8 Tips for Choosing Church Display Software
The overwhelming majority of churches today use some kind of display software to enhance visual clarity and communication in their services (and in their live streams, for those who stream their services). Being able to see lyrics and Scripture passages clearly on the big screen is a true enhancement to the way we worship. Live video often gets thrown into the mix at larger ministries, for image magnification, campus broadcasts, live streaming, and more.
As your church grows in what it wants or needs to do with church display software, you’ll eventually be ready to step up from PowerPoint-style apps and free church presentation software.
When you reach that point — or if you’re already there — these are the elements you should look for as you select the right live display church presentation software for your ministry.
Ease of Use
Anytime you’re adding new software to your tech stack, you’re adding complexity. But complexity doesn’t have to mean confusing or difficult to use. The best software expands your capabilities without adding confusion or complicated interfaces that are tough to use.
Look for worship display software that makes creating and editing presentations easy and intuitive. A drag and drop editor with plenty of customization power is the way to go.
Cross Platform Capability
Getting locked into church display software that’s PC-only or Mac-only can lead to serious headaches down the road. What happens when a guest speaker arrives with the other type of device? Or what if you need to switch ecosystems due to some future technology development?
These are just a couple of reasons we recommend choosing a true cross-platform solution like ProPresenter.
Also, look at which mobile apps (if any) a particular solution offers. ProPresenter and other top-tier solutions offer mobile apps for remote control. But not all brands offer both iOS and Android apps.
Ability to Quickly Display Scripture
One component of church display software that’s easily overlooked is its capability as Scripture display software. It’s worth looking closely at this capability because displaying songs and Bible verses on the screen is, after all, a pretty central part of most church service presentations!
Any presentation solution can display Scripture, of course. Even with a software solution like PowerPoint, users can always manually copy and paste Scripture passages. But doing so increases the possibility of embarrassing or even confusing errors that distract worshippers at crucial moments.
ProPresenter 7 can automatically import Scripture quickly and accurately, and it can pull from over 125 different Scripture translations, across 36 languages.
Even better, ProPresenter is the only solution on the market that can automatically display multiple versions side by side — perfect for the multi-lingual congregation!
Easy to Use Worship and Lyrics Tools
Along the same lines, your worship service is full of music, and people need to know what they’re singing. Most churches display song lyrics (and in some cases lyrics and video simultaneously), but displaying lyrics can suffer from the same problems as displaying Scripture passages. With some tools, you’ll be manually typing lyrics out or copying and pasting from some website.
Good worship display software solutions make it easy to import songs from popular databases such as CCLI SongSelect. ProPresenter 7 makes presentations manageable with easy lyric importing: no more typos or missing sections of songs!
Support for Media and Video Files
As important as those Scripture and lyric capabilities are, church display software is about more than just words. Most ministries will also want the ability to incorporate audio and video files. Whether you’re only playing the occasional missionary presentation video or you’re using video backgrounds for every song, look for a solution that supports a wide range of media files.
Also evaluate what a given software tool will let you do with those media files. Do you need trigger-based workflows? The ability to set videos to the foreground or background? Looping capabilities? Text that can progress independently of background video?
ProPresenter is the professional choice for handling media and video files: it can do everything we just described and much more.
Plus, ProPresenter gives you generous access to many of the leading media libraries (both free and paid), directly integrated into your presentation software. Use these libraries to enhance the quality of your presentations and to speed up the process of creating display media.
Advanced Video Controls
If your church relies a little more heavily on video content, then look for a solution that offers more advanced video controls. The more you can do without kicking a video file out to a full-blown Adobe editor or Final Cut Pro, the better.
ProPresenter 7 is built for the church as well as for live event and presentation professionals in even more demanding contexts, so it gives users a wide range of advanced video controls. With ProPresenter, you can:
- Dynamically set in and out points
- Adjust brightness, effect color, and volume
- Crop and scale videos
- Import and play videos within complex ProPresenter shows
- Apply video effects to videos in your media library
Additionally, you can choose how you live stream. ProPresenter allows you to output high-quality video to video capture devices and/or livestream platforms, or you can livestream directly from ProPresenter without the need for any no separate streaming software.
Do You Live Stream Your Services?
Most churches that live stream incorporate their presentation content into that live stream, and ideally you should plan out how you’ll accomplish this before investing in any new tool.
Some churches use video switchers and separate software to create their live stream video feed: the live video runs on one system, the presentation on another, and the stream feed on yet another, which stiches the two together in some fashion.
This works, but we believe it doesn’t need to be quite so complicated.
ProPresenter 7 does both, all in one platform. It’s a true live display church presentation software solution that can ingest all your video, audio, and display inputs and create multiple customized outputs using whatever set of content you need.
In other words, you can replace all three systems in that previous scenario with one system running ProPresenter.
With ProPresenter, you could send iMag to the big screen, presentation content to side screens, an announcement carousel to the lobby, and slightly different video + display content streams to your internal feed and your public live stream — all from a single presentation file and a single workstation.
Whatever your output needs look like, ProPresenter can handle them. The only limitation is the hardware you’re operating with!
Stable Software with Pro Support
Your worship presentation software needs to work reliably, plain and simple: your services are too important to let software crashes or glitches derail the flow of events.
Stability is one of the risks of relying on free church presentation software: if the people maintaining the software are all volunteers, it’s tough for them to stay on top of bug fixes and security updates.
Also, consider what your options are when your chosen software isn’t doing what you need it to do. It isn’t broken, but you need support. Who will you call? (Is there even anyone to call?)
With ProPresenter+, you get amazing ongoing updates and pro-level support. Whatever challenges you encounter, Renewed Vision has a support staff ready to help you.
ProPresenter 7 Is the Most Powerful Church Display Software
When considering church display software solutions, you have plenty of options. But none of them are as powerful, capable, and fully featured as ProPresenter 7. ProPresenter from Renewed Vision is the professional’s choice, and yet it was built for churches first, so you’ll always have access to the church-centric capabilities you need.
Ready to see for yourself? Download today to start your unlimited two-week free trial!
Curious how ProPresenter stacks up against other worship presentation software solutions? Check out our in-depth comparison guides:
