Props to Allan White & Brian Holt for discovering the tools & methods necessary for making this happen. Here are a list of resources to help you set this up:

- Air Display app for iPad

- Brian Holt’s method for mirroring specific displays

- and obviously an iPad, Mac, WiFi network, & ProPresenter 4.

You can use this with virtually any software or simply create more desktop space for your work-flow. I can’t wait to try this out during an event and to see how ProVideoPlayer responds. What’s great about Pro4 & PVP is its simple UI & large thumbnails, which makes controlling via touch much more accessible.

Now the question for all of us is “How can I apply this?” One way I’ve thought of is if you want to take advantage of Stage Display but don’t have a back-wall projector or confidence monitor; the iPad can rest comfortable on a music stand right on stage with the band!

What other applications can you see involving this method?

I saw this on Collide’s Videos of the Week and just had to post it here.

You’re welcome.

If you are in the Nashville, TN area and are a ProPresenter user, you might want to check out what’s going down next week. On March 3rd (Wednesday) I will be teaching a worskhop on ProPresenter 4 at the Apple Store. We will be covering everything from the basic purpose and functionality of ProPresenter, examples of how it can be used in a live environment, and the new, powerful features of version 4. Even if you aren’t a ProPresenter user, this workshop will be beneficial because you will see some real-life examples of how to creatively use video technology in a live event.

My friend Nick Rivero (former Student Life video director & wizard at motion graphics/Quartz VJ-ing) will be driving up from Birmingham to help with the session; both of us will be available at the end to answer any questions.

Here are some details:

Introduction to ProPresenter: Discover ProPresenter, the presentation system for lyric and media playback. In this workshop, explore the unique, dual-screen song display system of ProPresenter and learn about its multiresolution video mixing and multiscreen capabilities.

When? March 3rd, 9:00am – 11:00am

Where? Apple Store Green Hills (Nashville, TN)

To find out more, visit the Green Hills Apple Store’s website; if you look at next week in their “schedule of workshops & events”, you will see this event and can reserve a spot. If you are coming, I recommend reserving a spot, though it’s not required in order to attend…you just may have to sit in the back.

If you are interested in purchasing Pro4 or upgrading from Pro3, then visit our store site, make a request for purchase, and I can get you squared away. If you purchase through grateful inconvenience (my company), I can get you hooked up with a collection of free media.

- There is something powerful when people come together to create.

- Both of those guys (Camron & Nate) rank at the top of my list of creative people I know. … But as we focused on communication and our friendship, we all learned to die to our preferences and serve a greater cause.

- What happened in Thailand was probably one of the most creative worship experiences I have ever had.

- They wanted each of these nights to be set apart…very unique and special. So Saturday & Tuesday nights were our two main opportunities to bring all we had.

- Both nights incorporated Nate painting live during a segment of the worship while Camron and I took turns VJ-ing & running lyrics. As we dreamed together, we stumbled onto a few simple and innovative things that none of us had tried before. But what sent this experience over the edge was the participation of everyone else in the room…all contributing and leading through their own acts of visual worship. It was “co-creation” like I had never seen before.

- It’s all about relationships.

The Setup:

Saturday Night: Entering into Sabbath rest.

We wanted the worship space to be a sanctuary when people walked in. Lights dimmed, quiet & reflective music playing, and images/text on the screens that focused their hearts on God. People entered quietly and reverently.

The worship songs that night were played in a softer manner, and during a few of the songs, we didn’t even project lyrics. Instead, we projected various scriptures that focused on the Cross. The songs were well-known, so the need for lyrics wasn’t even there to begin with.

During this time of projecting scriptures, I felt the need (in the moment) to VJ scenes from “The Passion of the Christ”…slowed down to half-speed, saturation very low, and barely blended in with the scriptures. Then two people from the congregation got up and started reading scriptures while the worship leader lightly played his guitar. (For us, the scripture reading was a last minute add-on and someone else’s idea… a “curve ball” for us production guys…but we went with it.) It was POWERFUL. And the “Passion” scenes mysteriously lined up with what they were reading aloud. I love it when that happens.

Nate stepped on stage and started painting. No one could really tell what he was painting though…but we all sensed it was something profound. We continued to sing and hear scriptures. After a while, Nate turns the painting upside down and walks away. We were stunned as we made out the image…and overwhelmed given the powerful, scripture-filled worship moment we were in the midst of having.

