ProPresenter + Matrox TripleHead2Go
So last week we switched the presentation setup in our chapel. Our chapel isn’t like most chapels. It’s where our youth meet on Wed PM, our Junior High meet on Sun AM and our Young Adults meet on Sun PM. Plus other meetings.
It was a few years ago we made the switch from 1 screen to 3 screens. At the time the best solution for us was the following:
-2 PCs running Easy Worship
-2 Kramer VP719 switchers (one for the center screen and one for the outside screens)
-1 Kramer VP-72 a 1:2 distribution amp that pairs nicely with the VP719 switchers.
This was working OK. We had problems with Easy Worship, mainly it was old hardware problems I think. But the setup was confusing at time for our operators.
So we made a change. We put an iMac running ProPresenter and the Advance Module with a Matrox Triple Head 2 Go. We still use one of the Kramer switchers for the center screen. I have to say I’m very impressed with the results.
Somethings I’ve figured out:
-ProPresenter seems to like the secondary display set at it’s lowest setting (1920×480).
-I’ve also had to tweak the left and right text margins to get the text to line up properly (it’s currently set at 80 and 25).
-I like writing in bullet lists.
When you start creating your sermon graphics in photoshop at 1920×480 and video files at that size, you can unleash some very cool media.
And here are the pictures, they were taken with my phone so they’re not the greatest:
Creative Church Media 
Paul Brown replied:
Dave,
I have been seriously considering making the switch at my church to this hardware configuration (like you, switching from EasyWorship). We run our screens at 800×600 each (I would actually like to go to our projectors’ native 1024×768 resolution per screen, but that might be too much for our hardware right now), so the video requirements might be a little higher than your setup, but I am wondering how well does your system handle 1920×480 video files? Is it choppy at all? And what are the specs on the iMac?
Great stuff, thanks!
Paul
The Bridge Church, Atlanta, GA
August 28, 2008 at 9:20 am. Permalink.
Dave replied:
I’ve played some 1080p content on the system. It was a 1920×1080 30p file that was compressed as H.264. It played fine, transitions and text was smooth.
I haven’t made any custom content. But I figure if it’ll play 1080p it should play the 1920×480 content since it’s less than half the size of 1080p.
August 28, 2008 at 10:08 am. Permalink.
Brad replied:
Thanks for the write up.
You should have no problem doing a higher resolution on the iMac, but I wouldn’t recommend going higher the 2400×600. Remember, the projectors will scale your image nicely. If you need to do 3072×768 (3 x 1024×768) then the iMac can handle it, but video performance may suffer a bit (that’s a whole lot of video to process).
August 28, 2008 at 11:39 am. Permalink.
Andy replied:
We recently switched from Easy worship to the Triplehead2go on a new imac. We’re having real trouble with the instability of the moving videos where it causes the slides to not advance, to advance very slowly (not on cue), or to even lock up. We have set the screen to the very wide display (3840 x 1024). I’m wondering if anyone else is having this issue and ways to get it working properly.
March 9, 2010 at 4:22 pm. Permalink.
Dave replied:
I changed jobs about a year ago and I haven’t been using ProPresenter or the TH2G since then. Have you tried contacting Renewed Vision?
March 11, 2010 at 9:32 am. Permalink.