IT Solutions for Churches    Songview
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Overview

Songview is a free, easy to use and feature rich presentation software system designed for use in church services.

The demands on a modern church projection operator and software are often complex and many items are brought at the last minute. Songview takes all these in its stride with features to simplify the task of the operator.

Always looking for the song to project, so many with the same titles these days? Songview's powerful search facility allows you to enter any text from the song into the search box. As you type a list of song titles appears. Running the mouse pointer over the list shows you the full text of the song. A right click on the title adds the song into the playlist. Simple.

Got a PowerPoint to show? No worries just drop the file into the playlist, wait for the previews to load and it's done.

Someone brings you a USB stick with a bunch of slides of the latest youth trip that they want to show. No problem! Just drop the folder with the slides into the playlist. Done!

Maybe you have a video to show. Just drop it into the playlist.

Or someone has a Youtube video they want to use. No more dragging over a web browser. Just select the Internet tab, click the Youtube button, find the video you want, go to it and click add to playlist

Bible verses needed? Click the Bibles tab, select the version and chapter and verses needed and add to the playlist.

Need to stream? Just select Streaming Mode and all your normal projection output is duplicated to an NDI® channel with a separate fully configurable words channel for overlaying on your video stream

You are ready to go. Just hit the Show button and then select each playlist item as needed. Job done!

We will have a more detailed look at each feature. Hover over or touch the bold text to see screen-shots.

Songs

Songview comes with a file with some public domain songs. You can create your own file from scratch or import songs from a number of popular formats. Missing the words of a song? Just add it directly from CCLI Song Select. You can add or edit songs with the song editor. Notice a spelling mistake while you are projecting a song slide? Just right click on the slide, open the slide editor, make the changes and close the editor. Job done. You can continue to show slides while you do this. Got a file with all American spellings or British spellings? Use the editor's search and replace facility to change them all in one go! Once you have your song file you can set the preferences so that Songview loads it each time you start.

To work with songs, select the Numbers or Titles tab. The numbers tab is useful if you want to use numbers to identify songs, hymn book style. As you run the mouse down the list of songs you will see the full song text appear. Click on a song or song title to show it in the preview windows. You can add it to the playlist by dragging the title or song into the playlist.

The easiest way is to use the search facility. It does a full text search of the database working on song words, titles and authors. You can also search for songs having all the words in a list. As you hover the mouse over the song titles it shows you the full text of the song making it easy to find the correct version. A right click will add the song to the playlist, a left click will display the song in the preview windows.

Need a background? Click on the setup icon and add one of the still or video backgrounds from the background shuttle. Background picture too light for the words? Right click on the preview and colourise or edit the picture colours, brightness etc. Or you can use the Text icon to change the font colour or add outline and shadow effects. You can also change the font size and placing of text on the screen. All on the fly while you are projecting.

The preview windows show the slides as they will appear on the projector. Change the slides during presentation by clicking on the preview of the slide needed.

Bible verses

Songview includes bible texts. Click the Bible tab and choose the bible version, chapter and verses you want to display and add them to the playlist. You can display parallel texts with two versions on the screen if you like. Add a background using the Setup button if needed.

PowerPoint Presentations

Songview uses the Microsoft PowerPoint viewer to display PowerPoints. Simply drop the file into the playlist or add it using the button on the Powerpoint tab. You can cycle through the slides automatically, useful for notices, or click on the previews. Larger previews are available for those slides that are hard to read when projecting a speaker's slides.

Slideshows

Songview makes slideshows easy. If you have a folder with slides to show just drop it into the playlist and Songview will do the rest, generating previews of the slides in a shuttle. You can change the slides automatically if needed.

If you want a slideshow with captions or presentation slides, Songview has a simple slide editor that allows you to have a picture or coloured background and adding overlay pictures or text blocks as desired.

Video

Songview has has powerful video features. To show a video clip just drop the file into the playlist or add it from the Multimedia tab, you can set the start and stop positions too. If the video is too small you can zoom to fill the screen. You can display song words over the video if wanted. Songview also shows DVDs, plays CDs and can capture a video camera. Audio volume and EQ are also included.

Internet and Youtube/Vimeo

Need to show a webpage? Select the Internet tab, navigate to the page needed and add the URL to the playlist.

Maybe you have a Youtube or Vimeo clip. The Youtube and Vimeo buttons takes you to the websites. Use the search to find your clip, select it and then click the Add to playlist button. You can control the player using the Start/ Stop/ Pause buttons on the Internet tab. You can also set the starting position if needed.

Streaming

Need to send song words and your projector output to a video stream? Use Songview's streaming mode.

The preferences allow you to customise the streamed words and bible verses, setting the words position and size of the display box on the output as well as text colour and background or alpha channel colour. You can also choose how many lines of the song words to show while maintaining the normal output on the projector. The projected output is sent to a separate NDI output and includes video, PowerPoint, Internet etc.

The preview/ control windows show the individual slides for the words stream. Both outputs are controlled as the slides are selected.

Other Features

Songview has a large range of options to help you and to customise your presentation. They include:

  • Ad hoc alerts, to display messages over the presentation.
  • Production of song use history.
  • Guitar chords can be added to songs and displayed on a stage monitor.
  • Songview can be installed and run from a USB stick or any dedicated directory.
  • Songs and bible texts and notices can be scrolled if desired.
  • Fades between song slides
  • Songs can be grouped using tags
  • Spelling checker
  • Export or print song words
  • Full context help and help file.
  • Backup and Restore song files.
  • Song file management.
  • Touch Interface.
  • Interface Themes.
  • Custom Interface Themes.
  • Slide Labels.
  • Slide Layout.
  • Define song themes