Nate had also written out a beautiful treatment that I took and made into a video (all this was written and edited on the afternoon of). We also wanted to bring the experience back home for ELIC, and so Camron took his “Names of God” template and created a video of all the city names that ELIC is currently working in.

As you saw in the “setup” video, Camron had figured out in PVP (ProVideoPlayer) how to pixel-map the double-wide projection to fit exactly where the painting was hanging. This is an advanced setting in PVP and fairly easy to setup if you know what you’re doing.

And all at once, the elements came together. We captured this experience so that we could bring it back home and remember it, and we wanted to share it with you. (on the left, you’ll see the painting and what happened live, and on the right you’ll see what we projected on the side screens.)

And then we partook in communion.

Tuesday Night: The Sending Out.

This night was similar to Saturday night in that we had people enter quietly and reverently. However, this night was focused on the “sending out” of ELIC back to their cities.  This time, I VJ’d scenes of creation and people groups from all over the world. The music was less contemplative and more “other worldly” and “epic”…lots of movie soundtracks with a haunting yet inspirational rhythm.

Nate had painted a map of Asia earlier in the week and hung it on display in the back of the room. On Saturday night, people were invited to take sharpies and write prayers for their cities and friends over the regions where they were teaching. Some of the things that were written would break your heart.

We rearranged the chairs into a “U” shape, creating more of an “in the round” effect. I love doing this because it reinforces the community aspect of worship. (Nothing screams “community” like seeing the backs of people’s heads…just sayin’.) The band and speaker never stepped foot on the stage, but led from the floor down front. Many people could not see the worship leader, but this was kind of the whole point.

At the end of the night, after communion, Nate stepped back on stage and completed the painting of Asia. The first painting (from “Agnus Dei”) was hanging next to it. Nate finished painting, and what we were left seeing was the Hand of God holding Asia…prayers and all.

Then the worship leader led us in “God of This City”. In between the two paintings we projected faces of Asian people and then brought back the “Names of Asian Cities” that Camron had created for Saturday night.

Next came the last song of the night: “Mighty to Save”. Earlier in the day, Camron had taken his Canon 5D Mark II and took pictures of all the prayers that had been written throughout the week. After a little Photoshop magic, he opened up his editing program and created a double-wide video of all the actual handwritten prayers.

The people’s visual worship became our motion background! And it was the most powerful visual I could ever imagine while singing “Savior, He can move the mountains!” Spiritual mountains, one right after another, filled the wall. It was too much to handle. People were crying, raising their hands, and yelling “Yes, Lord! Do it!”

The last prayer came across the screen as we ended the song. In one person’s own handwriting, it read…

The president of ELIC got up, spoke a blessing over us, and prayed a benediction. The room continued to be a sanctuary. Most people just sat there in silence. Filled to the brim and ready to get back to the Work.

We had dreamed of merging live art and media all at the same time, but this was the first time we all worked together to make it happen. Even though the content was unique & creative, what made this experience so special was the context we were working with… 500 amazing individuals that make up ELIC. There’s no way we could replicate what happened that night…nor should we try…it was special for that time and for those amazing people. Again, it was co-creation like I had never seen before. What’s even better is that it took zero dollars to pull this off. Just a little time, creativity, a few of our own resources, unity and love for each other is all that we needed. I will never forget it.

It wasn’t the cool experience or our creativity that made the “worship” happen…it was the offering and surrender of people’s hearts…all of our hearts. That is what was pleasing and acceptable to God. It’s amazing when He chooses to use our talents in the midst of worship. He can do great things through us when we get out of the way, die to our preferences, and make ourselves available to Him.

What a journey it’s been… and in more ways than one. For the past few weeks, I’ve been bouncing around like a pinball between airports & MTR stations throughout Southeast Asia, getting to experience things & meet people I never would have dreamed of. There’s so much to unpack, and I don’t just mean my smelly socks & the souvenirs I bought for my nieces & nephews. Between spending a week in Thailand with some new missionary heroes of mine and meeting with church leaders (both visual worshipers & pastors) in Hong Kong, we’ve packed in a lot. I’m still processing it all…wondering what just happened…and thinking about what’s next.

I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog-front while I’ve been away, and for many reasons. Mainly, I knew that I needed to be 100% present with all that was going on. And what free time I had needed to be spent sleeping, hearing people’s stories, eating crazy spicy food, and getting $6 massages. :) It was also a great opportunity for me to relax and be removed from everything back home. But in the next few weeks, I hope to unpack some of these stories and share with you what God is up to in the Asian Church! It’s bigger than any of us could imagine…so get ready!

