ProPresenter 7 is absolutely incredible. There are so many new things that are going to serve the people using this program and allow churches to continue to elevate and enhance their worship experiences. I am a long-time user of ProPresenter 6 and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on and experience what ProPresenter 7 has to offer. Let me tell you I am so excited about this update and I want to share 7 new features and how they could impact your church right away.
I hope this is practical and helps you either figure out how you might use these new features in your church or if you are on the fence about upgrading maybe this will help you in your decision process.
So, let’s dive into the 7 Game Changing features that I find in the new ProPresenter 7.
1. NEWLY DESIGNED HOME SCREEN – looks like PVP (Pro Video Player) but has all the Pro Presenter elements
ProPresenter 7 has changed the layout. Instead the output being at the top left, and library/playlists below, they have been replaced by a new layout. Your Library is in the top left and playlists are underneath that. As you click on a library you can search that library and then when you click on your playlist the items in that list are what you will see.
The media library sits at the bottom and is adjustable in size just like Pro 6 however the media bin button is in the top right. On the right side of the screen you have your output, along with the clear button, and then you have you Audio bin below. Your content in your playlist takes center stage.
The new look is black. I personally think this is great because it will limit the amount of light emitting from the presentation screen. The dark background allows the focus to be on the content you are presenting.
Changing the look is going to take some getting used to for your team, however, I think as you use the program you will find that the new look helps to allow you to see and interact with the content you are presenting. It puts the focus on those elements.
2. ANNOUNCEMENT LAYER – NEW
This is a new feature of ProPresenter 7 and I absolutely love this feature. So, if you’re in a church that has screens outside of your worship center and you need to present slides on those screens and have different content in the room this is the solution you are looking for.
Before this update you would have had to either route whatever is in your worship center onto those screens or setup a different feed, powered by a different machine. Now you can take one machine and power an output for your screens and an announcement layer that shows announcements separately. You can be running a presentation in the room and your outside lobby can continue to scroll slides for your people.
This feature will allow any church of any size to use what you have to make 2 different feeds happen. If you are concerned about a stage display you can purchase a USB device that will allow you to send another feed to your stage display.
3. REVAMPED STAGE DISPLAY
You can really do anything with the stage display now. Really, I am not kidding!
Here are a few things I love.
There is so much more you can do but really you can do what you want/need to know with this update. Some things I have seen that are really cool:
4. EASY TEXT VIEW
This feature is amazing! I have had times where lyric operators can’t read the text easily that is being sent out, because it is formatted for the output. Before now, you could simply enlarge the slides. This was an ok solution, but you lose situational awareness in the song the larger you make the slides.
However, now you can change the font size and text to an easier to read view so that your lyric operators can lead in worship easily but not impact the look of the text on your outputs.
I personally feel its tweaks like this that show the team at ProPresenter is out to make a better end experience for the people in pew at your church but also, the people who serve on your team. Both are important. Updates like this show that the dedicated team at Renewed Vision had both in mind.
5. CLEAR SLIDE CONTENT VIEW
Ok, I am going to get a little nerdy here. ProPresenter 6 was awesome and you could edit the background of your slide, but I just never loved the way it looked. I didn’t love that I couldn’t easily see what content exactly was on the slide. ProPresenter 7 has changed that. The look of the checker box background that shows you elements in on the slide is incredible. I can easily tell text is only on that slide. This becomes super helpful if you are routing into a switcher with any sort of alpha keying or using the NDI feature (more on that next).
6. ALPHA KEY
Built into ProPresenter 7 is the ability to alpha key. You could do this on ProPresenter 6 but you had to buy a module. You still will need to have a device like this Blackmagic Ultra studio which will allow you to send out a Key and Fill.
Alpha Key? You might be asking “what’s that?” Alpha Keying allows you to send an output that has a blank background. This is important if you want to do a lower third of have content that only fills part of your screen. You can send out a lower third element and the rest of the image will be opaque. However, if you aren’t alpha keying the whole screen will take over and black out any unused part of your content.
This new feature allows you to purchase a piece of hardware and setup your own alpha key output to your switch (the switcher will need a Key “mask” and Fill “content” inputs). This new feature will save you from having to spend the money on the module which is $1,000 per machine in ProPresenter 6.
7. NDI
NDI stands for, Network Device Interface, and this allows you to communicate, deliver, and receive broadcast quality video in a high quality, low latency manner that is frame-accurate and suitable for switching in a live production environment. This is absolutely incredible!
You can send an output over a network. There are so many possibilities with this. I even tested this at home, and it works. I will plan to release a more in depth blog post in the coming months but for right now I would point you to read this article from a couple years ago about how Passion used NDI.
This article is older, but it shows what the team at Renewed Vision and Passion were able to do with NDI in 2018. Some this same technology has been built into ProPresenter 7.
So, here is a really cool example of what you could do. You can use your announcement layer to feed a network. You can have a computer in your communications office that gets the network feed from your Mac and displays that content for the tv’s in your building.
**For those of you who use the MASTER CONTROL MODULE in ProPresenter 6. That tool isn’t in ProPresenter 7 but there are some developments that Renewed Vision is working on to help satisfy the needs of those who use that. Stay tuned an upcoming podcast episode with Brad Weston as he delves into that and so much more.
ProPresenter 7 is a game changing update to the already amazing ProPresenter 6. There are so many other features in this new version. I look forward to sharing more about these updates.
If you have a specific question or subjects you want to see me write about, please share those with me using the contact button below. I would love to hear your feedback on what you want to know about this software. If I can’t figure out the answer for you, I know who to go ask and get you an answer.
Keep creating amazing opportunities in your church for people to experience God and have their lives changed!
