1 Church Media Computer Setup
2 ===========================
3
4 My church recently got a new media computer. We don't really have a defined
5 process for setting one up and I haven't really seen any recommendations on the
6 interwebs, so here I am documenting all the things that I have learned to do
7 throughout my time of running media and now also use. Some of these things may
8 seem a little strict, so please take what you consider to be the meat and spit
9 out what you consider to be the bones.
10
11 [[desktop]]
12 == Desktop
13
14 [[desktop-background]]
15 === Desktop Background
16
17 Make sure the desktop background is set to solid black. This is in case the
18 media software crashes or you need to transition from something like your media
19 software to powerpoint or vlc (assuming your media software doesn't support
20 playing those in-house). With this, you can fade to black, minimize/close, and
21 launch your next program with nothing but a nice smooth fade to black and back.
22
23
24 [[system-sounds]]
25 === System Sounds
26
27 Next up, be sure to turn off all system sounds. My church plays its music
28 before and after service from the media computer (who's doesn't?) and system
29 sounds are pretty intrusive in the middle of some Mumford and Sons.
30
31 [[users]]
32 === Users
33
34 This is something that has a lot of differing opinions. _In my opinion_, there
35 should be a media account and an administrator account. If you church has the
36 resources to have a dedicated media computer not used for anything else, it
37 should, unless of course that is deemed not being a good steward of resources
38 (it does after all stay turned off nearly all week... I'm on the fence about
39 this one). Nevertheless though, it is typically considered a best practice to
40 have your users be users instead of administrators. Otherwise, you'll likely
41 end up with every browser and music player imaginable installed, possibly along
42 with some viruses as well. I once cleaned up a media computer that had Virtual
43 Box installed on it with an Ubuntu virtual machine set up. It was an experiment
44 no one ever bothered to clean up and it booted with the system, taking up lots
45 of cpu time, memory, and storage (40G).
46
47 Having your user types be seperate also helps with clutter. Photo editing
48 usually doesn't require access to the Sunday service video backgrounds, song
49 texts, etc. Likewise, your Sunday media folks don't need to see the unrelated
50 clutter created by editing photos.
51
52
53 [[media-software]]
54 == Media Software
55
56 [[all-in-one-place]]
57 === All in One Place
58
59 It's generally best to consolidate all of your media resources into one place.
60 This might include announcement videos, countdown videos, background videos and
61 images, etc. Be sure all of your people running the media computer know where
62 this is so they know where to look and they know where to put new files. On
63 Windows, I typically have a setup within the User's directory that looks
64 somewhat like
65
66 *C:\Users\Media\Media* (Yep, there's two so we can have seperate documents,
67 downloads, etc)
68
69 * *Pictures*
70 ** Foregrounds
71 *** Announcements (this one might contain dated sub-directories so you can
72 track what was used and when)
73 ** Backgrounds
74 * *Videos*
75 ** Foregrounds
76 *** Announcements (this one might contain dated sub-directories so you can
77 track what was used and when)
78 ** Backgrounds
79 * *Bibles* (in case your media software needs a place to store this)
80
81
82 [[image-and-video-formatting]]
83 === Image and Video Formatting
84
85 Make sure your default settings are in place for aspect ratios of imported
86 files. Most of the time, you want to your backgrounds to __scale to fill__, not
87 fit, as sometimes your text runs right up against one of the slide borders.
88 Videos you typically want to _scale to fit_ since they can often have things
89 you want to focus on on the sides and you don't want that cut off.
90
91
92 [[fonts]]
93 === Fonts
94
95 If your media software supports it, set the default font sizes, alignment, and
96 other styles for songs, announcements, Bible excerpts, etc. While adjusting
97 these per song may not be difficult, it adds more time to creating a
98 presentation. Occasionally there are oversights and songs, Bible verses, or
99 anouncements are missed and need to be added on the fly. Having a "sane
100 default" means you can add something and it will at the very least not have
101 text spilling off the sides, a font far too large, or any number of other
102 things.
103
104
105 Category:Drafts
106
107
108 // vim: set syntax=asciidoc:
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