from the ground up with the following features:

* Universal Binary - Native to Mac OS X (requires 10.4)
* Sleek new interface with robust playlist management
* High-quality video playback with gorgeous cross-fading
* Dynamically selectable OR pre-programmed background selections
* Spell checking
* Quick Announcements / Nursery callouts
* Program window preview
* Multi-resolution playback (4:3, 16:9, or custom - supports up to 1280×1024 output resolution)
* In-Line thumbnail slide editing
* More features coming such as in-line scripture look-up, high-quality DVD playback, and more!
* Bundled with a wide range of 41 premium video backgrounds from the manufacturers below

Artbeats	a Luna Blue	Highway Video	12″ Design

	Retail Pricing
	• ProPresenter 3.0 Single User License	$399
	• ProPresenter 3.0 Site License	$799
	Upgrade Pricing
	• Any license purchased ON OR AFTER 8/01/06	FREE
	• Single License purchased PRIOR to 8/01/06	$199
	• Site License purchased PRIOR to 8/01/06	$399

Note: What is a Preview Release? While ProPresenter 3 is a major advancement to this application, it does not yet have feature parity with ProPresenter 2.7. If you use soundtrack sequencing or you play video out through the firewire port, you should NOT use ProPresenter 3, but continue using your current version. They will be adding these features into ProPresenter shortly. It is for this reason that the software is called a “Preview Release”.