Is there anyone out there that has had success using Proclaim with Apple TV & iPads to project onto TV screens?
Hello Sally,
Yes people have had success with Apple TV and Proclaim. I found a good example in a post here: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/84862/595295.aspx#595295
I am using an Apple TV with Proclaim on an iMac with Mavericks. Works like a charm. Let me know if you need more info. Glad to help.
Hello Pastor, Our church plant has been recently using proclaim with 3rd gen apple tv and MacBook pro. twice during our worship service we have lost our screen sharing. have you experienced this?
Pastor Dave
Pastor Dave,
We are also a recent plant using Proclaim and Apple TV. I call it "a church in a box" because we are in a rented space. We store all of our equipment onsite in a large locked storage cabinet and have to set everything up fresh every Sunday morning.
I have used a 2nd gen Apple TV with very little success and am currently using the older 3rd generation Apple TV. I found that it will work reliably if I avoid using any motion backgrounds, or video verse-of-the-day elements in my presentations. Apparently the Proclaim app causes an error in some of the Apple Airplay code when it attempts to show video. Usually the Proclaim app just crashes and throws out a crash log. At other times, the Airplay connection is terminated, leaving the Proclaim app running. When this happens, the slides that should be on the Apple TV/projector begin showing on the MacBook's screen behind the Proclaim control window. The Proclaim tech guys have been working on this issue, but say these problems do not occur when the 4th generation Apple TV is used.
I just upgraded to the 4th gen Apple TV, and will try it for the first time this next Sunday. I will let you know how it goes.
I also discovered that a fairly robust WIFI signal is required to keep the Apple TV connected via Airplay. WIFI instability of any kind causes trouble with the Airplay connection. I recommend using the wired RJ-45 connection if possible. We use PowerLine network adapters to pass our network through the facility electric wires. This allows us to plug the Apple TV and MacBook into the network using RJ-45 network cables and eliminating WIFI between the two. We still use WIFI with the local remote control feature to control slides using iPads.
Hope this helps.
I tested the 4th generation Apple TV with our MacBook Pro for several hours this afternoon from home. It appears to be completely stable. I loaded up our Sunday presentation with every kind of video element I could find, then ran through the pre-service loop for several hours with no Proclaim crashes, or Airplay dropouts. After several hours I advanced the presentation through the remainder of the presentation with no problems.
I'm satisfied that the 4th generation Apple TV corrects the disconnects and crashing that I have been experiencing.
Excellent news! Thanks for sharing Michael.
Thank you Michael, Thats good news about the 4th gen Apple TV. Its rumored that 5th gen is coming out this fall. If I understand your previous post correctly you use eithernet to connect your MacBook Pro and Apple TV to the internet. Do you still use Eithernet with the 4th gen? I am hoping the 4th gen proves reliable as we have our MacBook Pro sitting on the pulpit to control lyrics and scriptures so totally wireless would be nice.
If I need a hard wire I am thinking about HDMI cable direct connect to the flat screen with a mini display port adapter for the MacBook Pro.
Thank you Michael, Thats good news about the 4th gen Apple TV. Its rumored that 5th gen is coming out this fall. If I understand your previous post correctly you use eithernet to connect your MacBook Pro and Apple TV to the internet. Do you still use Eithernet with the 4th gen? I am hoping the 4th gen proves reliable as we have our MacBook Pro sitting on the pulpit to control lyrics and scriptures so totally wireless would be nice. If I need a hard wire I am thinking about HDMI cable direct connect to the flat screen with a mini display port adapter for the MacBook Pro.
Arlene
I often use a MacBook air to wirelessly control the presentation from the pulpit. I set up a local network to do this. I do though keep the Airport Express used to set up the network wired to the Apple TV and the Apple TV wired to the projector. If I used a newer version of the Apple TV I understand I could dispense with the Airport Express.
Arlene, Scott, and Jordan,
When I tested the 4th generation device yesterday, I was using my home WIFI and everything worked just fine.
