11/23/2005 3:25:15 PM

I have decided to use SSP this coming Sunday for our worship services, on a trial run.  I do have 2 questions, both of which will help me immensely this Sunday.  I will be running SSP evaluation mode 5.5.

1. Is there a quick way to increase font size by a keyboard comination?  In SongBase you can simplly hit the plus key and it will get larger. I tried this and didn't see any results in the Practice window today.  Doing the right-click and Edit Display Properties is more time than I'd want to take at the spur of the moment.

2. Is there any kind of way I can import songs from SongBase, which uses MS database files (.mdb)?  I was able to copy/paste them in today, but importing them en masse would be a bit quicker, I think.

Thanks.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving, everyone (including those from outside the USA) !

11/23/2005 3:46:58 PM

There are no shortcut keys for changing display properties at this time, although that would be a nice enhancement (good item for the wish list).

SSP does, however, have a ProModule that will directly access songs from the SongBase database.  This module is not part of the evaulation package.

11/27/2005 9:00:15 PM

Thanks for getting back to me with the answer.

12/4/2005 3:15:37 PM

How did it go when you ran SSP? You'll get used to it soon, we love it!

12/4/2005 7:24:31 PM

Karen, we used it last Sunday and it went very well.  Earlier, I was thinking that I really needed to have every stanza from every song up and visible (which you can't do with SSP), but things went well enough without that feature.  I talked to the guy who ran the lyrics for today's service--earlier I asked him to use SSP as well--and he said everything went smoothly. 

I really like having the ability to right-click and change only features for the one current song, or to do the global changes (for every song).  One of the problems that we've had with our current program (SongBase) has been with getting the background graphic changed--for some reason, we have to manually change the  background for each plate/stanza, instead of doing it for the entire song in one fell swoop.  Using global changes makes it easy to set the defaults for every song very smoothly and quickly. I'm really liking this program.

Thanks for asking.

Paul

12/4/2005 7:27:01 PM

In fact right now, I've liked it so much that I do want to try one other program (MediaShout) for at least a week, just to compare, although I don't recall it being as easy to use as SSP. At any rate, we're pretty close to buying a copy. our demo version lasts till January 10 or thereabouts.

12/4/2005 7:33:02 PM

I'm glad you like it so far.  One thing I really like is that Songshow Plus has the ability to create slideshows within it.  I don't know if Mediashout can do that or not.  Anyways, this was really cool.  Tonite we had the Children's Christmas Program at church.  I created a title slide and used the snow background that comes with SSP.  That was awesome!  Then, I had fun with a song and created a slideshow for it with animated Christmas trees.  I flew them down with one click.  I created that slideshow in about 5 minutes.  I feel like the more you use SSP, the more you will learn that it can do.  It is especially fun with children's events and youth events because you can experiment a bit more than on a regular Sunday morning.

Karen

12/5/2005 6:53:47 AM

So it can work like a mini-powerpoint. That's good to know.

12/5/2005 7:02:52 AM

Actually, in my opinion it is better than powerpoint.  With powerpoint, I had to change each slide's font if I wanted to change the fonts but with SSP, you can set the global display properaties of the whole slideshow to change it all at once.  You can also use moving backgrounds behind the lyrics.  You cannot do that in Powerpoint without a plugin.