Hey everyone, I’m looking for suggestions on church presentaion software. These seem to be the top four out there so I want to hear about what you guys are using and if you would recommend it or not. I’m looking for something that is easy to work with, something that volunteers can pickup fairly quick and run with. I want something that is powerful though and will do what I want it to do. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks everyone.
Update:
Hey guys, thanks for the feedback on this. I spent about half the day yesterday downloading and checking out a bunch of these. I think I looked at media shout, easy worship, live worship and another one that I cant remember right now. Anyway, they’ve all got their pluses and minuses. The one thing that I did find as I checked those out is that I know better what i want from the program that we eventually get. Here’s a quick list.
- Needs to be easy to pickup
- Needs to be powerful and customizable
- Needs to be stable
- Needs to run powerpoint from inside the program
- Needs to be windows. (My dream would be that we could use Mac but that’s not gonna happen at Calvary… unfortunately)
- Needs to look good
From what I’ve seen so far each of these is lacking one of these qualities. So keep the info coming. Sell me on what you’re using. And for those of you who aren’t using anything, what would you want to be using if you could? Thanks everyone.
That really depends on what your needs are. We just upgraded at church and went with Song Show Plus (SSP). It’s working really well for us, but depending on your needs, one of the other programs might be best for you.
The good thing about all these systems is you can download them and install them on your machine and try them for free. That was what helped us make our decision. Yea, it’s work, but it’s worth it.
We use MediaShout for our service and I love it. From what I’ve seen, it’s one of the easier programs to pick up on.
Hi mate,
After about six months of testing all kinds of software, we decided on Media Shout. It really came down to a choice between that and Easy Worship. Song Show Plus did not endear itself to us.
Our choice was based on the extra flexibility of Media Shout over Easy Worship, but we also felt that Easy Worship was much easier to learn for our volunteers.
I’ve used MediaShout since ‘02 - over 5 years! I have one thing to say about it - UNSTABLE. No matter what computer I’ve used or what updates I’ve downloaded (I’ve used 2.0 & 3.0) I’ve had problems. Never died mid service, only when I’ve spent an hour and forgot to save the presentation. Argh! I was so fed up with it. Then they spent a year saying a Mac version was coming, only to give up and say it was too difficult.
We just made the switch to Mac and bought ProPresenter, using it in conjunction with Keynote. Love it. Love it. Love it. Those guys are on top of it. And Keynote works beautifully. Our presentations overall look more professional, more crisp, just plain better - not to mention stable. Then as you grow you can get their other programs - Provideoplayer. Hope this helps!
Another vote for MediaShout. When you’re ready and need some background content let me know as I have some sites for you to check out.
Hey guys, thanks for the feedback on this. I spent about half the day yesterday downloading and checking out a bunch of these. I think I looked at media shout, easy worship, live worship and another one that I cant remember right now. Anyway, they’ve all got their pluses and minuses. The one thing that I did find as I checked those out is that I know better what i want from the program that we eventually get. Here’s a quick list.
1. Needs to be easy to pickup
2. Needs to be powerful and customizable
3. Needs to be stable
4. Needs to run powerpoint from inside the program
5. Needs to be windows. (My dream would be that we could use Mac but that’s not gonna happen at Calvary… unfortunately)
6. Needs to look good
From what I’ve seen so far each of these is lacking one of these qualities. So keep the info coming. Sell me on what you’re using. And for those of you who aren’t using anything, what would you want to be using if you could? Thanks everyone.
I highly recommend Easy Worship myself. It’s the first thing I did when I got here, switching to that (from Powerpoint…BLEH!)
I’ve used Media Shout a little, and EW is way easier to use and train volunteers with. At one time I would have said that Media Shout had more options though, but Easy Worship has added a lot and is very comparable.
Check out this article too, might help a bit:
http://mondaymorninginsight.com/index.php/site/comments/church_video_ideas_review_of_easyworship/
I look forward to hearing what you go with!
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, as far as your list, I think EW fits it all.
Easy was one of the programs I messed with yesterday. It was cool and looked easy enough. The problem I had with it though was that for some weird reason the video backgrounds didn\’t work in the demo. I think they we\’re supposed to but they didn\’t. That was a little bit of a turn off.
Victor,
I use Easy Worship, it really is easy for most people to grasp.
It seems like I had trouble with video backgrounds the first time I used it even though it was a registered copy. Off hand I can’t remember what I had to do to fix it. It was some kind of setting in the program or something.
I will try to poke around in the program and see if I can remember and let you know.
I haven’t used any of the other programs, but for me Easy works well and is very stable.
James
I heavily endorse PROPRESENTER…if you have been to a Passion event, you have seen it. Our church uses it. Good stuff.
my dream would be to use ProPresenter. I’ve seen what it can do and I am amazed by it. The problem with that is that I don’t think they would let us change our stuff over to mac. Heck I had to get special permission to use my mac on the network. It’s fear of the mac. I don’t know why. Probably because we’re gonna take over.
Hey man I used to use Easy Worship exclusively at my old church. My church now uses Media Shout. I think it’s a cool program but no one knows how to completely use it at this church (I suppose a downside to MediaShout.) I love Easy Worship but haven’t used it lately.
Pro is great but yeah I don’t think there’s a PC version yet.
Check out SundayPlus if you haven’t already. They currently offer version 2.4… but they’re feverishly working on a new major release that is based off the FreePath engine (developed by the same guys!) — FreePath is pretty darn cool!
propresenter is the best, but SSP is great…thats what we use
We’ve used EasyWorship since I came here a year and a half ago - before that it was PowerPoint.
For us, the big benefits of EasyWorship have been easy integration of various video backgrounds as well as quick training time for new volunteers.
We have 8-year olds running EasyWorship for our kids program on Sunday morning and 70-year olds running it for our mid-week seniors’ events.