If you’re into digital photography or videography you may have heard that shooting video on your HD capable DSLR is all the rage. This post from the ProVideo Coalition provides a great case study in how using these cameras to shoot an entire program can work. I need to get me one of these cameras!
About
Technology and Design as it applies to the Church. A collection of ideas scoured from the web and from Eric Granata.
Get More
Sponsors
I use these vendors regularly and would not recommend them if I didn't. Help me feed my babies by checking them out!
There’s been a lot talk about the publishing industry and how eBooks and other technologies will change things. This brief article from Joe Wikert, GM at O’Reilly publishing, has some interesting thoughts on what the step beyond eBooks might look like and a company you may be familiar with that has been doing it for years. Thought provoking stuff.
Looking to build a mobile website? Hoping to take advantage of huge screen sizes without leaving out the little guy? Check into Less Framework. It’s pretty cool!
With mobile sites being all the rage, don’t forget your visitors who, like me, are still rocking their non-iPhones and non-Androids and whose mobile browsers are limited by speed, rendering and bandwidth issues. If the group of mobile browsers in this situation is big enough for Facebook to consider, I’ll bet it’s big enough for your church to consider.
Don’t have the skills or time to set it up? There are services that make creating a mobile site quick and easy!
ProPresenter 4 is out for Mac (Windows version on the way!)
I got a welcome email in my inbox this afternoon. ProPresenter 4 has been released and with it a bunch of very excellent features that, in my opinion, keeps this app firmly on the throne as King of Presentation Software.
Even more interesting is Renewed Vision’s announcement that they are working on a Windows port of ProPresenter. I know a lot of PC users who will be happy to hear that.
Here are some FAQs that were included in the email:
WHAT WILL PROPRESENTER 4 WINDOWS LOOK LIKE?
We have put a great deal of thought into the user interface of ProPresenter 4 on the Mac, so why ruin a good thing? We are building the Windows version to look and function identically. If you know how to run ProPresenter 4 Mac, you will know instantly how to run ProPresenter 4 Windows.
WILL IT HAVE ALL THE FEATURES OF THE MAC VERSION?
We are working hard to make sure that every feature of the Mac version is implemented in Windows. In some cases, a feature may be less robust on the Windows platform while others may work even better. Some technical realities beyond the scope of ProPresenter may have an impact (video codecs, shared storage, etc.), but we’re going to make sure these are minimal.
WILL I BE ABLE TO USE BOTH IN MY ORGANIZATION?
From the ground up, we have worked to ensure interoperability between ProPresenter 4 Mac and ProPresenter 4 Windows. This means you will be able to move files back and forth, and they will run largely the same way on either platform.
WHAT ABOUT THE ADVANCED AND ALPHA KEYER MODULES, OR THE PROPRESENTER REMOTE FOR IPHONE?
We’re not planning our initial release of ProPresenter 4 Windows to include any modules or iPhone remote functionality. Depending on market acceptance and customer demand, however, we may consider developing them in the future. Be sure to let us know your interest in these additional features.
WHAT IS THE PRICING OF PROPRESENTER FOR WINDOWS?
ProPresenter for Windows has the same pricing structure as its Mac counterpart. Single user licenses will be platform specific and sold for $399. However, a Site License for ProPresenter 4 will work on either platform, allowing unlimited use on any platform for a single campus, making our site license an even better value add. This means for a $799 site license purchase, you can run ProPresenter 4 on either a Mac or a Windows machine. Existing ProPresenter 4 site license owners will be able to download and unlock the Windows version immediately after it becomes available.
WHY ARE WE ANNOUNCING IT NOW?
Because site licenses of ProPresenter 4 will work on both the Mac and Windows versions, we want people to know these benefits before placing their upgrade orders.
WHEN WILL PROPRESENTER 4 WINDOWS BE RELEASED?
We don’t have a specific date for release quite yet, but are working towards Summer 2010. We will certainly have a public beta test for registered ProPresenter users prior to the wide release. Stay tuned to this page for such an announcement in the coming months.
