We have tested every PC based presentation software program and could never find a program that met all our needs. Then we found ProPresenter and we were forced to go Apple. Last year at Northpoints’ Drive Conference I met the owner of Renewed Vision and he sold me on ProPresenter. By the end of the month we’ll be running 10 Macs with ProPresenter for each worship experience. To date it has never, not once crashed.

I talk to many people that are scared to move over to Apple, I was one of them. I’ve personally built 100’s of PC’s and had been a Microsoft fan for years. Then I got my 1^st MacBook Pro. Remember if you still need to run Windows programs you can run Bootcamp. We dual purpose all of our Macs each week. Our creative department and volunteers use these computers for video editing, programming and graphic design throughout the week.

ProPresenter is very user friendly, which is important because volunteers are running the program most of the time. We are able to quickly train people how to use the program and provide an error free worship experience. I urge you to go to their website and check out all the features.

Damion Pirolli – Production Director

Filed under: Tech | Comments Off

We have been absolutely swamped the past few months with questions about how our Evite pages work.

The page runs almost entirely in PHP. HTML is used only to create the form and it’s elements. The form’s method is post, and the action is set to itself; so that when submit is clicked, it comes right back to this same page. Just previous to loading, the page checks to see if a post variable, “submit,” is set. If so, the script continues on to separate all the email addresses specified and store them as an array. A for loop goes through each of the email addresses and calls the mail() function.

This is all pretty straight-forward, but can still be confusing. I’ve tried to make the code as clear as I could; you can view it below. There’s a number of places I’ve noted in the following code that need be changed.

evites.php

Caleb Loffer, Flipping Web Genius

Filed under: Tech | Comments Off

Currently, we stream all of our videos and audio through Lightcast Media. This allows us to embed streamable videos to any webpage (explained in this tutorial.) Unfortunately, the Lightcast Media player does not feature a click-to-play option, but that’s not to say there’s no work-around.

The idea behind faking a click-to-play Lightcast video is an extremely simple one, and could be used for any media player. The only requirements are the use of the html tag “iframe,” two .php or .html files, and the support php. This post assumes the reader has a very basic knowledge of HTML and PHP. Note that all source code will be listed at the bottom of this post.

Starting at the lowest level, I’ve created an iframe with it’s src tag pointing to what we’ll call “mediaNoAutoplay.php” This file contains only one image which links to another file we’ll call “media.php” The image is a screen-capture of the lightcast media player with a play button pasted on top of it, (see this image for an example.) To avoid using a click-to-play, you can simply point said iframe’s src tag to the next file we’re going to mention, “media.php”

The first php file, “mediaNoAutoPlay.php,” will contain a refrence to Lightcast’s javascript file, plus a few div tags. It’s essentially the bear bones of what you’ll see on their default player link, (see this video for an example.)

A php tag added where Lightcast requires a video’s ID and you’re set. Take a look at the snippets below. I’ve cut them down to be very easy to understand. Once you have put “mediaNoAutoplay.php” and “media.php” on your server and setup the links properly, set the ’src’ variable in the first example to the movie number you wish to link to and paste the iframe where ever you’d like to embed the movie.

embed.html
mediaNoAutoPlay.php
media.php

Caleb Loffer, Flipping Web Genius

Filed under: Tech | Comments Off

In Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that a great company doesn’t use
technology to create momentum. However, when used properly,
technology can accelerate momentum. We believe this to be
true in the local church. Cool software programs don’t grow a church but
they can definitely help accelerate that growth by detailing objective
information to help make big decisions.

Lately we’ve adopted some new software programs from some great mentor
churches. Here are some of the programs we use for various applications:

1. Crystal Xcelsius
If you are like us you’ve become extremely good with excel. It has been
great to organize and maintain our data, but when it comes to making
decisions we wanted a little more detail than excel can provide. Following
a trip to LifeChurch we were turned on to software they use called
Crystal Xcelsius. It is a business application that takes your static
excel files and turns them into dynamic displays of your information,
greatly enhancing your ability to see any information you want
to follow. We currently utilize it to follow goals, attendance and giving
trends. The upside of the software is that it is completely customizable
allowing the user total freedom to create their own dashboards to display
their information any way they wish; the only limitation is the imagination.
The downside of the software is the amount of trial and error required to
develop the project. Starting with the end goal in mind is a must when
designing the application. If you are not afraid of the learning curve and
are looking for a way to enhance your information synthesis, Crystal
Xcelsius is definitely worth the investment.

2. MapPoint
We’ve been searching for applications to display on a map the people that
have visited Elevation Church. There are several free packages available
but many had limitations on the number of addresses that you could plot or
were extremely difficult to import the data. We came across MapPoint after a
meeting at NorthPoint in Alpharetta and we have been very pleased. It is an
extremely user friendly application. Excel files are a breeze to import and
the software is easy to navigate. One of the best features is the drive
time application. You simply identify location on your map and click on the
drive time button, type in the number of minutes you want and it will draw a
corresponding boundary line around your location. It has been extremely
helpful when looking at where people are coming from and how many are within
a 10 or a 15 minute drive. One drawback on the software is it does not
contain addresses for new developments within the past few years. In the
Charlotte area where new homes are popping up all over some maps will not be
able to plot up to 20% of the addresses. But the benefits far outweigh the
drawbacks and if you are an aggressive church wanting to keep up with your
people MapPoint is a must.

3. Pro Presenter
We have tried many presentation software programs and have landed on Pro Presenter. We love the ease of use and the reliability. This program was a major shift for us, it meant investing in Apple Computers. We have not had a single program crash for the last 8 months since switching to Pro Presenter. Between both campuses and all of our children ministries we have 8 Macs running each Sunday morning. During the week these Macs are used by all of our creative and tech teams.

4. Central Desktop
Our production department utilizes a web based program call Central Desktop. It is a project management application that allows us to track all tasks and projects that need to be completed by the creative and production teams. I’ve tested over 20 web based systems and found Central Desktop to be the best system for under $100 per month. This program allows us to track a task from start to finish and also allows the production director to assign tasks and to others. It keeps us on schedule and organized.

Filed under: Tech | Comments Off