For my "church in a box" setup I have the MacBook and Apple TV connected to an Airport Express using network cabling and Powerline network devices. I also use several iPads to remote control the slides using the local WIFI remote option. I have a young volunteer who handles the music slides using one iPad, and another iPad for controlling sermon slides. Sometimes guest speakers use it directly from the podium, but most of the time I control sermon slides while sitting in the audience; our pastor hasn't learned how to do that by himself yet!
The WIFI provided by the landlord is nearly useless due to cinder block walls blocking the signals. The internet bandwidth provided is almost as bad, but they allowed me to connect a Powerline transmitter to their equipment so I can get their internet out of the bunker and build my own wired and WIFI network using the Airport express. I just have to take it down after service - along with everything else!
Scott, Jordan, Proclaim Crew,
I did some additional comparative testing this morning to validate yesterday's successful 4th generation test. The old 2nd generation Apple TV device we have been using crashes after only a few minutes if any video elements are present in the presentation. A newer 3rd generation Apple TV works much better, and might not crash at all, depending on how many video elements are included in the presentation. My test presentation is loaded with video elements, so it crashed after 30 or 40 minutes. If II was actually in the middle of a service, it would crash right at, or near, the beginning of the sermon. As I proved yesterday, the 4th generation Apple TV seems to run forever, regardless of the number of video elements present in the presentation.
I think the crash has something to do with the size of the internal buffer built into the Apple TV devices. The 4th generation device has a huge buffer, and will even write to the internal 32gig hard drive if necessary. Based on their behavior, I would assume that the 3rd and 2nd generation devices have progressively smaller buffers. My conclusion is that either the Apple TV devices aren't using a proper handshake to signal buffer overflow, or the Proclaim app is not getting, or handling, the overflow signal sent by the device when the internal buffer gets too full. This should signal the application to pause the data stream long enough for the receiving device to catch up, and avoid overflowing the memory buffer.
Can Proclaim push to multiple (say 5) Apple TV devices? We just received a quote to upgrade the televisions in our overflow seating that included plenty of video over ethernet to HDMI and video switching that pushed the project to $26,000 (eek!)
I'm thinking something under $5,000 is more our speed.
Have you been successful connecting AirPlay to more than one Apple TV device at a time? If so, please share how.
airplay has never had reliable sync for audio or video. You can watch a movie with no glitches but often times you are going to get a little skip which looks quite bad in a service. This is not a problem with proclaim but with the reliability of the wireless protocol/interference etc. If you only need a picture then a vnc viewer might be the best option for multiple ipads.
Mike,
How do you use the MacBook air to wirelessly control the presentation from the pulpit? We are on a local network. Is the MacBook air the primary machine running proclaim? (If so I get what you're doing). Or are you using the MacBook air to control the presentation that's running on another computer?
For worship practice I've always wanted to run Proclaim from the platform instead of our sound booth so I can tweek the presentation on the fly. But instead I run it with an iPad and use my MacBook to change the presentation. But then I have to have the audio guy sync Proclaim to get the changes displayed in the house.
Shawn, you could always use something like TeamViewer to remotely log into the computer and make all the necessary changes right on the machine, even control it from the platform. That's what I do when I'm running video tracks with our choir during rehearsal.
Just be mindful that usually TeamViewer may cause a delay as it's still remotely sending instructions to the remoted machine. Besides the delay, remoting in is also another excellent solution!
I use TeamViewer for other stuff and never even thought about it. Great idea. Thank you!!
Regarding Christian's reply, I have seen less of a delay using TeamViewer with my MacBook controlling our Sanctuary machine (Windows) than I have using the Proclaim remote, which repeatedly loses connection (or it did last Sunday afternoon) while in a rehearsal. I'm sure it all depends on the speed of your wireless connection. We have a 50 Mbps connection with a 5Ghz router so I get maximum bandwidth. I very rarely see a slow down when using TeamViewer.