WILL PROPRESENTER 4 WINDOWS EFFECT THE MAC DEVELOPMENT CYCLE?
Above all else, we want to create the most functional products possible. While ProPresenter 4 has a great many features that we’ve been thinking about for years, we still have a great many more ideas we are looking forward to implementing in the future. Because we have completely separate development teams working on the Mac and Windows versions of ProPresenter, we can concentrate on making each platform’s product the very best it can be and developing new features quickly.
So yesterday I released my first iPhone app, Audio Footnote. I’m busy sending out press releases and promo codes now and I figured I’d plug it here as well.
I’ll never listen to another sermon podcast without Audio Footnote. Now I can record voice notes while listening to podcasts on my iPhone and those notes will be saved and sorted by what I was listening to, when I was recording the note and how far along in the podcast I was. Works with audiobooks and the iPod Touch too.
I created this app, with the help of some wicked smart guys, because it solved a problem I was having. I hope it is a help to you also. More info at http://www.audiofootnote.com.
MediaCore is a free open source video, audio, and podcast publishing platform. It is built for organizations who wish to distribute media in a variety of formats on their website while maintaining the ability to control the user experience.
The purpose behind MediaCore was to make a central media library that could pull media from any source, track statistics, enable commenting, and provide a high degree of control over the presentation and administration.
Roll Your Own Digital Signage 2.0
A while back, I wrote a series of posts detailing how I created a digital signage solution of Henderson Hills Baptist Church using modified AppleTV.
While the hacked AppleTV worked well enough, it was not quite as robust as I wanted, could not play video well, and would not auto-scale for different display sizes. So I’ve been working on a new solution.
Now I have something ready to show. We’re using this solution at our Edmond Campus and it’s been received well. The video below shows it working:
Here’s a graphic that shows how everything works.
I can’t give the Flash source file away due to licensing restrictions but I can distribute the compiled Flash Projector (what you’ll run on the computer connected to the display). If you’re interested in having something like this set up at your church, email me at eric@ericgranata.com and we’ll get things rolling!
Introducing Stage Time (or How to Reign in Those Announcements)
Tired of the announcements dragging on at church? Need to give the guest speaker a subtle hint that his turn at the mic is over? If you’re looking to manage your stage better, check into Stage Time from the same mind that brought you Countdown Maker!
Stage Time is an app for Macs that let’s you create a “show” consisting of a list of elements that will be happening on stage. Each Element gets a predetermined amount of time which is counted down on an external display (your confidence monitor). The idea is that the person on stage will be able to keep track of how much time he has remaining on stage before the next element takes place. Your show might look like this:
- Announcements - 5:00
- Tithe - 5:00
- Worship - 20:00
- Prayer - 5:00
- Sermon - 30:00
- Closing Prayer - 5:00
Every time an element goes over its allotted amount of time, the clock turns red to let the people on stage know they’ve gone over and by how much time they are over. Once an element wraps up, the show is advanced to the next element with a click of the mouse or using an Apple Remote. The clock then displays a countdown clock for that element, and so on.
Shows can be created and saved for later. There is even a handy notes pane in case you need to insert specific instructions for your friends in the tech booth.
Stage Time also displays a clock at the bottom of the monitor to show the time. It’d be wicked cool if somewhere else on the screen, you had the option to display the total minutes behind or ahead of schedule the entire show is.
For more information about Stage Time or to download a trial, visit http://www.tastefulworks.com.
[Full Disclosure] The guys at Tasteful Works and myself have been working together on a soon to be released iPhone app. This is not a paid review or anything, just trying to help them out with some promo.
It’s been discussed before that Vimeo is a fantastic deal for churches looking to offer video online on the cheap. Now, if you’re a paying customer ($60/yr.) you can expect support for 1080p and mobile playback (as in, your Vimeo content on an iPhone). That’s a pretty sweet deal!
