ProPresenter is the application that we use at Life.Church to get slides and videos from the computer to the screens during stage time. Each week, the content will change, but the workflow will stay fairly consistent. This article will go over how to use ProPresenter to operate a weekend experience at Life.Church.
Each week, ProPresenter is used every experience, throughout the whole experience.
Pre Experience
A pre experience loop of content is provided by each campus. It is your responsibility to play this pre experience loop before the experience begins.
Cover tune/Worship
During the cover song and worship, ProPresenter is used to display lyrics on the confidence monitor so that the Worship Leader can effectively lead the audience in worship, without having the stress of trying to remember each and every word of every song.
Although this may not seem like a front-line crucial task, it truly is. You are leading the Worship Leader as they lead the campus. Please pay close attention while operating during the worship set.
Stage Time
During the Stage Time, ProPresenter is on the front lines, displaying on the screens. During this time, your responsibility is to aid the stage communicator, helping the audience visualize what is being communicated from stage.
Message
During the message, ProPresenter is used as a backup source in case Resi, Hyperdeck and Satellite fail. Even though it is not showing on the screens, it is very important to have this playing along with the live message in case of a failure.
Close
During the Close, the campus pastor will give a call to Christ and celebrate with those who've given their life to Christ. ProPresenter is used to show next steps and play a walk-out video that visualizes "Whoever Finds God, Finds Life".
After this short video, please play the pre experience loop unless instructed differently by your campus.
To open ProPresenter, find the logo in the dock at the bottom of the desktop, and click on it.
This is the view you will most likely have when opening propresenter. This window shows:
(1) The document that is currently selected - This is where we will play slides and videos from. To play a slide or video, simply click on the desired slide or video. Once the first slide or video is played in a document, you can use the space bar to advance to the next slide or video.
To help verify the correct document is selected, look for the name above the slides.
(2) Preview of ProPresenter's main output - This preview shows the current media being played.
(4) Playlist - This area displays all of the playlists that correspond to different events or services. If the current service playlist is not displayed, defer to the Worship Pastor to locate it.
(5) Current playlist menu - This area shows all of the documents that are in the selected playlist. These documents are placed in order of experience, from top to bottom. To select a document, simply click on it in the current playlist menu.
(6) Toolbar - The toolbar provides the ability to quickly:
(from left to right)
- search for documents
- edit document text properties
- edit document themes
- return to the home screen
- edit an existing document
- easily input text with multiple slides
- open the Bible
- and more tools to edit different aspects of Pro Pre
- as well as open the media bin
The video/image bin houses all of the video or images that have already been imported into ProPresenter. To bring a video or image into a document, select the desired document, and click and drag it from the Video/Image bin into the document.
The messages button allows us to overlay messages on the screens. A perfect example of this is displaying a LifeKids code.
If a child is having a non-life threatening problem and the LifeKids team cannot get a hold of the parent any other way, a LifeKids volunteer or staff member might bring you a LifeKids tag with a code on it. We use the Messages window to display this code on the screens as another way to get the parents attention. For more on how to display the LifeKids Code check out this article: LifeKids Code Best Practices
Document
Each document is almost like a slideshow, with multiple media files organized in the order that they should be played during an experience.
Playlist
For organization and flexibility, each experience uses multiple documents that are brought together into a playlist. Documents are placed in order of experience from top to bottom.
There are two types of media behaviors that are used within ProPresenter. Foreground and Background. Any slide or video can be switched to foreground or background at any time.
With the workflow of ProPresenter at Life.Church, we use mostly foregrounds to allow the use of "Go To Next timers".
To find out more about Foreground vs Backgrounds, please check out this article:
At Life.Church, we use stage display layouts as a tool to best serve the worship team and stage communicators. By using different layouts, we are able to automate the confidence monitor to fit the specific need of each part of the service.
To find out more about confidence monitor layouts, please check out this article: Stage Display layouts