Media (Screens)

Mindset

The goal is to be on time, and comfortable enough to adapt to everything that can happen in a service. You are enabling the congregation to participate in worship. Here are a few things to remember:

• Being slightly behind is better than showing the entirely wrong slide
• When 2-3 syllables are left on the slide, go ahead to the next one
• When moving to different 'parts' of the song, give it an extra moment to make sure you feel where the worship team is going

Responsibilities

• Service (-1.5hr)
  • Startup station
  • Work with leadership to accommodate service order updates
  • Work with worship team to check song order
  • Work with sound technician to check videos & their volumes
  • Manage the following through service:
    • everything going on the screens
    • room & stage lighting
    • background music before & after service

Words to Know

• ProPresenter – presentation software, controls basically everything
• BlinderKitten – what controls the room (Asheboro only) & stage lighting
  • Wash Lights colored lights pointing up the walls
• Apple Music – background music
• CC0 - Copyright Free/Copyleft Media (we can stream/broadcast this)
• Macros – shortcuts for doing things in ProPresenter: lighting, adding overlays to the livestream, changing what's on the stage display
• Props - temporary popups to be used during sermons (images or videos), usually go to just the livestream
• Keyboard Shortcuts - quick actions that can be performed by pressing 1 key

Start of Service

We have quite a few moving parts at the very beginning of service, and high expectations because its the intro to the service/livestream/congregation, additionally the first 2 minutes of services are where 90% of complaints/issues arise. Propresenter is extremly capable, and simplifies most of the start of service, but requires setup and double checking. Here is the ideal flow:

By this point, you will probably have some background music playing and the announcement slides on the screens.

The following should happen automatically

1. ProPresenter Calendar is configured to start the "Countdown & Intro Video" presentation 5 minutes before service starts

2. In the countdown video's inspector page, cue markers have been added to the video to ensure CCO background music will play and stop at the start/end of the video

2.5 The countdown video slide has macros to unmute the livestream audio, unmute the PC's audio, set the lights to pre-service

3. At the end of the Countdown video, the Service Opener video will play and adjust the lights appropriately

3.5 The Service Opener video has cue markers to have the wash lights follow bursts of color, and the stage lights to come on at the appropriate end of the video

4. After the Service Opener video, the logo will show and macros will put things back to a normal state

Then you take over and go into the first song.

Troubleshooting

• The Lights aren't responding!
  • Is the Blinderkitten running?
  • Is the project loaded? (should be seeing a stage map in Blinderkitten)
  • Try reopening Blinderkitten: quit, discard changes, and reopen
  • (Asheboro) Is the touch control panel taking over? (use Mac Ctrl button)
  • (Liberty) Are the lights on at the light switch & breaker 35?
• The screens are not working!
  • ProPresenter can get confused if the extra screens turn on out-of-order. Make sure the rest of the booth is turned on (ask the sound technician), then quit and re-open ProPresenter.
  • If that doesn't work, reboot the Mac, this can take 4-5 minutes to complete.
• The Screens are black and still not working
  • On the Mac Mini, open the VMP app (be careful in here)
  • Now select the device, click through the tabs looking for an error log at the bottom
  • If you find a page that says "output disconnected" one of the breakers for the screens has been mistakenly turned off
  • There are labeled breakers behind the stage for the LED Screens, and one for "Baptismal" on the left side of the lobby near the hospitality room, Both must be turned on
• The scriptures are sized wrong, wonky, weird, or too big!
  • Select a slide from the presentation, then in top left click Theme
  • Navigate to and select AFA Themes -> Dual Scripture NKBG
  • This will reapply formatting to the selected presentation
• There's no audio coming from my video in ProPresenter!
  • Is the volume up on the soundboard?
  • Is the volume up on the Mac? (use keyboard shortcut or top right panel)
  • Does audio from something else play? (background music or YouTube)
  • Does the video itself have audio if you play it in Finder?
  • Are the correct Macros applied to the media in the presentation?
• Thumbnails aren't showing in ProPresenter!
  • Fully quit ProPresenter using the top left ProPresenter menu then quit and confirm, then relaunch it. Scrolling around should pull in the latest thumbnails

More Details on the lighting - Asheboro

The touchscreen panel and the mac both send DMX signals to the room & stage lights. If both are trying to "control" the lights, it gets unpredictable because the "loudest" signal takes priority.

Simplify by selecting the Mac Ctrl button on the touch screen. The computer now has full control.

INFO 80% of the time lighting will be automatically changed along with the slides. You may manually control the lighting using the Lighting Cues macros in the bottom left of ProPresenter. Feel free to test these buttons during practice to learn what they do.

I do not reccomend using the Blinderkitten app directly. If you insist, the Pick Scene and Full Off buttons are a great start. Things get more complex managing specific light fixtures and making new scenes.

Even More Details!

Propresenter talked to other devices based on what is in the Settings -> Devices page.

In Asheboro, there are two devices, if either are misconfigured or unavailable macros will have a yellow exclamation mark/error symbol.

1. MIDI -> CoreMIDI Device with Destination set to Bus 1 (blinderkitten is on the receiving end of this)
2. SQ7 MIDI -> CoreMIDI Device with Destination set to CC Translator Outputs (the soundboard gets these forwarded to it)

Programming what goes over these connections is out of scope for this document.