I thought I would make a quick post while we are getting ready for church. It is Wednesday night, and people have begun to file in. The picture is taken from the new media booth I and another guy built at the back of the church. We can now do lyrics and scripture verses like the big boys, and all with open source software. We are using OpenSong. I tried using OpenLP, but had issues with video and a couple other bugs that made it unfeasible. Anyway, we video all the services, and do projections. At some point I would like to see a projector installed to replace the flat panel monitor we have, but we all have to work with what God gives us. I guess that's about it for now, i'm just trying to get into the swing of regular posting.
God Bless you all!
Hi Todd,
ReplyDeleteNice looking booth you got there! I'm one of the OpenLP developers, and Google Alerts, which tells me when someone mentions OpenLP on the ol' web, alerted me your post :)
I'd be interested to know what the bugs were that made OpenLP unfeasible? We're aware that sometimes videos don't work as well as we'd like, but this can't be your showstopper since I don't think OpenSong supports videos at all!
If there are issues preventing people from using OpenLP we'd certainly like to try and fix them and try and give a good first impression. That way people can spend money on projectors instead of commercial projection software :)
Anyway I enjoyed reading your blog, and hope you have fun in your new booth! :)
Jonathan.
Gushie,
ReplyDeleteWhen I tried to use OpenLP live the first time, I had to restart the program 4 times during the service because it kept freezing up, the slides would not progress. I wasn't using video, it had something to do with the "blank screen" buttons or something like that. I have found the same problem in forums dedicated to OpenLP, but no solution. I no longer have it on my computer so I can't be more specific about the actual issues. All I know is It got pretty hectic having to restart the program during the service. I really like the program, especially the ability to show video, It was just too flaky. I use vlc media player, video desktop mode to show video. Not great, but works (most of the time ;-). You can email me direct if you think I should give it another shot... God bless, and thanks for the comment!
Hmm, very odd, not sure why you got such problems. Although there are sometimes codec related problems for certain video formats, I wasn't aware of locking up issues in general song/bible usage. I'll drop you an email later. However if OpenSong works fine for you, then it could well be a case of if it ain't broke, don't fix it! :)
ReplyDeleteThere are also ways to operate VLC in dual screen mode too, since we do this when we have a video in a format OpenLP won't play! I'll let you have the details of this too. (I'm hoping we can do away with this in the future, since v2 of OpenLP should have better video support!)