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+Church Media Computer Setup
+===========================
+
+My church recently got a new media computer. We don't really have a defined
+process for setting one up and I haven't really seen any recommendations on the
+interwebs, so here I am documenting all the things that I have learned to do
+throughout my time of running media and now also use. Some of these things may
+seem a little strict, so please take what you consider to be the meat and spit
+out what you consider to be the bones.
+
+[[desktop]]
+== Desktop
+
+[[desktop-background]]
+=== Desktop Background
+
+Make sure the desktop background is set to solid black. This is in case the
+media software crashes or you need to transition from something like your media
+software to powerpoint or vlc (assuming your media software doesn't support
+playing those in-house). With this, you can fade to black, minimize/close, and
+launch your next program with nothing but a nice smooth fade to black and back.
+
+
+[[system-sounds]]
+=== System Sounds
+
+Next up, be sure to turn off all system sounds. My church plays its music
+before and after service from the media computer (who's doesn't?) and system
+sounds are pretty intrusive in the middle of some Mumford and Sons.
+
+[[users]]
+=== Users
+
+This is something that has a lot of differing opinions. _In my opinion_, there
+should be a media account and an administrator account.  If you church has the
+resources to have a dedicated media computer not used for anything else, it
+should, unless of course that is deemed not being a good steward of resources
+(it does after all stay turned off nearly all week... I'm on the fence about
+this one). Nevertheless though, it is typically considered a best practice to
+have your users be users instead of administrators. Otherwise, you'll likely
+end up with every browser and music player imaginable installed, possibly along
+with some viruses as well. I once cleaned up a media computer that had Virtual
+Box installed on it with an Ubuntu virtual machine set up. It was an experiment
+no one ever bothered to clean up and it booted with the system, taking up lots
+of cpu time, memory, and storage (40G).
+
+Having your user types be seperate also helps with clutter. Photo editing
+usually doesn't require access to the Sunday service video backgrounds, song
+texts, etc. Likewise, your Sunday media folks don't need to see the unrelated
+clutter created by editing photos.
+
+
+[[media-software]]
+== Media Software
+
+[[all-in-one-place]]
+=== All in One Place
+
+It's generally best to consolidate all of your media resources into one place.
+This might include announcement videos, countdown videos, background videos and
+images, etc. Be sure all of your people running the media computer know where
+this is so they know where to look and they know where to put new files. On
+Windows, I typically have a setup within the User's directory that looks
+somewhat like
+
+*C:\Users\Media\Media* (Yep, there's two so we can have seperate documents,
+downloads, etc)
+
+* *Pictures*
+** Foregrounds
+*** Announcements (this one might contain dated sub-directories so you can
+    track what was used and when)
+** Backgrounds
+* *Videos*
+** Foregrounds
+*** Announcements (this one might contain dated sub-directories so you can
+    track what was used and when)
+** Backgrounds
+* *Bibles* (in case your media software needs a place to store this)
+
+
+[[image-and-video-formatting]]
+=== Image and Video Formatting
+
+Make sure your default settings are in place for aspect ratios of imported
+files. Most of the time, you want to your backgrounds to __scale to fill__, not
+fit, as sometimes your text runs right up against one of the slide borders.
+Videos you typically want to _scale to fit_ since they can often have things
+you want to focus on on the sides and you don't want that cut off.
+
+
+[[fonts]]
+=== Fonts
+
+If your media software supports it, set the default font sizes, alignment, and
+other styles for songs, announcements, Bible excerpts, etc. While adjusting
+these per song may not be difficult, it adds more time to creating a
+presentation. Occasionally there are oversights and songs, Bible verses, or
+anouncements are missed and need to be added on the fly. Having a "sane
+default" means you can add something and it will at the very least not have
+text spilling off the sides, a font far too large, or any number of other
+things.
+
+
+Category:Drafts
+
+
+// vim: set syntax=asciidoc: