Coming from EasyWorship
We have our first Sunday using Proclaim behind us. We have been using EasyWorship for two years - and probably still would be if they had come out with a Mac version. Although it might not be good business for promotion and sales, I am very disappointed about some basic things that EasyWorship offers that Proclaim does not. I post this (1) for any considering making the switch - be aware! and (2) to suggest that it might be better to be up front about these kinds of issues for those considering a change and (3) in case I'm being ignorant and misinformed - desire to be corrected if so!
I was disappointed that when we needed to skip a verse during a song we could not do so. This was an unfortunate event that embarrassed our worship leader and actually had our audience giggling during the song. Not the effect we were going for.
Our sound booth operator was unable to see the upcoming slides well enough to know what was ahead. That wasn't an issue this Sunday, but had my lesson notes been more complex (and sometimes they are), how does he know when to go ahead to the next slide if they are so little he cannot see them. Can that be adjusted?
I was unable to print out the schedule, so the other participants could not look ahead to their time and make any needed last minute corrections.
I did not know until the last second if we would even be able to use the program...our internet signal at the soundbooth is very unreliable...and I discovered after buying the program that there was no download feature.
Those are four pretty big things that we really depend on. Please correct me if I am wrong...but we seemed to be
1) Unable to skip a verse
2) Unable to see upcoming slides (they are way too small)
3) Unable to print out the schedule
4) Unable to d/l to a flashdrive
Those things seem to not be able to be done if I read the "upcoming features voting page" correctly.
John
Comments
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One area that Logos/Proclaim can do better is make things a little more intuitive, but I believe that most of the features you are looking for are there.
1. The verse order can be adjusted to what ever you desire by using the order box just below the title of the song in the edit screen. By using the sections of the song, Verse 1, Chorus1, Verse 2, Pre-Chorus, Bridge, etc, you can order them however you like. Before you click the box you will see in the box "1, C, 2, p, b" etc.
2. the slide issue bugged us until I stumbled on the fact that you can make the slides bigger. In "preview" mode the slides can be made larger by moving your mouse cursor to the border line between the preview and upcoming slides. By moving it slowly a double arrow should appear and by dragging it up the preview will get smaller and the upcoming slides bigger. Don't do this in live mode, it doesn't work the same.
3. on the print, I haven't tried, we use Planning Center Online and it has an order of service option
4. If you have the service "presentation" taken care of before sunday, at least as much as possible. ONce the light turns green on the top right of the screen the file is running locally.
Hope this helps. I love this program and its a work in progress.
Jude
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John Dobbs said:
1) Unable to skip a verse
Go to any verse directly by clicking on the ribbon below the displayed verse (also handy if you have forgotten to put a chorus in the line up.)
John Dobbs said:2) Unable to see upcoming slides (they are way too small)
Hover with cursor over the slide you want to see.
3 ?
4 Design feature - if on flash drive co-operation facilities disabled - Mac Book Air not much heavier than a flash drive. :-)
tootle pip
Mike
How to get logs and post them.(now tagging post-apocalyptic fiction as current affairs) Latest Logos, MacOS, iOS and iPadOS
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Jude, thanks for your reply ... finally able to get back to this page... have tomorrow's ready to go (I THINK!).
Most of my concerns do not relate to preparing the presentation, but rather to the use of the program during the LIVE showing. So my concerns more specifically relate to...
1) Unable to skip a verse if a song leader decides on his own to repeat a chorus or to go back to a previous verse and sing it again. I see now that it can be done by double clicking on the slide desired - if you can see which one you want to click on while a song is ongoing and while trying to see the popup slide and keep things rolling along. By not having a static viewable (i.e. readable for those over 40) slide you really have to be swift (during a fast song in particular).
2) I have no trouble seeing the slides during preview or when we are not live - there's no pressure at that point! In Easy Worship there is a full size slide in the left column that you can see very very clearly and know exactly what is going to be in the next slide.
3) I do not know about Planning Center Online. I usually do a printout for worship leader, the volunteer running the sound booth, and any readings ... so they know ahead of time exactly what is going to be on the screen. As we all know there are any number of versions of songs/hymns. Without having to copy/paste my way through the program and produce my own ... Easy worship has a simple print summary and print details function. that would be great for Proclaim.
4) Mr. Binks suggests that I buy a Macbook air. Nice. I actually just bought two mac computers so that we will be all-mac in the office and thus investing another small fortune in order to accommodate a function that many users are asking for. However, by use of a wifi repeater we have solved this issue ... which shouldn't really be an issue...but it's done.
I actually really like Proclaim ... I love the integration with graceway media, which we have subscribed to for several years ... and I love the signals, iphone app, and several other functions. I suppose my biggest issues above relate to the fact that I'm not the one doing those things while it is LIVE... a volunteer is... and that makes the learning curve a bit higher than it might have been otherwise.
If you're not asleep and still reading, thank you!
John
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Mike, thanks for your reply. All of my issues relate to LIVE presentation and as I replied to Jude, with the preview panes being so tiny, and if one has to look for a particular slide when a preacher or song leader switches things around ... they're just too small and that popup is just too slow a process ... especially when things are going along fast.
#3 relates to the ability to print out the songs and scriptures to give to our worship leaders so they know what's coming up on the screen. Nobody likes to be surprised to see verses they didn't intend to sing (which happened last week). Easy Worship's print summary (outline of worship) and print details (every word in every slide) have been very very helpful to all of our worship leaders.At this point I'm relegated to copy/paste the whole service into a file to print on my own. (= TIME)
#4 has been solved with a plug in wifi repeater that got signal to our soundbooth. I had already bought a new mac computer for the sound booth - and it was not meant to be portable (i.e. easily toted off) ... so buying another one is out of the question. So I'll add the $80 repeater to the cost of using Proclaim for budgetary purposes.
It seems to me that Proclaim knows it has some awesome functions (and it does! [:D]) but also must know that the on-air use of the program is the weakest link - and that's why you don't see much of that in the videos and pre-purchase materials. Easy to put together the program - yes. Ease of use ... there is room for growth at that point.
Anyhow...thanks for your time and as we enter our second week using the program I am exposing my newbie concerns that over time may not be concerns at all...but thanks for reading.
John
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Hi John,
We, too, came from EW - and while there are some quirks we need to get used to, for the most part we're happy with our little test run (2 sundays in)
I did notice that you can resize the slide ribbon, though the border between the preview and the slide ribbon is pretty vague, so move your mouse around it until you find it. (the cursor will switch to the vertical resize arrows)
For skipping verses, I noticed purely by accident that you can hit the letters on the keyboard corresponding to the letters under the slide. So, for example, when our worship leader said, "On the last.." I just hit "5" and went directly to verse 5. Same thing when he threw the chorus in there instead of the bridge - I just hit "C". Pretty slick.
I second the thought of Planning Center, though I wish the integration were tighter. I also wish the "import from planning center" was on the "Add Item" section instead of "New" since I like to re-use my pre and post service loops.
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Thank you Joshua. Your tip on skipping verses by hitting the corresponding letters on the keyboard is very helpful. That feature needs to be part of the orientation I think. Appreciate that!
John
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