Once in a while, I’d check in and see what’s going on back home, and it seems that a lot of exciting stuff has been taking place! From iPads to LOST to Sabre buying out Dunder Mifflin, I’m coming home to a very different place. (ok, so the iPad isn’t that exciting…but whatever.) But even more exciting are the advancements & developments in the visual media community. Here’s a few that stuck out to me:

First, my friend Brad Zimmerman of CMDtv has been hard at work releasing his newly designed site. From the looks of it, the new experience at ChurchMediaDesign promises to be a refreshing oasis of training, inspiration, community, and free resources for those of us in the church media revolution. I love the new layout & design; if you haven’t experienced CMDtv yet, go do it now!

Second, Echo Conference has released their new site & has officially started promoting their 2010 conference. Last year was my first time at echo, and I was truly impressed by what Scott, Kami, Trent & the RT Creative staff pulled off. I’m humbled to be invited back to join this creative community. I’ll be teaching with Camron Ware again, and our focus will be on the “service programming” aspect of visual worship…the preparation & curation process of VJ-ing & Environmental Projection. I hope to see you there!

Last and definitely not least… the exciting news many of us have been waiting for. Just recently, Renewed Vision tweeted:

“Coming this week: The official ProPresenter 4 release… Oh, and there is “one more thing”. Stay tuned.”

FINALLY!!! It’s here!

I’ve been testing the beta in live settings for the past month or so, and with each update it has gotten more stable & exciting to use. I’m confident the gold master release will not disappoint. In fact, I just used Pro4 throughout the entire conference in Thailand, and it never crashed once! (fun fact: I bought my upgrade while in sitting outside a coffee-shop in Chiang Mai with elephants walking by & street vendors & all. Great memory.)

Brad Zimmerman gave a very thorough review of ProPresenter 4 on his new site; I highly suggest checking it out. Also, I’ll be hosting a Pro4 workshop at the Apple Store in Green Hills (Nashville) on March 3rd, and there’s a Germantown (Memphis) Store workshop in the works, as well.

I’m grateful for the guys at Renewed Vision and for their dedication to the vision they have for media & worship in the Church. They have once again brought relevant, cutting-edge technology and packaged it in an easy-to-use, affordable solution for us Mac users. I wonder what that “one more thing” is…hmmm…. any guesses out there? Whatever it is, they deserve our thanks and some much needed R&R.

Speaking of R&R, I’m gonna need some after being cooped up in a plane for 20+ hours. Flying around dodging islands with imploding hatches & frozen ancient wheels is nothing to take lightly. But nothing a little Mexican food can’t take of though in the end. :)

As amazing as Asia was, it will be good to get back home. And like I said before, I will try my best to unpack as many experiences, stories & opportunities as possible. Maybe some of it will end up on this blog, but the heart of it can only be shared in person! So if you’re up for it, let me know…but be careful, the journey may end up leading you to Asia!

MPEG-1, WMV, MOV, M4V, AVI…the list goes on. Remember the good ole days when everything thing was on VHS? (And then LaserDisc came out…man, that was exciting.) There’s so many file formats to choose from. And while they all technically/supposedly/are-rumored-to playback in most presentation softwares, which is the best format for VJ-ing?

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UPDATE!

Since this was posted, I have discovered a better codec for the best VJ playback experience. Instead of going with PhotoJPEG, use H.264 …except you want to KEY ALL FRAMES! Read more about this here.

For those of you using Stomp to batch export, here is a screen-shot of the new settings.

One playlist i use at every event is called “Test Patterns”. It’s simply a collection of various grids, patterns & color bars that i use when setting up my VJ rig. It’s very helpful when setting up for any scenario…whether it be Environmental Projection, multi-screen video staging, or simply plugging in to a venue’s house projection system. Here are a few things to keep in mind when testing your projection:

• fill the screen…use a grid or focus pattern to align the sides to the edges of the screen.

• calibrate the colors… if you’re on a Mac, go into the Display settings in System Preferences…start with projecting color bars (via Pro or PVP), but run through various images (photos w/ faces, motion backgrounds, slides, etc)…choose the calibration setting that looks best overall. With PVP, you can adjust the colors of each image (individually or globally)…if the projector lamps are old, i’ll boost everything a notch to make the images pop. ProPresenter4 will have this feature in the Clip Preferences on videos!

• make it seamless… when setting up multi-screen or Environmental Projection that’s “seamless” but you don’t have Edge Blending capabilities, set a grid pattern to stretch across all 3 screens (or 2, or 5, or 27…) and line up the grid lines as closely as possible. You can see a time-lapse video of this here.

