17 May 2013 07:42 AM
RE: Stage Monitor stopped working by mike in Version 7

The first thing I would do is make sure that, outside of windows, everything is behaving exactly as expected, in both positions of the switch.
That when the switch is in position 1, and you run identify monitors from windows Display Properties, you see 1, 2 and 3 in all the right places.
Then flip the switch and make sure that you see: 1, 2 and 2 (or whatever your setup is) in all the right places.

Then do the same thing in SSP with the identify monitors  there. One thing that is interesting is that the monitors that windows identifies as 1, 2 and 3 are not always the same as the ones SSP identiofies as 1, 2 and 3; in my case, monitors 2 and 3 are reversed.

15 May 2013 07:24 PM
RE: Importing multi-page song parts from PowerPoint by iamgap in Tips & Tricks

Posted By Joel Osborn on 15 May 2013 06:18 AM

A couple of suggestions. When I did this, I imported the PPT into a slide show and just showed it that way. You can't change anything once you do this (text, font, background, etc), but it's just click and go. You could then go in and name the slides approriatly and/or break the slide show into different shows for each song.



The other option would be to save the powerpoint as an rtf, then open the rtf and copy the text into the clipboard and import from clipboard.

I would have never thought of doing this. BRILIANT! I'll have to try that this year, as we probably have the same VBS coming soon.

15 May 2013 07:19 PM
RE: V7 and SSP Control App by iamgap in Version 7

I have not used the APP because I have a Nook, but I did set a static IP address for the projection computer and then used the web control. One thing that I quickly discovered is that SSP has to be open to use the web app, it will not launch SSP if the computer is on, but SSP is not running.

14 May 2013 07:36 AM
RE: No sound on WMV videos AGAIN by downeyflo in Version 7

Posted By George Taylor on 13 May 2013 09:33 AM
Bill,
Interesting issue. I probably would have used the word frustrating. :-)

I would say your best bet is to contact the support team for them to take a look. 

A couple of things to clarify:

You say it won't play but are you getting any error messages? No error messages

Also is it actually playing but you are getting no sound?  Video plays, no audio. This is an important distinction.  Does the progress bar move when you play the audio file? I'll have to check that again tonight. 

You could also try changing to Option B for audio in the Audio Files Settings in the Utilities panel and see if that changes the behavior. That didn't seem to help. 


Again, contacting the support team would be the quickest way to resolve this.

13 May 2013 09:43 AM
RE: SongShow+ freezes frequently by George in Version 7

Bill,

If you have not yet, I would suggest connecting with the support team.  They are not only the place to go for issues but also assistance.   If something is not behaving how you expect or you are looking for a different/quicker way to change the background, they can help you out.

For the items that you mentioned that you can reproduce (changing a slide causing a hang) we would certainly like to see those since you may not be the only one experiencing this.

Also as you mentioned, perhaps more seat time will help in some cases but I can tell you that utilizing the support team and the training videos can help speed this up.

13 May 2013 08:42 AM
RE: Version 5.3 Release 2.0 by osborn4 in Version 5.5

Looks like the oldest verison available for download is SongShow Plus Version 5.5 Release 5.3. I don't know if your licensing will allow that upgrade.

However, numerous new features and enhancements make paying for the upgrade worthwhile.

You could download the current version as a trial to try it while you are sorting out your licensing.

10 May 2013 08:35 PM
RE: Dropbox, Google Drive, and Sky Drive by ffunky in Feature Reviews

Great! We've been doing this for a while with spideroak. (foldershare, too, back when it was the one to use..). I sync my videos, images, programs, songs, and slideshows, so we all have access to the same material. Will we have this amount of granularity, or will it just sync to one folder and we have to retrieve materials from that one folder?

10 May 2013 07:28 PM
RE: Grid Line Enhancements by sara-t in Feature Reviews

Nice, thanks!

10 May 2013 07:23 PM
RE: Fill-in-the-Blank Animation by sara-t in Feature Reviews

Thank you for the new tools.
Someday, it would be lovely to be able to do this without the underline showing on screen. For some years now, we have done filled blanks without underlining. Graphically, the slide looks cleaner when we set off key words with bold, or color, rather than underlining. We don't use numbers or bullets, either, but I believe that will work fine with the new commands.

10 May 2013 05:53 PM
RE: Color Selection Enhancements by sara-t in Feature Reviews

Hooray for consistent color!  Because of lighting/projection issues, we have limited color choices for text.  If we are a bit off on a creamy yellow, for instance, it projects green.  Being able to enter the exact RGB value will be wonderful.  And color pick is more than I hoped for.  Thanks!

10 May 2013 12:09 PM
RE: New Update? by mwilson in Version 7

We have been wondering the same thing. New features used to be every quarter or so. May 2012 was the last release. Maybe the developers have a big surprise in store for us.........They usually do....

08 May 2013 07:04 AM
RE: massive problems. Video and song database by osborn4 in Version 7

Glad you got it owrking.

There should be an option to turn off showing the library, either in view or by right clicking on the header of the Songs pane.

03 May 2013 10:25 AM
RE: Include a picture in the message?? by osborn4 in Version 7

I've done similar, but put the pics on Google+ in a public viewing area.

But you have to have someplace other than here to host the image.

03 May 2013 08:44 AM
RE: Maximum jpg size in a slide show by mike in Version 7

+1 on Joel's suggestion to re-size pictures in advance.

In my case, the native resolution of the projector is 1024x768; that is the size I set the Windows Display to and virtually every jpg background I use has been resized to that size before SSP ever sees it. Pictures for slideshows get resized in advance so that they can fit into the 1024x768 box.

The large pictures from a digital camera are way larger than you can display anyway, they will get rezised to the native resolution of the projector before displaying one way or another -- it is better to do it in advance. Loading a huge file takes extra work for the system (more disk I/O more memory) then it is more work to reduce it.

Doing this, I frequently do photo slide shows, with an audio track, fancy transition and I use pan-and-zoom -- I never have any problem.
BTW.. I also normally use JPG format.  I don't recall having tried TIF, but you mentioned that you scanned; many scanners produce huge TIF files that include multiple pages in one file (even if it is just a copy of a single scan).  I know several software packages that have problems with mutli-page TIF files (as far as I know, SSP is not one of them, but it would not surprise me to find out...)

03 May 2013 07:40 AM
CMS@theChapel by dreece in In Action

GoFishMedia will be at CMS@theChapel this weekend presenting SongShow Plus and its ProKey systems.

01 May 2013 07:59 PM
RE: File location reference by KingsleyUMC in Version 7

Joel,

Thanks for the suggestion of putting package to go. never thought of that. Great idea! Doesn't help my current problem as my other drive archive goes back at least 7 years. Don't ask me why I have stuff from that long ago. Probably because it is a 1Tb drive and disk storage is cheap.Also I am lazy and don't want to take the time to clean it up. LOL.

Maybe I will play around with the files and learn another language or finally learn Perl (to be more than dangerous) to parse the files out. You know old programmers never die their just loose their bits.

Tim

01 May 2013 01:51 PM
SSP Best Practices - Media file sizes (SSP101) by George in SongShow Plus Information

When creating programs and slide shows for use in SongShow Plus, users typically will include various media such as Videos, Images and Audio.  The media used for this may come from a variety of sources.

For the best performance of SongShow Plus, we recommend that your target size for these items be the smallest file size possible while getting the quality that you want.

For audio this is fairly straight forward since the different audio file options don't vary the file size a huge amount.  For videos and images on the other hand, changes in things like resolution, bit-rate, frame rate and file type can have a large effect on the resulting file size. 

There are several other KB articles that cover some of these recommendations so I won't re-hash that here but you should try to have your Images and Videos match the resolution of your projector.  This will ensure that SongShow Plus is not having to "over process" the content to get it to your screen and with all other things equal, this practice will improve the performance and overall SSP experience.

(SSP101)

30 Apr 2013 09:25 PM
RE: Question about Libronix by KingsleyUMC in Version 7

Go to the bottom of the page and there is a link to additional downloads. Then scroll down to the bottom of that page and I think what you are looking for is there.

Tim

30 Apr 2013 03:50 PM
RE: File path? by osborn4 in Version 7

Posted By George Taylor on 30 Apr 2013 10:29 AM

The better option is from inside the database panels.  From within SSP you have a couple of useful features that will allow you to locate files - both are right click options.

If you do a text search and right click on one of the results you will see a "Go to Folder" option.  This will change the search view to the folder view with the containing folder selected.  This will find the file in the SSP structure.  Then if you want to find it in the file system you can right click on the containing folder and select "Explore" which will open the folder in a Windows Explorer window and you will have the exact file path.

This process will work for most of the databases.

Looks like I will have to pay closer attention to the right click options.

29 Apr 2013 12:50 PM
The Flare effect is not working when applied to a white background or object. (TS228) by George in Troubleshooting

Symptom:
When attempting to use the Flare effect on a white background, surface or object, there appears to be nothing applied regardless of the light color setting.

Possible Cause:
This is expected behavior.  The Flare effect is done by adding "lightness" value to the item based on the underlying color of the item.  White is the maximum value of "lightness" in this application and therefore any added "lightness" will not be possible.  Changing the Flare light color will not have any effect either since this only adds color.  White already has all the colors at maximum and nothing more can be added. 

Possible Solution:
It is recommended that if you want to use the Flare effect you do so over a background, surface or object that is not solid white. 

(TS228)