Proclaim Presentation Software – Great and Frustrating All At Once

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Dec 10, 2011 in Software, Technology, Worship | 4 comments

UPDATE: I changed the title of this post to read as above instead of “Great and Horrible” because of the responses I got from Logos developers at their forms. Please jump to the end to read about it …

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Logos added a new tool their arsenal of Bible and church software – Proclaim. This worship presentation tool has many great features to commend it.

• Cloud based – edit on home PC and presentation is ready on church PC
• Interface – beautiful interface
• Integration with Song Select for lyric import
• Integration with Logos for Bible verse/translation import
• Displays images, video, Bible, lyrics, and more

Syncing your presentation through the cloud with multiple computers makes proclaim an awesome tool for people who edit their presentations on one computer and display them on another. Teams can all work on the presentation at their various work stations and everything shows up on the computer in the sanctuary. So when I learned about the product, I jumped for joy! Finally, a tool that will let me and my team work from home but have it ready to go when we get to church.

Unfortunately, along with the great options Proclaim has some clunkiness to it. Keep in mind its in beta and hopefully Logos will get this stuff ironed out soon. They promise to make it free till the end of the year and will be a subscription based model afterwards. I just doubt they can make it useful enough to make me willing to fork over my church’s limited resources. They have another 20+ days till the end of the year. Maybe they will see the limitations and extend the free beta period.

Here’s the heavy lifting their programmers have to do before I can justify switching from MediaShout to Proclaim.

1. Image Import: I cannot import all of my images and then order them easily. The drag/drop is slow and painful if you have a lot of images. If I want to split my slideshow of images with a bible reference or a video, then I have to import just the files before one of those elements. Afterwards I add the element, say a Bible verse, and import the next set of images and then the next element and then the next set of image … etc.

2. Video Formats: I cannot use any of my video files because I create them as M4V files using iMovie. Proclaim won’t recognize them.

3. Complexity: Initially I though the interface seemed simple and elegant. Then i tried adding files to my presentation. I have to click a minimum of 6 times just to add one picture. That doesn’t include the clicking I have to do to find the file on my computer (opening folders).

The solution? Just let me important all of my offline content and put it in a temporary “box”. Let me drag and drop from that box to the presentation list. Then let me upload the presentation at that point. That way I can do most of it offline and it will speed up my work. When I upload it, then it will be ready for the next person to edit or for download on the worship center computer. As all the files and the presentation are uploading, I can go do other work. This makes me more productive and happier as I’m using the program.

Logos is the kind of company that I was always sure they’d get it right, in the past. Lately, I’m not as sure and this is just one more reason to doubt it. (UPDATE READ BELOW) Because it is in beta, I’m giving the program an incomplete. But based on the direction they are going, I don’t think I’m going to be happy. Check back in a month when they are actually charging. If things haven’t drastically changed I won’t recommend it.

To paraphrase another great mind, I’m stuck with the worst presentation software on the market (MediaShout), except for all the others. Someone has to be able to get this thing right. I hope Logos can be that someone.

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UPDATE: I posted some of my concerns in the Logos Forums and got a great response from one of the developers. First, the problem I had with ordering slides, which I didn’t even include in this post, will be worked on according to the response I got on my Forum post.

Regarding issue #1 above, I got a response as well.

Regarding issue #2 above, I got a response for that one too.

Great Job! Logos!! I am less skeptical now that Proclaim will make it to the point where I can use it in my church setting.

Proclaim Church Presentation Software a Game Changer

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Oct 11, 2011 in Software, Technology, Worship | 0 comments

Proclaim from Logos provides a simple, attractive and easy to learn church worship presentation solution that will enter a public beta phase today. I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in the private beta and have seriously considered switching from MediaShout, our church’s current solution, to Proclaim. Here’s why.

Simplicity

Most important, Proclaim has a simple interface that won’t be hard to learn for your team. I can quickly put together a usable presentation after playing with it for a few minutes. There may be some things that will take a little while to learn, but the basic stuff is just there.

Also, the ability to run the presentation from a  mobile phone using the Android or iOS remote app, means your team could potentially sit with their family during worship. Pastors of small churches who down’t have a team to run the presentation could do so from the pulpit.

Team Approach

Proclaim can be installed on all of your team member’s home computers – both Macs and Windows PCs. They can setup their portion of the worship presentation from home. The pastor can add graphics for the sermon. The music leader can add hymns. The ministry leaders can add announcement slides. And it will all be ready for Sunday morning.

Proclaim is a cloud based system. You add your graphics or videos to the Logos servers and they will show up on the computer at church. This might be a problem if your church doesn’t have Internet or the computer where you worship isn’t connected.

Weaknesses

Proclaim isn’t perfect. The need for an Internet connection to get the content onto the worship computer might be a real challenge for some people. You can bring a laptop and have the presentation cached to the computer and run it without Internet. For example, if your worship center doesn’t have Internet but the office does, set things up on a laptop in the office and then when you are sure you have everything, bring it out to the worship center. Alternatively, you could set things up at home.

