Media Shout, Easy Worship or Song Show Plus?
Now we have the Beast projector running in our services, we are desperate to upgrade from PowerPoint to a dedicated church presentation software package. These three are the front runners so far. We are testing Easy Worship at the moment, and will download the trials of the others, one by one.
Any recommendations?
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11 comments:
Hey Mark, thanks for stoping by my blog and dropping a comment. Your blog looks great! I look forward to adding it to my RSS reader so I can keep up with it.
By the way, on the current topic... I like Media Shout the best. They all have a little learning curve but I found that I can do things the way I wanted well on Media Shout. Anyway, thanks again.
- Vic
it really depends on whose is going to be running the program during your worship service... my advice is download the free 20 day trial of each and have your volunteers/staff/whoever runs it during the service to sample out each of the different interfaces and then choose. They all essentially do the same thing and the main variation is the interface.
This is my two Egyptian Pounds on the subject...
Thanks guys for the advice.
Right now the plan is to download the software, one by one and live-test it on the weekend with our volunteers as guinea pigs. Just like you said, Leigh!
Right now we have EasyWorship up and running. It's great at handling PowerPoint files, great song fonts, hard to get consistant font sizes frame to frame. Great at handling live dvd playback, cueing etc.
Lets see how it goes - watch this space...
We recommend Song Show Plus due to the advanced graphic capabilities. The program has been around since 1995 and seems to stay one step ahead of the competition. 3D transitions, 3D animations video and image editing. You also have settings on each motion background. Snow flakes with mountains in the background size, shape, windspeed, wind direction ect. YOu can also import a jpg image and use the pan and zoom feature which makes the image look like a motion background. They also release new features every few months which you receive for free with the purchase for the next year
I agree with Leigh... it depends. For us we recently selected EasyWorship. I personally like MediaShout, but we found that it was too much of a learning curve for our volunteers. We especially like that a "site license" was standard with EasyWorship. This allows multiple people to work on songs and prepare schedules/sets.
Mark,
If you are still evaluating software, please contact me through my blog. I have been using Media Shout for about four years and recently started working for Media Shout, so obviously I'm going to be biased towards MS. But I am more than willing to give you a detailed explanation on why I would choose Media Shout over the other options.
As far as the comment about SongShow Plus. My church was using SSP for a little over a year before I introduced Media Shout to them (v2.5 at the time). MS was far ahead of SSP as far as user-friendliness and functionality. Only recently did SSP come into the same ballpark with Media Shout and EasyWorship. SSP offered similar abilities before, but they were much harder to use IMHO.
If anyone is considering MS, please contact me directly to talk about MS. Like I said, I just started working for them, but that really doesn't mean anything. I'm a contract employee so I only work special events on the road and so far that's only been one conference convention booth, and that's because I happened to know the right person at the right time.
We have been using SSP for about 5 years Capital Cristian in Boise, ID. They just released SSP7. They released the first worship software program in 1996. songshowplus.com I believe all of the programs are adequate for churches worship services. It depends on what you want to project graphically and what your budget is. They have created 30 different motions backgrounds with settings which enable you to create multiple motion backrounds (snowflakes with the mountain -wind speed/size of flakes/directions of wind/ color ect which helped our church so we do not need to purchase media. You can also import jpg's you take from your digital camera camera and turn them into motion backgrounds through the program. My recommendation is to download all of the evaluations and see which program works best for you. NO other program have this capability along with several other features-video editing/image editing/constant new features (monthly/so you do not have to wait until the next program. What I enjoy most is being a part of the evolution of the program. The website has a voting system which enables us to post ideas and imporve the program. The developers probably appreciate all of the churches throughout the world issuing there ideas so they can improve there program and help all churches get the christian message to there congregation.
Hey guys,
Thanks for all your posts and helpful advice. See my recent blog entry fo an update on the saga!
I'd skip the songshow plus as it has a steep learning curve and the version we are using has some instabilities built in, and I for one miss many of the key board controls one has grown used to with most computers.
I found this blog while researching alternatives to the program we now use. just thought I'd let you know what my opinion of the product was, save your money.
JIM
just wanted to share that i have loved media shout for almost 3 years now. have even been to 3 of their seminars and just totally sold out to it. specially with all the upgrades that v3 came with. however.... when i switched from PC to Mac i'm at a loss. i am able to run vista on my macbookpro but still the graphics issue does not allow me to run MS using my mac. i'm beggining to wonder about potentials with using easyworship and i'll see what happens there. just sharing my experience and frustration now that i love mac but MS does not support it.
We have been running Media Shout for several months now. We are a liturgical church. The one thing that drives me crazy is the font not holding formatting in our Liturgical prayers or Eucharist and going back to Arial 12 from Georgia 30. Any info. I have been importing from notepad.
Also, with just a single screen how to you do the following song:
You Are Holy (Prince of Peace)
Marc Imboden and Tammi Rhoton
I will be at WATS at Biola next week, although in the Audio Track, will you be there?
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