Possibly returning to Proclaim......questions

I used Proclaim when it first came out till about 2016. Then I moved to my present church and I am thinking of bringing it to this church.

Questions:

1. How stable is it?

2. Do you run it on a separate PC than the PC run-in the livestream? That would work best for us, but how is that going for others???

3. What is your biggest frustration with it??

Thanks

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David Taylor, Jr.

I used Proclaim when it first came out till about 2016. Then I moved to my present church and I am thinking of bringing it to this church.

Questions:

1. How stable is it?

2. Do you run it on a separate PC than the PC run-in the livestream? That would work best for us, but how is that going for others???

3. What is your biggest frustration with it??

Thanks

It is lightyears from where it was in 2016. Very stable. No current frustrations. We livestream through Zoom so I can't speak to that part.

Mike Binks

1. How stable is it?

Not quite as stable as it used to be. I don't think that they have come to terms with Apple Silicon yet. I have had failures with the colour picker, and the on screen bible recently.

2. Do you run it on a separate PC than the PC run-in the livestream? That would work best for us, but how is that going for others???

No we run it side by side with Ecamm Live on an iMac.

3. What is your biggest frustration with it??

See above and

1. The nonsense that is the the font size indicator. (It doesn't mostly)

2. The failure to indicate which backgrounds are in use in the backgrounds panel.

3. The Faithlife Groups section.

4. The lack of ability to edit text in most of the provided background slides and hence remove Americanisms.

5. The general infantilisation of some of the built in features.

That said there is nothing better on the Market that I have come across and the integration with Sermon Builder (when it is integrated will be a game changer).

Mike Tourangeau

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200015#Comment_1200015

Thanks everyone.....that's helpful

Justin Gatlin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200136#Comment_1200136

We used to run it on a separate PC from our live stream, but since they introduced the awesome feature of virtual displays, it is no longer necessary. We create our slides full screen, then create a mirrored lower thirds output which goes to OBS via NDI. It is very cool. On Windows, we have had very few stability problems.
No real frustrations except that running it from Logos is too piecemeal for it to work for us. You can't insert On Screen Bible into the sermon editor, and the software is not smart enough to tell that I have deleted a regular Scripture slide with OSB, for instance. Otherwise, I really like the idea of running it from the sermon editor.

Mike Tourangeau

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200149#Comment_1200149

awesome feature of virtual displays

Can you elaborate? What does this do?

Otherwise, I really like the idea of running it from the sermon editor.

Does this mean one can have the slides change from the pastors ipad?

Graham Criddle

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200171#Comment_1200171

Does this mean one can have the slides change from the pastors ipad?

Yes - either by using the Proclaim Remote app, or directly from the Sermon Builde on the iPad.

Both work well - I use them regularly.

For use from the Sermon Builder see https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046239932 and https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051771651-How-do-I-control-my-Proclaim-presentation-using-Preaching-Mode-

Mike Tourangeau

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200172#Comment_1200172

Both work well - I use them regularly.

Wow....I have been away too long. I just tries it out (on my phone) it works well. Thanks

Myke Harbuck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200015#Comment_1200015

3. What is your biggest frustration with it??

See above and

2. The failure to indicate which backgrounds are in use in the backgrounds panel.

Truth! And this is such an easy fix. It's omissions like this that lead me to believe that the development team doesn't actually use Proclaim on a weekly basis, or even semi-frequent basis. This is so basic! There should be a way to easily tell what background a given slide has (by name!) and which backgrounds an entire presentation incorporates.

3. What is your biggest frustration with it??

See above and

4. The lack of ability to edit text in most of the provided background slides and hence remove Americanisms.

This is another HUGE weakness of Proclaim. Bob mentioned a couple of years ago that Proclaim was moving in this direction, but it never happened. It isn't just about removing cultural aspects from backgrounds, it's entirely about making slides more usable in a wider array of instances. For example, if I find a slide that has "Small Groups" in graphical text, I should be able to easily edit that to say "Home Fellowships."

I had hoped that "Customize Smart Media" was heading in that direction, but NOT! If the FL Proclaim team would work toward this end, they wouldn't have to put out quite so many different backgrounds and media items - we'd be able to customize what's already there and make existing slides work for our particular circumstances and needs.