Also, you have to upload graphics and videos to the Internet first and then download then to the worship computer, even if you are set up the presentation and run it on the same computer. This is a silly extra step. I hope Logos will let you add content without immediately uploading it if you don’t need to.

However, after you upload the content once it will always be ready to add to future presentations and backed up to the cloud. You don’t have to worry if your computer dies, gets damaged or even stolen.

If you use DVD clips directly from the DVD you will have to use DVD ripping software first. Proclaim doesn’t work with DVDs. Also you will need a subscription to lyric service Song Select from CCLI in order to quickly add songs without typing them out word for word.

A Game Changer

I believe that Proclaim will be a game changer for those who do use computers in a church connected to the Internet for the following reasons:

• Less training on complex software
• More time at home since you don’t have to be at church to set up the presentation
• Annual subscription cheaper than buying software and upgrading each year
• Safely back up your graphics, videos and other content for use at a later time
• Backed and supported by a strong company with a great record of customer service
• Presentations can be run form anywhere in the room via mobile phone

Right now Logos has a giveaway of either an iPhone 4S or one of ten one-year Proclaim subscriptions. And if the service hits its goal of 11,00o fans by 11/11/11 the free beta period will be extended till the end of the year. After that there is a cost, but this hasn’t been announced.

Day One Journal App Helps Me in Prayer Time

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Sep 2, 2011 in Featured, Ministry, Review, Software, Technology, Worship | 0 comments

As I lead my congregation through 30 Days of Prayer, I felt the need to be more concerted and organized in my own prayer life. Thankfully, writing an article about Mac Apps I found a program called Day One in the Mac App Store. This little app helps you keep an organized calendar based journal. You could use it for almost anything, but I’ve chosen to make it my prayer journal.

The app places a Menu Bar icon in the OS X Menu across the top of the screen. Depending on how you set it up, the app will remind you to make a journal entry every so often. I had it set up to do so every four hours, but I’ve now moved it to every eight. I think I might settle in on every six hours, which would make me write an entry about three to four times a day.

You can tell the app to wait a little while or skip an entry if you are too busy to do it or have already made an entry recently. I like this feature, but also worry that I might keep skipping and not follow through. So be careful that you don’t do that.

The journal entry window drops down from the menu and you type directly into it. You can also choose to open the full app from the drop down box.

If you want to look over past entries find them based on the calendar date. You can organize on a calendar or in a list.

I really like the app, and think it will help me keep regular focused times of prayer as I type my prayer instead of saying it. I struggle to stay focused if I am thinking or speaking my prayer. But if I write it, I keep on task and don’t wander in my thoughts. Combined with the Bible Study apps I use for reading plans, this will help me stay disciplined.

Other features of the app include:

• Password protection
• Exporting
• Starring of favorite entries or those you need to remember

They hope to add the following in the near future:

• Tags/categories
• Photo attachment
• iCloud Sync
• Formatting of text
• Full-screen distraction free mode
• Encryption of the journal file

The app costs $9.99 in the Mac App Store. An iPad version costs $1.99 in the iTunes App Store. You can sync the two using DropBox.

Logos Launching Proclaim with Big Giveaway

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Feb 16, 2011 in Ministry, Software, Technology, Worship | 0 comments

Logos is doing a nice giveaway starting today.

Below is a press release from the folks at Logos regarding there new online presentation worship software solution called Proclaim. I don’t normally just cut and paste these but wanted to get it out.

Worship leaders: you don’t need crazy-good luck to win!
Have you ever entered a contest to then discover that only one in a million will win?
Proclaim Church Presentation Software is breaking all the rules with the Great Worship Resource Giveaway. To celebrate its coming launch into the church presentation market, Proclaim has partnered with today’s top worship resource companies to give away over $25,000 in prizes to more than 100 winners.
And because worship leaders belong to such a small group, the chances of winning are huge!
“We put together a giveaway that will help worship leaders everywhere,” said New Media Executive Director Matt Peterson. “Proclaim is all about creating better worship services. Shouldn’t the giveaway do the same thing?”
The prizes all center around one thing—creating powerful worship services. Prizes include:
·         A professionally created website, hosted free for a year

·         One year of expert video and audio podcasting

·         $100s in gift cards for worship images, music and videos, downloadable music lessons, and more

·         An acoustic guitar from Lunar Guitars

·         Tickets to some of the premier worship leader and music conferences

·         Much more!

To enter, check out the short Proclaim video. At the end there is a list of ways to enter the giveaway. There are several one-time ways to enter and a couple ways to enter every day!
About Proclaim
Proclaim is a new kind of church presentation software designed with sharing capabilities between the pastor, worship leader, and worship team. The cross-platform software contains a built-in media store with fully formatted and compatible media, and allows the whole team to review selected content before it is presented. Proclaim allows a team to plan well together and is also the same application used to present on-screen.  http://www.proclaimonline.com

Ministry with a Mac

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Feb 2, 2011 in Bible Software, Digital Bible Study, Editorial, Ministry, Preaching, Software, Technology, Worship | 0 comments

Can a Windows person, who has integrated a PC into his recipe for ministry, substitute such a primary ingredient and go Mac without compromises? I’ve been trying to do that for the last three months and I want to share how it’s going.

