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Control a PowerPoint presentation with animations inside slides

9/28/2014

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Add your PowerPoint presentation to the agenda:

either with drag and drop from the desktop to the agenda surface:

or
Click on the "Open agenda" side button, the select "Add PowerPoints":

Controlling a PowerPoint presentation that contains slides with animation

Controlling a PowerPoint presentation that contains slides with animations requires the operator to be aware of following details:

Clicking on a slide thumbnail (in VideoPsalm) will display the slide at its first animation state.
Using the keyboard keys will move to the next or previous slide.
It will skip the eventual transitions inside of slides.
This is a problem (see solution further down, with the “Next” button).
With the thumbnails, it is not possible to advance to the next slide animation (it is a PowerPoint limitation).
If the PowerPoint presentation contains no animation inside slides, the operator can use the thumbnails and the keyboard keys to move to the next slide.
However, please use the “Next” button to advance to the next slide or to the next animation inside a slide:

The “Next” button will advance the PowerPoint presentation, either to the next animation inside a slide, or to the next slide
There is no “Previous” button at the moment, hopefully this will be corrected in a future version of VideoPsalm.

Alternatively, try following steps:

Give the focus to the presentation screen, by clicking on its icon on the taskbar with the mouse.
Be aware that clicking on the presentation screen will advance the presentation to the next slide.
Use the keyboard keys (up or down keys) to move to the next or the previous slide or slide animation.

Does this work for you?

At the church where I attend, the pastor likes to advance his sermon PowerPoint slides by himself, with the help of a remote controller.
We got him the following remote controller:
http://www.amazon.com/Kensington-K72426AM-Wireless-Presenter-Joystick/dp/B009K1PYG0
and he is seems happy of it.
Other controllers will certainly do, notably Logitech or other brands. However, I cannot recommend Targus remotes, as their buttons are sometimes clumsy.

Make sure that the presentation screen has the focus at the start of the presentation, for example by clicking on its icon in the taskbar.
Our pastor makes plenty of use of animations inside slides, and it works well.

We use PowerPoint 2013 trial. The trial period has elapsed by now, and PowerPoint works as a viewer only, but this is OK because the PC is not used to edit PowerPoints.

In case the PowerPoint presentation is off-center

To solve the PowerPoint being off-center, try following settings:

1. Make sure that the video-projection screen resolution is set to the "native" screen resolution.

2. Make sure that the Windows font size is set to "Smaller":

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Transfer songs from one PC to another

9/20/2014

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To transfer some songs from one PC to another, the easiest way is to build an agenda with these songs on the source PC, then open the agenda on the destination PC. The songs will be instantly and automatically added to your songbooks.

Here is a detail of the steps, with some explanations:

1. Add your songs to an agenda on the source PC.

2. Save this agenda on a USB key or OneDrive, DropBox, etc.
The agenda contains all that is needed to reproduce your presentation identically on another PC:

Songs with their lyrics
Styles (the backgrounds, styles at different levels)
Songbooks definitions
Basic styles (Songbooks, Bibles, Base)
Slideshow images
Standalone videos
PowerPoints
etc.

3. On the destination PC, open this agenda.
This will automatically add to your destination PC all the agenda songs, in particular those that are not yet on the destination PC.
If necessary, VideoPsalm will create the containing songbooks.
Song backgrounds are automatically added to the image or video galleries of the destination PC.
The song styles at different levels are also added to the destination PC.
If the songs are already on the destination PC, their lyrics and other attributes are replaced by those from the agenda, depending on how you set up the "Agenda open" options on the destination PC:

Preserve the text of my songbooks and Bibles
When this option is active, VideoPsalm does not replace the song lyrics on the destination PC with those from the agenda (those from the source PC).
In case the destination PC misses one or more songs from the agenda, VideoPsalm adds them to its songbooks, and, if necessary, creates the corresponding songbooks, regardless of the state of agenda open options.

Preserve the styles of my songbooks and Bibles
When this option is active, VideoPsalm does not replace the styles of songs on the destination PC by those from the agenda (those from the source PC).

Note These options are disabled by default.
However, it is advised to turn these options on on the church PC, in order to protect the church song lyrics, their styles, etc.

Consider following example:
Someone prepares an agenda on his home PC. Among the songs, one is called "King of kings". In our example, this song contains an accidentally mistyped title "King of all kings". There are possibly other misspellings in the lyrics.
To prevent these errors to propagate to the church PC, enable the "Preserve the text of my songbooks and Bibles" option on the church PC.

4. Finally, save the songbook changes produced by opening the agenda:

If you forget to save your changes, VideoPsalm will remind you about it when you close it.

Note that the songbooks and the Bibles only take little space on your hard drive:
A songbook with hundreds of songs occupies about a quarter of the space occupied by a photo.
A Bible takes around as much space as a photo.

Alternative method to transfer songs from one PC to another
Copy the corresponding file to the destination PC.
Your songbooks are normally located in the following folder:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\VideoPsalm\Songbooks

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Connect VideoPsalm to a video-projector and setup your monitors

8/27/2014

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By default, Windows is configured to display your desktop on all the monitors that are plugged to the PC.
This mode is called “Duplicate the desktop to the other monitors”.
However, the preferred mode while using VideoPsalm is “Extend the desktop to the other monitors”, so that you can control VideoPsalm on the first monitor, while the presentation is displayed on the second monitor.
To switch to the “Extend” mode, use the built-in Windows feature that enables you to extend your desktop to the video-projector.

One easy way to achieve this is to press the “Windows” + “P” keys...

... and choose "Extend the desktop to the second screen" option:

For detailed instructions and other tips, follow this very well made tutorial.

Another way to do it:

Right click on the desktop.
Choose the "Screen Resolution" menu option.
Select "Extend these displays" in the "Multiple Displays" drop-down:

This second method brings additional options to you, mainly:

Set the resolution of each monitor, in particular the resolution of the presentation screen.
If necessary, you can improve the rendering speed of your presentation by reducing its resolution.
Drag and drop a monitor to the right or the left, to rearrange them.

Short Microsoft video (1 minute or so) explaining how to setup your monitors

Disable the taskbar on the second monitor/video-projector

On Windows 8, you will want to disable the taskbar on the second monitor/video-projector:

Right-click on an empty spot on the taskbar.
Select "Properties".
Uncheck the box next to "Show taskbar on all screens"

Note These options only appear when you have more than one monitor plugged into your PC.

How to move the VideoPsalm presentation to another screen

By default, VideoPsalm shows its control window on the main monitor and displays the presentation on the second monitor.
If ever you want to display the presentation on the first monitor, simply drag the VideoPsalm control window, with the mouse, to the second monitor: VideoPsalm will then “chase” the presentation to the first (or next) monitor.This works identically in a configuration with three or more monitors.

Note In the VideoPsalm settings, there is no specific setting for the monitor layout.
When you open VideoPsalm the next time, it will simply restore the layout from the previous session.

To start the VideoPsalm presentation

To start the presentation with the first agenda item, press the "F5" key:

This will have following effects:
1. If the presentation screen is not opened, it will display it.
You can display the presentation screen by pressing the "Present" button, located to the right of the control screen: