Announcing ProPresenter 5!

ProPresenter 5 is the evolution of our award winning presentation software. This major upgrade to the software builds upon the incredible foundational capabilities we built in ProPresenter 4 and adds completely new functionality to make service preparation easier, and the overall impact of your presentations greater.

Available When?

ProPresenter 5 is now available for Mac and the Windows version will follow later this Spring. Nothing more specific is available at this time since development is a fluid process, but we are hard at work to bring you this great new functionality as quickly as possible.

Pricing?

Pricing is $399 for Single License and $799 for a Site License. Upgrades from Pro4 are 50% off the retail price. Upgrades from ProPresenter 3 are also 50% for now, but discounts will be eliminated soon (so upgrade now while you can).

What Does It Look Like?

Our customers overwhelmingly approve of the look and feel we have refined in ProPresenter 3 and 4, so why change a good thing? The award-winning WYSIWYG interface continues to evolve, however, with refinements and functionality befitting the current trends in user interfaces. Familiarity with previous versions will have you ready to work with ProPresenter 5 the moment it ships. Plus, a completely customizable toolbar will allow each organization to get quick access to the functions they use most.

System Requirements?

ProPresenter 5 continues to build on improvements made in each OS and requires more horsepower to accomplish all that it is capable of doing. Therefore, the system requirements may be a little higher than your existing equipment and are outlined below for both platforms. While the software may work on systems that do not meet these requirements, those systems will not be supported. As always, you will be able to download the software at no charge to test performance on any computer before making a purchase.

Slide Transitions and Animated Text Boxes

ProPresenter has always had smooth, seamless cross dissolves between slides and video elements. Now we've added some incredible new transitions. These aren't cheesy eighties-era wipes. We're talking 3D animations that are layer independent. So, for example, words can "fly-in" from the top right while backgrounds dissolve underneath. In addition, slide fly-ins can be made to "hover" in continuous motion for as long as they are active before flying off as the next slide flies in.

Our aim with this design is to enhance the caliber of your everyday presentations and make it easy to create tasteful motion presentations from right within ProPresenter.

Here is a screen shot of our new slide transitions panel showing both the full A/B transitions to choose from as well as all the motion options:

This video shows an assortment of these transitions and motions in action:

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/8Xm2u9ipNtc?rel=0

Song Select / CCLI Reporting

ProPresenter 5 includes the ability to create CCLI reports for the songs you use. During your CCLI reporting period, CCLI requires that reports be filed when a presentation is first created. ProPresenter 5 makes this process easy to track and report right within the application.

Shown below is the export panel, available via the Preferences screen in Pro5:

Video / Image Effects

ProPresenter 5 now features some powerful new video effects beyond those introduced in ProPresenter 4. Now not only can you change the hue, saturation, contrast, and speed of video clips, you can also apply color filters and blurs dynamically to images and videos.

As always, these settings can be saved on a per instance basis. So one clip can have multiple versions of itself despite only existing once on the hard drive.

The screen shot below shows the updated "Media Properites" window with the new options available:

Scripture Enhancements

ProPresenter has enhanced its scripture presentation engine to include the ability to put scripture references into a separately placed text box. Many users have requested the ability to automatically format the reference separately from the verse, and this feature accomplishes this task.

We've also included the ability to add verses to an existing presentation. So in the case where a presentation with a range of verses from one chapter has already been created, it's now easy to add verses from other chapters searched on to that selected presentation. You can now easily create a single presentation for all of the scripture references for the Pastor's sermon.

Shown below are the multiple text boxes, one for the scripture and one for the verse reference:

Planning Center Online

Many of our church customers use Planning Center Online to manage resources and their worship plans. ProPresenter 5 now includes integration with Planning Center enabling you to download your service plans, attach presentations to specific plan elements, and get live updates of your plans right within ProPresenter.

Here we see a screen shot of what this looks like:

DVD Ripping

While ProPresenter 5 maintains the ability to playback DVDs from within the software directly, it's not always the best method since DVD's are not very reliable. As an alternative to this for presentations that are not last minute, we have created the ability to rip DVD Content right within Pro5 (for non-copyrighted material only).

On this screen shot, we see the same DVD interface, but now there's a small "Rip" button in the lower right corner and it brings up the "Encoding" window as it creates the QuickTime movie of the in/out range defined:

Text Reflow

ProPresenter has always made it easy to edit slides, but now we've made it as easy as editing text in a text editor. Whether you're changing the flow of a song's text during import or creating a new version of an existing song in your Library, ProPresenter 5's Text Reflow functionality gives you a complete view of a song's text on the left hand side and a slide view on the right. You can easily change line breaks, slide breaks, add labels in this text edit view. You can see how the changes make your slides look as the slide view updates with your changes. This is a substantial time saver versus having to edit on a slide by slide basis.

This is the Text Reflow interface:

Corner Pinning

Projection can be a tricky business as you can't always set up projectors in a straight-on fashion. This leads to misshapen angles as opposed to a nice, rectangular projection. ProPresenter 5 now offers a way to adjust the corners of the projected output to better accommodate off-angle projection. By all means, if you can reposition your projector optimally, do so, but when it's not possible, ProPresenter's new corner pinning correction makes it easier for you to improve the caliber of your presentations.

Do you use our Advanced Module for 2- or 3-Screen output? The ProPresenter 5 corner pinning function works for each of the outputs.

Corner Pinning values are set in the "Displays" Preference in ProPresenter:

Hot Folders

ProPresenter 5 now has a new "Hot Folder" item that mirrors a folder on your computer. It dynamically adds and subtracts media files in ProPresenter according to its existence in that folder. This means you can keep all of your media in one place and it will automatically be added or removed in your Hot Folder in ProPresenter. You can create multiple hot folders in the Video/Image bin and contents will be updated in real time.

Here we see a screen shot of what this looks like in Pro5:

Cued Transitions

ProPresenter 5 delivers one of the most frequently requested features... "Can I set a different transition within presentations on a per slide basis?" The answer now is YES. There is still a global setting, but now one can set a default for a specific presentation or even set it per slide, so every slide change can have a different transition.

This screen shot shows how to select a transition as well as how each slide is marked when it has cued transition set. A blue icon indicates a slide level transtion while a green icon indicates a background layer transition on each thumbnail:

Twitter Integration

Few technologies have facilitated communication between people at large gatherings like Twitter. ProPresenter 5 features a new Twitter feed feature that allows you to search by keywords or hashtags, moderate tweets, and display them on rotation using your choice of templates.

Search results are shown in the left column where they can be reviewed and approved for display. Approved tweets will be added to the active rotation on your output, and can be removed at any time.

Here we see a screen shot of what this looks like:

Here is an example of what this could look like:

Stage Display 2.0

ProPresenter 4 introduced the industry's most robust confidence monitor with the Stage Display feature. The fully customizable Stage Display offers an easy way for stage personel to view current slide text, next slide text, notes, countdowns, current time, and custom messages sent by the ProPresenter operator.

Stage Display 2.0 takes the industry's best Stage Display to the next level. These enhancements include:

This new functionality will be complemented by a new version of the Stage Display App for iOS devices.

The updated configuration panel looks like this:

The stage display with chord chart option looks like this:

Slide Grouping and Arrangements

The foundation of ProPresenter has always been the easy display of song lyrics. We recognize, however, that songs aren't always sung the same way from week to week. Sometimes you want to skip a verse, repeat a chorus, or change the arrangment altogether. ProPresenter 5's new Groups and Arrangments feature allows you to accomplish this easily.

First, create groups of slides and give the group a name (such as Verse 1, Chorus, Bridge, etc.). You can then create Arrangements by dragging tokens indicative of each slide group to your arrangment. The process is fast and easy, and allows you to set your volunteers up for success by showing them every slide a song has, in order.

When you edit a slide within the group, all instances of that slide will be updated in all of the arrangements of that song, so misspellings need only be corrected one time.

All Arrangments are stored as part of the presentation file, and each instance of a presentation within a playist can have its own "active" arrangment, allowing you to set your volunteer users up for success with all the slides to be sung on any given Sunday.

Here we see a screen shot of what this looks like in the presentation window:

Printing Enhancements

We have greatly enhanced our printing capabilities of ProPresenter 5. Now you can choose to include slide notes, print the thumbnails of the slides, include presentation information, and layout text in multiple columns dynamically.

