Church Video Projection and Worship Software

We are pleased to announce the availability of SundayWorship 1.3.

The main focus of this release has been adding support for downloading and installing additional Bibles for use with the Scripture picker.

We’ve also fixed a few bugs and re-worked the multimedia picker to make it a bit easier to use.

You can get the new version from the download page or by clicking here.

A new version of the getting started guide can be downloaded from here.

New features in SundayWorship 1.3

• Download additional Bibles
• Added support for typing non-English Bible book names
• Display musical keys for songs
• Drag and drop for adding content to the content pickers
• Added additional keyboard shortcuts for the Projector view
• Updated manual

Bug fixes in SundayWorship 1.3

• Failed detection of PowerPoint can prevent SundayWorship from starting
• PowerPoint presentations were not running correctly
• License dialog was shown but hidden when 30 day trial period had expired
• Improved the performance of the picture browser for large numbers of pictures

Downloading additional Bibles

To view list of available Bibles use the Bible Manager by clicking Tools –> Bibles and then select the Downloadable Bibles.

At present we are able to offer Public Domain or royalty free Bibles. For this release we’ve added Bibles in French, German, Spanish, Polish as well as a couple of alternative English Bibles.

For more information see the updated Getting Started Guide.

Using non-English Bible names

To help users whose first language is not English we’ve added the ability to search for Bible references using non-English names. We currently support French, German, Romanian and Spanish.

To use this feature use Tools –> Options –> General and select the Language to use.

Existing users

SundayWorship 1.3 is a free upgrade for all existing users of previous versions.

Before upgrading we recommend making a backup of your song database. To do that use File –> Export –> SundayWorship song database.

The first edition of the SundayWorship Getting Started Guide is now available to download. You can get it by clicking here or from the download page (here).

If you have any comments or questions please send them to our support email address.

In version 1.2 of SundayWorship we have introduced the ability to add tags to parts of songs so that they can be reused. Tags take the form of a text inside a pair of angle brackets, for example <chorus>, on a line by itself. For example,

Blessèd assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

<chorus>
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

<chorus>

Here the second part of the song has had the <chorus> tag added to it. Now every time SundayWorship sees the same tag with blank line either side of it, as in the example, the lines after the tag will be shown instead of the the tag. This song would be displayed as

Blessèd assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long.

Notice that tags are not displayed when the song is displayed.

A tag can be redefined by adding it before another part of the song. Subsequent uses of the tag by itself use the latest value assigned to it

SundayWorship 1.2 provides two new options for searching for songs: by author(s) and by lyrics.

Searching for a song by author selects all songs that have the typed text in the Author(s) property. Searching for a song by lyrics selects all songs that have the typed text anywhere in the lyrics.

Here I’m searching for all songs with the word, “Wesley” in the author.

Note that the lyric searching may be slow when you have a 1000s of songs.

SundayWorship 1.2 can now capture live video from video cameras attached to your PC or laptop enabling you to project live video without having to leave SundayWorship.

To project live video, first select a camera from the list of video cameras on the Multimedia/Video tab. If a video camera is attached but not in the list of video cameras displayed, trying clicking the refresh () button. SundayWorship should be able to use any device recognised by Windows as a video camera such as DV cameras, Webcams and so on. If your camera is still not recognised, make sure it can be seen by other programs such as a video editor.

Once you’ve selected a camera the output will be displayed in the Preview View. Click the Send to live button ( ) to transfer the camera to the live view.

Use the video controls to begin and end capture by clicking the Play and Stop buttons.

If your camera has a VCR mode, you can capture the playback of recorded video as well as live video.

SundayWorship 1.2 enables you to play video files, and to add them to your schedules. You do this through the new Videos tab on the Multimedia tab.

To open a video click the Open Folder icon (highlighted in red above) and select a folder containing MPEG (MPG), WMV or AVI files. The list of available video files will be displayed in the Videos list.

Choosing a video to play

Select a video and it will be displayed in the Preview view along with a new set of video controls.

Previewing a video

To preview the video before playing it to a congregation, use the controls at the bottom of the preview view. Note that by default audio will be enabled, so you may need to click the mute () button before clicking play ().

In the bottom left of the display are two sets of numbers. The first shows the current playing position in hours, minutes and seconds (e.g. 01:05:12 for 1 hour, 5 minutes and 12 seconds). The second shows the total length of the video when available.

Use the slider on the right hand side to adjust the volume, and the long slider below the video to search through the video.

Showing a video to a congregation

To show a video to the congregation, click the go live button ().

The video will be transferred to the live view. If the projector view is showing, clicking the Play button in the live view will show the view to the congregation.

Controlling the video when live is done in the same way as for the preview.

Improving performance

With the preview, live and projector views it is possible to have three videos playing at once in SundayWorship. Though many modern PCs and laptops may be able to handle this kind of workload, lower powered PCs and laptops may not be able to.

If you find that video is not playing smoothly, first try stopping any video or slideshows running in the preview view.

If that doesn’t solve the problem there is a new setting that allows you to optimise playback on slower PCs. To enable this setting click Tools –> Options… then select the Multimedia tab.

Check, “Use playback performance optimisations” and then click OK.

Try playing your video again to see if the problem is resolved.

If that doesn’t work you may find that lowering the resolution of the display you are playing the video on will help.

In some circumstances it is possible that your PC or laptop is not fast enough to play video. Check whether Windows Media Player can play the same video without faults, if it can’t you will probably not be able to use SundayWorship to play that video.

