If you have been serving in technical ministry over the past 10 years chances are you have heard of ProPresenter. Renewed Vision really set themselves apart from the other presentation software companies years ago with the release of ProPresenter 4. At the time, it was quickly established as the solid gold standard for church presentation. With a groundbreaking feature set, easy-to-use operation and tools that were not only functional, but innovative, the obvious question was “How do you top this?” When ProPresenter 5 came out I was convinced that Renewed Vision had done it again; they had pulled away from the rest of the pack by allowing the user to do things no other software would. Now on the brink of the release of ProPresenter 6, I find myself asking the same question “How do you top that?” This week, talking on the phone with the company's Greg Dolezal, I got my answer. ProPresenter 6 has been completely redesigned from the code up. While I expect to see a familiar looking interface, I have been assured that under the hood it's a whole new program. There are a number of aspects of the new software that I am really excited about, but these are the features I think will make converts out of the churches using other software, and firmly place ProPresenter in the secular market as well.
Playback, Slide Layout and Animation
If you have used ProPresenter 5 then you know that the video playback render engine leaves a little to be desired. The playback was sometimes a little choppy, and no matter how seamless the loops are sometimes they don't playback perfectly. It's the type of thing no one but the videophiles notice, but it tends to make some of us a little nutty.
In the new version, I have been assured the playback is far smother --- more on par with expensive media servers. The new render engine must have opened up some options with the new slide editor as well. Now each object in the slide can have its own timing, transition, and animation. This allows the objects to function more like Keynote or PowerPoint, for step-by-step reveals and animations. Also more objects handle opacity in the new version, and we're told the new slide editor is more powerful than the previous version.
Telestrator
Ever wanted to be John Madden? Does your speaking pastor think he is? Well ProPresenter 6 is ready to help out with the addition of a telestrator to the feature list. You have seen one of these in action whether you know it or not. Telestrators are commonly used by sports announcers and weathermen to draw over live or replayed video to help explain a point. According to Dolezal, the latest version of ProPresenter will allow a user to use a tablet as a telestrator. One of the interesting features with this is, unlike other telestrators, the user can draw on the video while it's playing back.
Notifications
Apparently Renewed Vision listened to their clients and made some serious changes in the area of notification. First they added a scrolling ticker, which can be populated by internal information, like text you added ahead of time, or can pull from an RSS feed. I think this might have some interesting uses in the church world, but this feature seems more targeted at the secular audience. They also improved upon a feature that really focuses on the church market: the new parent alert tool. In the past if you needed to page a parent during worship, then you had to get pretty creative to continue running lyrics and handle the data entry. Now different production people can handle those jobs without impacting each other. Pretty much anyone with a computer or tablet can generate the alert via a webpage. It then shows up as a notification that the ProPresenter operator can acknowledge and activate with a mouse click. No more trying to type license plate numbers between songs.
Stage Display
One of the features I am most excited about is a request I (along with many others) made on the Renewed Vision website. The new cue palate can trigger clocks and stage display layouts by dragging and dropping them on selected slides, making it function similar to how the multiscreen module worked in version 5. For example, if you use lower thirds to identify everyone like we do at our church, that slide could reformat the stage display layout from lyrics to separate message layout. This is great for churches that have multiple pastors speak, if one pastor wants to see his/her notes, while others want just a clock it's not a problem. Each pastor's name slide could change the stage display to layout to the template they prefer. All of this lets you control the confidence monitor with a lot more confidence.
Based on what I've learned about the new version of ProPresenter, I am really excited about it. Renewed Vision has put together a feature set that could take their already groundbreaking software to the next level. After the success they had at the Olympics, I wouldn't be shocked to see ProPresenter show up more commonly in the secular market. That said, it's pretty clear by the feature list that they have not forgotten their roots in the church market and I think we can expect another great software release in Propresenter 6.
