Church Video Ideas: PC or Mac?
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Tue, October 30, 2007
- Viewed 874
- (36) comments so far
Obviously, a big part of the rise of Macs is due to Apple’s amazing marketing campaigns. Apple has done a great job of presenting their products in fresh, exciting, compelling and attractive ways. The “PC vs Mac” commercials were and still are a huge success. Whether totally accurate or not, Apple and Mac computers are seen as sleek, stable and cool. It feels as if every one has an iPod and uses iTunes. Is that true? I doubt it, but it feels like that. My hats off to Apple again for one heck of an advertising job. Earlier this week, on my blog, I asked how many had upgraded to Apple’s Leopard and several responded that they had already upgraded.
I recently did a software poll where I asked churches what worship presentation software they used. If I had done this poll just 1 to 2 years ago, it would have been a toss up between EasyWorship and MediaShout and everyone else would have been way behind. This year’s software poll shocked me as ProPresenter (a Mac-based worship presentation software) took the top place and has never looked back. I, personally, stand behind and endorse 3 worship presentation products: EasyWorship, MediaShout and ProPresenter. I knew ProPresenter would be in the top 3, but had no idea they’d take the top spot.
Also helping Macs in the world of worship are the endorsements from conferences like Orange, Catalyst and all the Passion events. ProPresenter is also used on the Chris Tomlin tour and got its start at North Point where Andy Stanley is Senior Pastor. These high profile conferences, events and churches started raising the bar for media and when attendees asked, “What are you using to do that?” - the answer came down to two worship products made for Mac - ProPresenter (the worship presentation software) and ProVideoPlayer (designed to enhance live staging events).
Now having said all this, I’m back to the original question. You see, my church is PC-based. I love many of the features of ProPresenter, but we haven’t switched over to the Mac platform (for presentation) for a number of reasons. We do use Macs (with FinalCut) for video production. So, I bring this up for my own education. I’d like to know what you use at your church. Are you PC or Mac? Are you a hybrid like my church (PC for presentation and Mac for production)? I’ll also ask two more questions: If you’re Mac-based, have you upgraded to Leopard? If you’re PC-based, have you upgraded to Vista?
©2007 – Greg Atkinson (www.churchvideoideas.com)
Used by permission from author. All rights reserved by author.
Greg Atkinson lives in Dallas with his wife and their three small children. Greg served previously as the Director of WorshipHouse Media, after having served as a worship pastor for 11 years. Greg is now the Technical Arts Director at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship and continues to consult, teach and write about worship, media and creative communication. You can connect with him through his daily blog, Church Video Ideas, his podcast, Creative Synergy , or his email: .
Ah - that is the question these days. On the production and editing side, church techies have been pretty Mac-heavy for years, but most used a PC to project their lyrics and videos in an actual service. A big reason for this was that worship presentation software until recently was all PC-based. With the surprisingly quick rise of ProPresenter, I'm seeing more and more churches make a total switch over to the Mac platform...
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Peter Hamm on Wed, October 31, 2007
A little early to ask about Leopard, but I’m not upgrading right away. None of my macs are Intel based (I have a PowerBook G4 I’m typing on right now and a Tower G4 that we do our video edits on - a little antiquated, but it works) and I’m not going to push it by putting Leopard on them.
That said, everybody else around the church is PC-based, we use MediaShout currently, too. I will NEVER go back, having spent a very significant time on Macs and PCs both over the last twenty years. (Yes… Twenty…) I also do music on my Mac, and I recently completed a full-length album project on just one Powerbook G4 and a Midi and Audio interface. It sounds GREAT. I would not try to do that, nor would I try to do video, on the PC. Just can’t stand it…
But MediaShout works real well for us on the PC and I don’t really want to switch any time soon, and Microsoft Office works WAY better on the PC, imho… Stuff like that… Windows is IT.
Tom Watson on Wed, October 31, 2007
Reading this post made me think of the condition we are in during this present age. One day we know we will live in perfection with God as King of the New Heavens and New Earth. Longing for this day, there is a tension living in a world of sin.
In a similar way (admittedly limited in scope http://www.mondaymorninginsight.com/images/smileys/grin.gif I am currently working on a MacBook and living in a PC based world at church with our presentation software (EasyWorship). I long for the day of perfection when all we see is the beautiful apple.
eric Partin on Wed, October 31, 2007
We started our church a little over 2 years ago, we were PC based and used Media Shout. For the last year we have been switching over to Mac including the MacBook that I am typing on right now. So, Sunday’s are still run on a PC but we will eventually move it over and yes, we have already installed all 4 Mac’s with the new Leopard.
Marshall Huwe on Wed, October 31, 2007
We use Mac’s and ProPresenter. My Macbook Pro was running Leopard by 4:30pm last Friday. It is worth the upgrade for the new Quick Look alone. Although Spaces and Time Machine are amazing too!