Video backgrounds and overlays

In this release we don’t support using video backgrounds, or showing alerts when a video is playing.

Known Issues

1. Video appears to play but no pictures appear

(or does not play on the projector/second display)

Some video content – such as MPEG files – may require additional software to be able to decode them. This software, known as CODECs, is often included with DVD playing software such as PowerDVD but is not included with all versions of Windows.

You may need additional CODECs to play some video files.

A set of freeware CODECs can be found at K-Lite or DScaler.

2. Video shows on second display without clicking the Live button

Sometimes video may display on your secondary display when you play it in the Preview View, or may do so when the Live button is not clicked in the Live View.

This can happen when your video drivers are configured to automatically play video content on secondary displays. This is the default with some NVidia graphics drivers.

To disable this behaviour do the follow:-

For Windows 7

1. Right click on the desktop and select Screen Resolution.
2. Click Advanced settings.
3. Select the NVidia tab.
4. Select Full screen video.
5. In Full screen video controls set Full screen device to Disable.
6. Click OK.

In Windows Vista

1. Right click on the desktop and select Personalize.
2. Select Display Settings.
3. Click Advanced settings…
4. Select the NVidia tab.
5. Select Full screen video.
6. In Full screen video controls set Full screen device to Disable.
7. Click OK.

We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.2 of SundayWorship.

This release includes the following new features:-

• Support for playing video from files and video cameras.
• New methods for searching for songs.
• Options for displaying scripture references.
• An improved export dialog.
• Song mark up.
• An improved Romanian Bible text.

You can download the latest version from here.

As with the release of v1.1 the next few blog posts will give some details of the new features.

Users of SundayWorship who have purchased a licence are entitled to a free upgrade to version 1.2.

If you find any problems with SundayWorship please send an email to our support address. You can find the address here.

Play video from files and cameras

SundayWorship 1.2 now supports playing video from files and connected video cameras. Video can be reviewed in the preview view and then displayed through your projector.

New song database search capabilities

In addition to being able to search for songs by title, we now support searching for songs by author and lyrics.

Options for displaying scripture references

You can now choose whether to display the reference for a scripture at all, whether to include the Bible version and where to display the reference.

Improved song export dialog

The song export dialog now lists the authors of the songs in the database and can be sorted by author or title. This allows you to easily export lists of songs by author as well as by title.

Song mark up

In SundayWorship 1.2 we have introduced song mark up. By adding a tag to the start of a paragraph of text (e.g. a verse or chorus) you can use that tag to repeat the following block of text.

The tags are defined by the user, so you can identify any part of the song you want to be able to repeat. For example, you can identify multiple different choruses, verses that repeat or bridges.

Improved Romanian Bible text

The Romanian text we have been using has been found to have a number of issues (for example missing passages) that are being gradually corrected by a Romanian brother. We have included the latest version in this release.

During his lifetime Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley, wrote over 6000 hymns many of which have been favourites for over 300 years. Hymns such as “And can it be, that I should gain”, “Love divine, all loves excelling” and “Rejoice, the Lord is King” have been sung by Christians all over the world.

In the 1970s 120 of the hymns of Charles and John Wesley were collected in to a hymn book called, “Hymns of Eternal Truth.”

We have created a SundayWorship song database of these hymns so that they can be imported to your SundayWorship song database. Each song each labelled with its index in the Hymns of Eternal Truth so you can find it more easily.

To download the song database file click here.

To add the songs to SundayWorship follow these steps:-

1. Extract HoET.sdb from the HoET.zip file
2. Start SundayWorship
3. File –> Import –> SundayWorship song database
4. Click Browse…
5. Select the HoET.sdb file you just extracted.
6. Select the songs you want to import.
7. Select a method for handling duplicates.
8. Click OK to import the selected songs

SundayWorship v1.1 adds support for importing songs exported from EasiSlides.

To import your EasiSlides song database into SundayWorship you first need to export them from EasiSlides as follows.

1. Start EasiSlides.
2. Click Tools -> Export.
3. On the Export dialog select the songs you want to import into SundayWorship.
4. Set the path of the file to save the songs to.
5. Click Export

To import the songs into SundayWorship follow these steps:-

1. Start SundayWorship.
2. Click File -> Import -> EasiSlides exported songs
3. Click Browse… to select the XML file containing the exported songs
4. Select the songs that you want to import
5. Choose how to deal with songs that are already in the SundayWorship song database
6. Click Import to perform the import

SundayWorship v1.1 allows you to open and run Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from within SundayWorship. With this release we support PowerPoint 2003 & 2007.

To open a presentation in SundayWorship click File -> Open -> PowerPoint presentation.

The opened presentation will be added to the current schedule and the slides will be displayed in the preview view. You can look at the slides before showing them by clicking on a slide in the preview view.

To run the presentation you must first send it to the live view. To to this you can double click on the presentation file name in the schedule or click the Send to live toolbar button.

Once the presentation is in the live view, click the Live button.

The presentation will start running on the same display that songs and other items are being shown on.

You control the show as a normal PowerPoint presentation. When you close the presentation, return to SundayWorship.

SundayWorship allows you to run your presentation manually, or by using the slide show settings from the presentation. By default the slides in your presentation will be advanced when you click the mouse.

To run the presentation using the slide show settings right click on the presentation in the schedule, and click Properties. On the dialog click Use timings, if present and then click OK.

Double click the presentation to send it to the live view, and then click Live to start it running. The presentation will run use the Slide show settings from the presentation.