Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Pro5 Move

I'm pretty excited about moving to ProPresenter5 in the coming months. Nothing makes a nerd like me happier than increased software functionality and efficiency. Pro5 has rolled out some features that will make the lives of everyone who works with ProPresenter (weekend operators, worship leaders and TDs) much easier. Below are some of my favorite new features that I think will have the broadest and most immediate impact. Also, don't forget that I've parsed out the most ACF-relevant training videos from Renewed Vision's website here. Launch date is tentatively scheduled for September 2.

Planning Center Integration

Now you can import Planning Center schedules directly into ProPresenter. Once you have it setup, a few clicks is all you need to drop your full service plan into your ProPresenter playlist, complete with title and linked songs!

Song Arrangements

Save various arrangements of songs (i.e. Joe's arrangement, Jason's arrangement) all in one library and recall them with a click. Completely re-arrange a song by selecting section tags (i.e. Verse 1, Chorus 1) and dragging them around in the song order. Best of all, if you make a change in 1 section of a song, it duplicates that change for all additional iterations of that slide!

One important thing to note - I've played around with this feature quite a bit, and while it simplifies everything, it can also add some layers of complexity. I highly recommend watching the video closely and practicing this feature on your own to see how it works. Don't forget you can download a demo version (both Windows and Mac OS) of ProPresenter5 for free here.

Importing Presentations

Pro5 has added some more functionality to make it easier for us to create new songs, teachings slides, etc. from copied text and other sources. The method is still essentially the same, but with some added steps. Now, when you go through the File->Import dialogue, you will be able to specify more settings and even re-arrange the song text before it even gets put in your library. Big time saver IMO.




Hot Folders and Media Management

This feature is quite handy for moving Videos and Images into ProPresenter and making sure they always land where you want them in the media bin. Simply create a folder on your computer, then in ProPresenter right click in the Media bin and add it as a hot folder. This feature will become especially useful as we further integrate file sharing programs like Dropbox into our media distribution process.








As I said, these are all just highlights - please please please make sure to watch the training videos I mentioned and start familiarizing yourself with the new platform before we launch. The interface itself has largely undergone only cosmetic changes and buttons and windows are located in the same place - so you won't have any trouble adjusting to the new software. However, I don't want anyone to miss out on some of these features that will really save time and make all of our jobs easier!




If anyone has any questions, or if you're a team leader and need licenses/logins, please just shoot me an email.