hshii's dashboard

I haven't tried this, yet (we need another screen setup), but my suggestion is:

Twitter.

1) Setup a Twitter account for the church.

2) Have folks in the congregation send tweets (they can do that through txt messages) and include a tag in the tweet (example "#OurChurch")

3) Login to Twitter and use it's real-time search capability to search for tweets that have the tag in them. (ex: search for #OurChurch)

4) On a second screen (one shown to the congregation) have another browser window open that's showing the church accounts "favorite" tweets.

5) As the real time search brings up tweets from the congregation mark the ones you want seen as favorites. Refresh the window shown to the congregation and <ta> there you have the tweets you have filtered for display.

This means, of course, that you need another screen available for the congregation to see (there's been plenty of discussion about capabilities for that).

This also means that you need to teach your members how to use Twitter.

And, of course, this means that you need Internet access for the system showing the real-time search and favorites windows.

If anybody tries this, let me know. I know that there is a church in Charlotte that's using Twitter during the services, but, as I said, we haven't tried it yet.

Have fun!

Stuart

I really hate to add this idea since there are a ton of ideas already, and MS has a ton of fixes they need to get done.

That said... Here goes anyway:

The ideas for a clock or countdown timer on the Stage Display are great. But while we are dealing with time based displays... Could we have a "visual click track". One that we could set in beats per minute? One that could be adjusted from sub-cue to sub-cue ("increase to 96 BPM over 8 beats"). A visual click track would be a great help to our praise team.

OK, I also realize that this brings a whole new possibility to the Time Based cues ("advance this cue after 6 beats"). But that also gives us an easy way to adjust the speed of a presentation. Think of it this way: Currently we specify time in seconds, or 60 BPM. If we rethink that as specifying time in "beats" and have the capability to specify the BPM as mentioned above, then speeding up or slowing down a whole section becomes easy.

OK, I'll stop there. I won't mention anything about synchronizing the beat clock to something else (like "start the beat clock 1.2 seconds after this video starts"). Or, maybe I will...

'Yall have fun!!

Stuart

I second the responses above.

My own thoughts are:

This, of course, is similar to the question of "What vehicle should I buy?" Do you need a car, pick-up truck, van, bus, box truck, etc? In this case, the usual question is "Why should we buy this software when we have PowerPoint?" (Kind of like asking, "I have a car, why do I need that tractor-trailer?")

PowerPoint was designed to develop presentations for business meetings. If the services at your church are business meetings, then PowerPoint will work just fine for you.

But since the services at you church are not business meetings, then you need something designed for the worship services that you have. (Yes, you can haul 60 cubic yards of mulch in the trunk of your Honda by making a whole bunch of trips, but a dump truck is much more effective.) You need the multimedia capability. You need the ability to bring up a song from the song database, go back and sing that 2nd verse again, or bring up a scripture that the Pastor just thought of in the middle of his sermon. You need to be able to do these things because the Spirit sometimes leads the service in a different direction. And you need to be able to follow.

Those are my two cents. I pray it all goes great for you are your church.

Stuart

This could also tie in to the discussion under advanced networking. Essentially having multiple scripts running simultainiously (on the same machine with multiple monitors, or multiple machines). This question, however, implies that the multiple scripts would share a single presentation display and stage monitor pair.

I love flexability. Just love it.

Interesting arguments. But this is not an exclusive-or proposal. If properly developed there is no reason that the various nodes can't reside on the same machine, or different machines, or some combination of the two. Editing can be handled the same way.

Purchasing or upgrading a system to handle 3, or 4, or 8 displays would be cheaper then buying multiple computers. That's obvious. But that ignores the possibility of using existing equipment that may be unused or underused. If a church has a main presentation system, and a computer or two that is sufficient, but unused, and already has a network in place, then why make them spend the money to buy a new media system?

I hope everybody has had some fun thinking about it!

Thanks greatly,

Stuart

One PC supporting multiple displays would also be great. However, the type of media I'm thinking about would require, given MS's cue based structure, multiple scripts, one for each display. The coordination capabilities between scripts (as listed above) still apply.

Multiple, asynchronous scripts running on one computer, or multiple computers, either way the script development complexity is essentially the same. Especially if MS had the capability to develop a script on one computer and deploy it to another. Essentially "Packer" with the added ability to "Deploy Packed Script to Node X".

Deploying multiple displays over a sizable facility (multiple displays in the main sanctuary, a couple in the nursery, a couple in the living center for sanctuary overflow, a couple in the vestibule) all run from a single computer requires significant video extension. It may actually be easier and more cost effective to deploy a wireless network (if one is not already in place).

Just my thoughts..

Thanks greatly,

Stuart

I would love to be able to put a text box, a video box, and a flash animation box over the same BG graphics.

And, of course, be able to properly layer them (as suggested yesterday by Brent).

I can hear those cores sizzling with excitement.

If MediaComplete is really considering redeveloping the video engine for a later release, this would be a great capability to add to the new engine.