5/8/2014 10:17:50 AM

I need to figure out how best to do something that we used to do in v7.

At the traditional service, the choir stands in front of the screen.  The bottom of the screen reflects off the heads in the back row.  So we made a .png file that had a black-to-transparent gradient at the very bottom.  As the music director created hymns, the black bar file was added to each hymn, using the "background effects" tab in the song file.  This way, no matter what background was selected for the program, the black bar was at the bottom of the screen when the choir sang. 

Each week, I set up the contemporary service at my home workstation, package the file and put it in Dropbox.  At church, the director restores it and copies the display properties into the traditional services.  The backgrounds, fonts, colors and layouts all appear, and the hymns have the background I have chosen, plus the black bar.

In v8, this no longer works.  Any change to the song background overrides all the display properties, so I have my black bar, but over a black background.  I can change the background to any of the properties files, using Load from, but I don't think this helps me, as this just accesses the global factory and user files, as far as I can tell. (Kristen tried hard to explain this, and I have watched the video training, but I'm still pretty confused.[script removed]

I suppose I could create a program level display item just for the traditional services, using the black bar.  If I comment it as" traditional display properties", and place it above the one set up for the contemporary service, it won't affect my program if someone forgets to remove it.  Then the director can cut that one and paste it into her services.  This should work.

If there is a better way to do it, I'm eager to hear it.  It has to be very simple.  The current steps for the director are:  restore contemporary, open contemporary, copy display props, open traditional, paste display props, save.  So if anyone can do the job in fewer than 6 steps, please let me know.

Thanks!

5/8/2014 1:14:31 PM

Sara,

It's likely that the idea you came up with toward the end of your post is a good solution for you. One other idea to consider is to set the margins so that in one service, the content has a larger bottom margin. The margin can be set independently from the background.

A couple of questions though to help my understanding: Do you use a single background image or video for all songs? Is it the same background image or video for both services?

5/8/2014 7:16:55 PM

Yes, Doug, we normally use the same background for all songs each week, and use it for all three services. It coordinates with a theme graphic relating to the sermon.
I will play with margins, but I think the sharp edge will be less accepted than the gradient. Thanks for the tip, though.

5/8/2014 8:38:04 PM

Okay, so I assume then that you are setting the slide properties as program item at the top of the program. If this is the case, then one other option is to include the gradient PNG as you have done but instead add it as a background layer. Then its simply a matter of editing that slide property item and unchecking the layer to remove the gradient bar.

In re-reading your original statement, I am wondering why the gradient .png was added to each song. In version 8, the .png item could have been simply inserted after the contemporary properties as a single properties program item, and would have applied to all of the songs that followed it. Perhaps I'm not understanding something.

5/8/2014 9:27:48 PM

Yes, I used to set up a program-level display properties item each week at the top of the program. This controlled the background for songs and slide shows. The director copied this and pasted it into her programs. Now I need one item for All Media and one item below that to set the video background to black. (If we decide to have different backgrounds for songs, I will need a third item to do that.) The video item can stay constant in all programs, as long as we paste the weekly properties in above it.

It was simpler for the director to set up the black bar on each song as she created the song than to remember to go into the display properties each week. I can, indeed, add the bar as a layer that is toggled on or off. But the director will have to remember to do this. In v7, she just pastes in the display properties item and is good to go.

I don't understand your second paragraph. Did you mean v7? And what is a single properties program item? If it means creating a special program-level display properties item that only added the bar to whatever properties were above it, I never learned to do that. It would have helped.

Going forward with v8, I will plan to make the director special slide properties items for the traditional service, or she will have to learn how to toggle the layer on when she pastes the item in. She can learn this, it's a matter of convincing her that the advantages of the new version are worth the trouble. There are advantages, but they probably won't be clear to everyone for a while.

Now if I have totally confused you, Doug, we are even, and maybe we should continue this by phone some time. I'm not even sure I am making sense to myself any more.

5/9/2014 10:53:16 AM

From what I understand, it seems to me that the new way in version 8, while different, should actually be much easier than in version 8 once its understood. That's the one of the reasons that we included the capability to easily disable a background layer simply by clicking a check box. However, if you include two slide property program items, one for contemporary, and one for traditional, that can be easily swapped, then that may be even easier for your director.