3. What is your biggest frustration with it??

See above and

5. The general infantilisation of some of the built in features.

Another truth here, unfortunately.

Example: One cannot enter the sermon metadata for a recorded presentation until AFTER the event has been recorded. This is a huge headache. It means that I have to enter all of this AFTER church and AFTER the media team has left the media area before the recording can be published.

Example: When searching media, there's no way to exclude particular types of media, such as the canned, bloatware stock photos that comprises 75% of search results. As such, one must spend a ton of time sifting through these stock photos because the search functionality doesn't permit one to exclude certain types of media. This is another example of development by those who obviously don't use Proclaim in a production environment regularly.

3. What is your biggest frustration with it??

That said there is nothing better on the Market that I have come across.

As a loyal supporter of FL and their products, I must respectfully disagree here. Perhaps a small caveat might make this true..."For the price, there is nothing better...." I've been trying out ProPresenter, and I'm blown away by the features, responsiveness, and power that that system has. Yes, it's more costly, but it really gets the job done well.

I realize there has to be a balance between cost and functionality add, but I'd be willing to pay a little more if Faithlife could step up their game with Proclaim, start releasing more features, and work towards a more robust and feature-rich platform in the near future. I'd also like to see Proclaim advance faster than it does. They've really only released one new feature inside the GUI of Proclaim (Announcements 2) in the recent past, and it's only half baked.

Justin Gatlin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200171#Comment_1200171

awesome feature of virtual displays

Can you elaborate? What does this do?

Each slide can have different formats. So when we have a full screen version of each slide, as well as a lower thirds one, the slide changes on the livestream and on the screens in the room with one click, and without needing to run two presentations on two computers. You can change slides with the Proclaim app, or if you use the Sermon Editor in Logos, you can open it in preaching mode and click on your slides alongside your manuscript and the presentation will advance automatically. It is very cool. I will try and take some screenshots later.

Brandon Adent (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1200195#Comment_1200195

Hi Myke, thanks for writing this all out.

There should be a way to easily tell what background a given slide has (by name!) and which backgrounds an entire presentation incorporates.

In the Media Browser, we do show you the series in use for your open presentation, just beneath your Boards. I can see why you'd want to know the media in use for the exact item, though. We'll take a look and see if we can get something in the works.

4. The lack of ability to edit text in most of the provided background slides and hence remove Americanisms.

This is a really fair criticism, and as mentioned elsewhere it is not a new one. We need to do a better job of making Pro Media fully customizable so it can be tailored to any situation, and it's something we are actively working on. I'm hopeful you'll start to see changes in this direction in the next month or so.

Example: One cannot enter the sermon metadata for a recorded presentation until AFTER the event has been recorded. This is a huge headache. It means that I have to enter all of this AFTER church and AFTER the media team has left the media area before the recording can be published.

Proclaim should remember the last information you entered. So assuming you're in the same series, the media team should just have to change the sermon title. It would be nice to completely pre-load it though. We'll look at ways to improve this.

When searching media, there's no way to exclude particular types of media, such as the canned, bloatware stock photos that comprises 75% of search results.

There is actually a way to do this today. You can select the media collections you want to see and search on the left side of the Media Browser under “Collections.” If you don’t want to see the stock, you can select any combination of collections, as long as Faithlife Stock isn’t one of them. The default setting here is “All” unless you have something selected, so if you haven't selected a facet you'll see a ton of Faithlife Stock. We can look into ways to make this a bit more intuitive.

They've really only released one new feature inside the GUI of Proclaim (Announcements 2) in the recent past, and it's only half baked.

We released Announcement v2s in August of 2020. We’ve done a ton since then: Virtual Screens (along with support for different backgrounds and content per screen), added support for multiple aspect ratios, NDI and BlackMagic SDI out, live video background support, and Stream Deck support just to name a few things. We’ve also worked hard to improve performance.

Often we’ll announce these features in the Faithlife Proclaim group, in the release notes, and on the site, but if you’re not watching any of those avenues and don’t poke around all corners of the app it would be easy to miss them.

Thanks again for the feedback. A couple of us do use Proclaim in our church services, and even if it’s not in a typical production environment we all use it on a daily basis. While Proclaim may not be everything to everybody, we always want to improve and appreciate you bringing these things to our attention.