• focus! … i know it seems obvious, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded… focus those projectors people! :) i just had to VJ an event where the middle projector lens was broken and we couldn’t focus it properly… it about killed me.

• black desktop … set your 2nd display desktop image to a black jpeg. Not matter what software you use, it WILL crash on you. In those moments, let’s lead our congregations in some “visual silence” instead of a picture of your family vacation to Sandals. I’m just sayin’….

For those of you who don’t have any proper test patterns, i’ve posted mine for you to download . Not only does it contain the patterns, but it also has solid colors, which are a killer backdrop when the screen(s) are directly behind the band. (one time at Passion, the huge video wall went completely red…all lights off… Crowder* Band was silhouetted … EPIC WIN.)

Test away.

thanks to Allan White, Jason Norris & Nicholas Rivero for teaching me the ways of the Jedi.

to experience more Quartz awesomeness, check out these blog posts:

Quartz Composition VJ-ing

Screencast: Routing iTunes’ Visualizer into ProPresenter (by Allan White)

VJ Shakinda’s blog (lots of great Quartz Composition posts, even a book coming soon!)

Quartz Composition (from worship*VJ in Poland)

Just in case you missed it, the upcoming release of Pro4 was announced!

Get ready. This is just the beginning.

Today, i’m going to start something new and hopefully consistent for worshipVJ.com. Introducing, the “VJ Blend”.

Check back MOST Wednesdays for a new VJ blend. But I’m going to preface with this…it may not be as consistent as other bloggers’ weekly witty posts. if you follow me on twitter, you have probably connected the dots that i travel a lot…and many times i’m in some crazy 3rd world country getting into all kinds of trouble. So i’m telling you now, i’m gonna miss some weeks. cool? cool. here we go.
(revision: it’s now the following wednesday, and i know for a fact i won’t get to this every week…so i’ve removed all traces of “Blend of the Week” and am now sticking with “VJ Blend”. So much for that. It will just have to come any random moments, i guess. #weeklypostfail )

“VJ Blend”: Introduction

If you use a VJ software like ProVideoPlayer, you have the option of manually blending (cross-dissolving) visual elements live during an event. This is the essence of VJ-ing…not just pushing the play button, but pushing multiple play buttons & then blending/manipulating/speeding/slowing/colorizing/effecting/etc. as i work with more and more visual media, i have noticed that many clips (produced completely independent of each other) work in visual tandem, and the result is creatively inspiring, to say the least. It’s as if they were meant to be together!

That’s what the “VJ Blend” is all about: showing examples of this. And this isn’t about me saying “cool! look what i can do!” but more about “here’s what i’ve discovered and i’m going to show you how to do it yourself.” Because i really believe in what i do, and i am told constantly that it’s impacting people during worship in ways that i would have never imagined. this really does blow me away. and it’s my heart to share these experiences, techniques, & ideas with you so that you can lead your congregation into deep, meaningful worship using visual media.

Each “blend post” will come with a few elements: a nifty picture that sums it all up, a video demonstration captured live from PVP, links to download the media, and a few worship song suggestions where the blend could be used.

any questions?

i give you our first “blend” = OVERFLOW.

RESOURCES: “Prison” & “Cup” by Radiate Films.

SONG SUGGESTIONS: “Made Me Glad”, “Just to Be with You” (a new song by Paul Baloche), “Fill Me Up”, and any songs w/ lyrics or themes involving the words “overflow”, “fill me up”, “pouring”, “water”, etc.

SOFTWARE: i am using PVP in this example b/c it’s the software of my choice, however, anyone can VJ using a myriad of options. There are tons of VJ softwares out there, and you can also blend visuals using multiple computers and most any video mixer.

(music used in the video is “Armistice” by MUTEMATH – BUY IT… NOW! Trust me.)

Ok, this is the coolest thing i’ve seen in a while. it doesn’t get much better than Apple’s website!

So head on over & watch the PVP seminar on Apple’s free seminar site, and let Brad Weston blow your mind!

We’re live streaming “Conversations on Visual Worship” at the Gurus of Tech conference! Join in on a discussion i’ll have with Jonathan “Biscuet” Smyth, Camron Ware, and we’ll be taking questions from the live audience. we’ll cover topics such as tools for visual worship, the role of the worship VJ, visual philosophy, relationships within the worship team, and what visual worship looks like in the global Church.

if you decide to purchase ProPresenter or PVP, then email me!