6/4/2006 9:38:15 AM

Yesterday morning, a young lady was going to give her testimony about her semester over in Bangledesh. 5 minutes before the first service was supposed to start, she approached me with a CD full of pictures that she wanted showed during her testimony.

I told her that the CD would have been real helpful Thursday night, but I'd see what I could do. I could probably have something put together by second service. But unless a miracle occurs, it wouldn't be first service.

Well, I looked at the CD and there were about 50 pictures spread throughout a huge directory tree. During pre service, I was able to copy all the jpgs into a single directory on the hard drive. First hymn, then screen up for children's message and offering.

I told SSP to create a new SSP Slide show, had it start the PhotoShow Builder.

I pointed PhotoShow Builder to the directory that I had placed the JPGs in, told it 7 seconds per slide, black background and a fade between. Tweaked the slide show settings to have it loop continiously.

By the time the offering was done, I dropped the screen as the pastor introduced the young lady and was able to show the slide show while she gave her testimony.

I was a hero and, more importantly, her testimony was much more impactful with pics from her experience showing as she spoke of them.

Thank you SongShowPlus.

6/25/2006 4:32:26 AM

I am surprised at the frequency with which requests like this happen, and before my system was upgraded my answer would be that they would have to provide me the pictures ahead of time. I haven't tried the new feature, but I do plan on using it. I have been re-educating our folks that I can NOW accept pictures, maybe 15 min before service starts

6/25/2006 6:55:41 AM

Good luck on receiving pictures more than 10 min. before service time.

Travis

6/25/2006 11:11:25 AM

I still wouldn't let people know that this is possible. It could have been better if we would have had them ahead of time, adjusting the brightness and contrast, selecting what part of the pic to show and possible using pan/zoom on some of them.

We are trying to get an official policy in place that anything that is wanted up on the screen needs to be delivered to the church office (or my e-mail) by end of business Thursday.

But it is still nice to be able to pull off a miracle on occasion, if it's important enough. This was one of those occasions.

The trick is not to get them to expect it.

7/9/2006 10:54:55 AM

I have tried out the PhotoShow Builder a few times now and I am very impressed!

It is now so very easy to quickly make a slideshow from random photos or a last-minute disc handed to me a few minutes before a service. (which gets a forced smile and an evil eye in return from me. )

I also agree that I am not telling our pastoral staff that I can do it so easily. I still would like some time to make the slideshow as good as possible instead of slapped together last second.

Because I work in the church office throughout the week I am able to make up deadlines for different Media-related items. For example: Sunday Morning service order is due Thursday noon, and any videos or slideshows or sermon slides are due Friday noon. This gives me a few hours at least on Fridays to create or update any slides. I also change the Announcements slideshow during the week as I learn of new Announcements.

We typically use sermon and Announcement slides every week and about once a month, some sort of photos slideshow.

Wow, sorry to ramble, just thought I'd show you my typical slideshow-full week.

Thanks!
~ Kirsten Black

7/9/2006 8:03:32 PM

Normally I'm handed a CD mid service and that makes for a whole pile of fun. Bad thing is normally the pastor is the one pushing for something to be done. Glad to see yet another one learning the nicer points of the sofware.