A long time ago I shared a secret: I want a Mac! Yep! I, an avowed Windows guy, had Mac envy. When I finally made the jump to a MacBook Air when Apple released their refreshed version in November of last year, I got my secret wish. For years I used iPods. Two and half years before I got my heart’s desire, I switched from a Windows Phone to an iPhone. The journey took a big step forward when I bought an iPad and then started covering Apple, among other tech subjects, for Notebooks.com.

Over the last three months I have attempted to find ways to do my daily ministry tasks with my shiny new MacBook Air. And for about 85 percent of the tools I use there have been perfectly acceptable and sometimes better options on OS X. For example.

I spend a lot of time writing in Microsoft Word. There’s a Mac App for that – Microsoft Word. I do expense reports in Excel; there’s a Mac version of Excel too. On the rare occasions that I use PowerPoint, although I avoid it as much as possible, I can use the Mac version of PowerPoint. Alternatively, I tried out the iWork applications – Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets, Keynote for presentations. All are perfectly acceptable for my simple needs and in the case of Keynote, I believe it is much better than PowerPoint. Pages is simpler to use than Word. And I don’t need much for spreadsheets, so Numbers does the job.

I spend a lot of time online. My favorite browser is Chrome and it has a Mac version and for email I just go online. Occasionally I use the Mail app in OS X too. I don’t use Outlook, but it is pretty good on a Mac. Essentially most of the tools I use are available on a Mac or have substitutes. For blogging I miss Windows Live Writer. But I found MarsEdit, which has some really nice features and has become a good alternative.

For creativity work, I use three applications in ministry. I have not yet received my crossgrade version of Photoshop for the Mac, but it is on the way. If you are sure you plan to switch, just call Adobe and ask them to depricate your Windows license in favor of an OS X license. They will send it along. But be careful as the Windows version will no longer work. And they won’t let you just download the trial and enter a key. You have to wait for the license to come in the mail. Until it does, my OS X Photoshop Elements has been working fine. It comes in the box when you buy the Windows version of Elements 9.

For video editing, iMovie is much simpler than Sony Vegas. I miss some of the power of Sony’s app sometimes, but not enough to worry. My picture library is over 100GB because I was shooting in RAW format – a very large picture format that mostly serious photographers use. iPhoto is no better or worse than the Windows Live Photo Gallery, which I never used either. But I needed more both in Windows and now on a Mac. Organizing my monster library is hard. On the Windows side I used Adobe Lightroom which does the job well and has great editing features. And Adobe gives you both a Windows and Mac license when you buy it. However, this is where I have struggled a little. The Mac version is not  as stable as the Windows version. It crashes when I import photos sometimes. But other than that it has worked.

As you know, I write a lot about Bible software. This is where I have struggled some. I use a lot of Bible software applications as I test and review them. I even have beta tested a number of versions of major applications. But I spend most of my time in Bibleworks, of which there is no Mac version, Logos, and WORDSearch.  Logos has a Mac version but it is slightly behind the Windows version in its included capabilities and is much slower. The sentence diagramming feature is only in the beta version of Logos for Mac and has some issues. Initially the WORDSearch for Mac version was awful, but they have taken huge steps forward in the last few months getting their version with WINE (an emulator for Mac and Linux) to run acceptably. Now, it is pretty good, even though it does not run natively in OS X. I am now testing Accordance, a native Mac OS X Bible study application, and early results are hopeful. So I am getting my Bible study done without too much of a compromise.

There are a few smaller tools that I miss. My sheetfed Visioneer scanner is not really great on a Mac. But my EPSON Artisan 800 does a good job in its place. My CD/DVD labeling software doesn’t have a Mac version. But I am reviewing a few Mac counterparts and they seem to be great alternatives and in the case of one of them, it is more powerful.

I don’t run worship presentation software on a Mac. Our church has a Windows PC for that. So I will have to defer comment about that. I may try out the Mac version of MediaShout to see how well it works as an alternative. But we will have to see on that.

All of this is to say, that yes doing ministry on a Mac is very doable. It is hard to change the way you do things after years of habit. But this adventure has been a joy. So much so that I just replaced my Lenovo desktop with an iMac at home. And I have setup my MacBook Air to be easily dockable at my office so that I can always use a Mac except in the one thing that I have not found a good Mac alternative – Stamps.com‘s postage printing software.

Priests and their iPads

Posted by Kevin Purcell on Jun 18, 2010 in Bible Software, Digital Bible Study, Ministry, Prayer, Preaching, Technology, Worship | 0 comments

I’ve been preaching with my iPad for a few weeks now. I open the sermon in Pages and preach from it each Sunday and Wednesday. Now the Roman Catholic Church has an app for their priests to use to lead the mass in multiple languages. It is called iBreviary. Who says the church is out of touch with modern life?