I have used many flavors of PC’s running many flavors of windows, including Tablet PC’s and Vista - the Mac and OS X win hands down in my book! What can I say - I’m a fan boy!
MH
Leonard Lee on Wed, October 31, 2007
People who have PC’s should read the warning label… Intel Inside…
I use a pc but I love being ridiculed by my Mac staff and friends.
Rob on Wed, October 31, 2007
We’ve been using easyworship for a few years here and it works ok, but there are some definite drawbacks for a large, multi-venue facility like ours.
As far as using Leopard, it’s way to early to expect people to switch over. You never want to change your operating system if you have a stable editing system. Until the release has been out and the bigger bugs are worked out, you never want to upgrade to something that’s going to possibly disrupt your workflow. One problem I’ve already heard about is that many Adobe apps won’t work to their fullest on Leopard yet. They are working, but some don’t work completely yet. Adobe will issue a patch soon, but that’s still something that could cause a major problem if you’re trying to do a project that relied heavily on these programs.
While the whole PC vs Mac debate can go on and on, it does show a bit of pride to think that a PC cannot handle anything important. Our audio post guy had been working on a PC for many years and only recently switched over to a Mac. It wasn’t because ProTools HD wouldn’t work with his PC, he had more than enough capacity for what he had been doing, but he wanted to upgrade his computer and decided that since our video editing systems are on Mac it would help if he went Mac too. My personal editing system is a PC but my work systems are Mac. I know that both offer a lot of functionality to the point where I don’t think anyone can really claim that what is possible on a Mac is not possible on a PC. One thing that I will say, though, is that I do not want to run Vista and so I will be switching over to a Mac when I can afford it.
Eric on Wed, October 31, 2007
We’ve been using ProPresenter on a MacBook running Tiger and have had no trouble. Everything works as advertised.
Erik Richter on Wed, October 31, 2007
We started with MediaShout several years ago, but moved over to ProPresenter a few months ago. The only thing we use the PC for is general office tasks. Everything looks so much smoother coming off the Mac.
Erik Richter on Wed, October 31, 2007
Oh yeah… We haven’t moved to Leopard at church, but I’ve upgraded my work Mac and personal laptop. Leopard is a great OS!
Brian Hutchinson on Wed, October 31, 2007
We use PC’s. The main reason is noone on staff here has any experiance with Mac’s + it would be expensive to purchase 7Macs (4 in office & 3 for service + a server) at once.
We use Easy worship & our trial is almost up & will probably purchase it. It is more cost effective because of Media Shout’s site license thing.
I personally have a lappy with Vista & have only have problems adding software.
Adam Gregory on Wed, October 31, 2007
We are currently PC based, though I am actually pushing to go Open Source and switch to Linux boxes and servers. Yes we have unfortunately moved to vista on some of our systems. This is a big reason why I am for the switch to open source.As far as the presenter software goes though I would favor a switch to Mac
Granger just released a free program that they developed in house and have been using for the last year called iWorship
you can get it here http://www.renovatiosw.com/
This would keep in line my open source desires but it only runs on Mac so I would have to compromise on that end.
Richard Gaspard on Wed, October 31, 2007
Our production facility is all Mac. Our main auditorium just switched to Mac about 3 months ago, and we run ProPresenter. I had already bought LiveWorship, but a guy I met @ Willow Creek’s Arts conference convinced me to go to ProPresenter. We were using an older version of EasyWorship, but every time I tried to upgrade, my computer would crash (sound familiar to anyone?). I liked EasyWorship, but it was clearly time to upgrade my media computers, so the hand-me-down Macs went to the auditorium. The youth room is to follow, then our children’s dept., possibly within the next couple of years. We LOVE ProPresenter. The computer is runs on is a Dual 2Ghz G5 with 4GB of RAM. I have played 7min videos with no hiccups.
Greg Atkinson on Wed, October 31, 2007
Thanks, Adam - that’s actually what my blog (http://www.churchvideoideas.com) is on tomorrow. I’ll be telling people about Granger’s new presentation software. FYI - It’s only free during the beta time period.
Paul Bergum on Wed, October 31, 2007
We have a very happy with Oratorio from graymattercomputing.com. It’s crossplatform and can put together a song presentation in just a few minutes on the fly. Change backgrounds and lyrics quickly and seamlessly. A free trial and only costs $99. Developer has been great with feedback and adding new features. Check it out. Has saved us money and lots of time.
Brent H on Wed, October 31, 2007
We use easyworship in our main worship center. I used a powerbook for about 6 months and didn’t find any reason to stick with it. It wasn’t any easier to use, it didn’t do anything my PC couldn’t do, and it did not play nice with the PC’s the rest of the church was using. On top of that, Mac’s are too expensive to justify switching everyone over. Apple is brilliant at marketing, but we can’t afford to spend that much more money just to be “cool.”
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