Here we see a screen shot of what this looks like in the printer panel:

This is what a print out would look like now with the new slide view option:

Media Management

Managing media is often a challenge given it's size and all the places it can be stored (multiple locations on a hard drive, purchased CD/DVD, thumb drives, downloads, content created by your organization, and content located on multiple systems, etc.). ProPresenter 5 offers a new method to help facilitate this management. With this option enabled, when you import media into ProPresenter it will move this media to a default location. If the media is not located on that drive (network volume, CD/DVD, thumb drive, etc.), it will copy it to this location. This optional method automatically consolidates all of your media into one folder, greatly simplifying media management.

This is set in the "General" Preferences panel as shown below (a specific path can be designated as well):

Multi-Screen Templates

The Multi-Screen Module for ProPresenter 5 (previously called the "Advanced Module") now offers the ability to select a different template per screen. This allows you to have the text placement, font, etc on one screen be different than the output format on another screen. This flexibility helps accommodate unique output requirements in a production. For example, you can select a template with lower third text for the outside screens and select a template with centered text for the center screen. You can also have a different template for all three screens if desired.

The Preference Panel now has the following extra choices for Alternative Templates:

Fill in the Blank and Bullet Point Reveals

Two new reveals for ProPresenter 5 are the Fill-in-the-Blank and Bullet Point features. As the names imply, these features allow users to dynamically create fill-in-the-blank or bullet point reveals on a single slide. ProPresenter recognizes a hard return or under lined word as a reveal element and each successive click on the slide will advance through the reveal, filling in a blank or displaying the next bullet point.

This visual tool has been used for years in churches and schools to emphasize a point and enhance audience participation. Now the same can be done easily in ProPresenter 5 with a single slide and a visual indicator of where the user is in the reveal process.

The slide below shows new symbols at the bottom. These green bubbles indicate what point (or blank) has been revealed:

Template Import/Export

ProPresenter 5 now allows you to create templates on one system and export/import them to another system. This is a very useful feature for the artistic designer of your presentations so they don't have to go around to each and every ProPresenter station and recreate a design. Now they can just create it once and install it anywhere.

Here we see a screen shot of what this looks like:

Language Localization

Renewed Vision is opening its doors to the world with language-localization in ProPresenter 5. Initially we'll be offering ProPresenter 5 in English, Spanish, and Korean. From there, we will strategically roll out support for additional languages over time.

There is no interface element for setting this in ProPresenter. Instead, ProPresenter simply uses the localization setting that's selected in "Language and Text" System Preference as shown below:

Master Control Module

An entirely new and exciting module is available for ProPresenter 5. The "Master Control Module" allows one operator to control multiple ProPresenter Network Nodes from one computer.

This is a highly useful feature for productions where one may need to utilize multiple instances of ProPresenter to control multiple screens, each with varying content, but want one operator to control them all in unison from one station. This new module allows one Master ProPresenter Station to remotely trigger slides and Video/Image bin contents of one or more networked ProPresenter stations. Each station can have their own respective content suitable for its output, so it can be the same or different material than the Master station (great for multi-lingual environments).

This feature is available on the Mac, but are not certain if it will be part of the PC release at this time. All ProPresenter 5 for Mac systems will be capable of being a Network Node out of the box, but to utilize this capability a Master Control Module must be purchased and installed on one system.

Network nodes are connected to in the "Network" Preferences panel of ProPresenter:

Full Synchronization

ProPresenter 4 introduced the ability to synchronize a user's library of documents easily across volumes. ProPresenter 5 greatly expands this feature, allowing user's to synchronize all other elements - media, templates, playlists, messages, and even Stage Display layouts. This is extremely useful for any organization using ProPresenter on more than one system. It helps manage all elements of presentations across multiple installations throughout the campus.

The Synchronization panel now has all these options to choose from:

Multi-Screen Improvements

Along with multiple template enhancement for our Multi-Screen Module (formerly known as the Advanced Module), we've added two additional features inspired by the requests of our users:

NOTE: All users that have the Advanced Module in ProPresenter 4 will be able to take advantage of these new features when upgrading to ProPresenter 5. A repurchase of the Multi-Screen module is not necessary.

The full panel of the Multi-Screen Module looks like this:

General Enhancements

ProPresenter 5 contains a number of smaller, general enhancements with the user interface and other functional aspects of the program. Included in these enhancements are:

New Media Bundle

We've updated our free media bundle with a great new set of loops and stills from some of the most popular producers around. Registered ProPresenter 5 users (both upgraders and new customers) will get 60 great new loops from the producers below and 120 new stills with the software. All clips will be available as a free download from the built-in store.

Here is a glimpse of the free loops:

And here are the still images: