OpenSong - open-source projection software

I stumbled upon OpenSong today quite by accident ... according to the OpenSong.org site

OpenSong is a free, open-source software application created to manage lyrics, chords, lead sheets, overheads, computer projection, and more.

I thought to myself, "hmm, I should remember that next time someone mentions using PowerPoint for lyric projection at their church."  And I went about my day.

Tonight I got an IM from some Taylor Smith dude.  He introduced himself and we chatted for a short while ... among other things he sets up PowerPoint for the weekend service at his small church.  What?  Did he just mention PowerPoint?  So I mentioned he check out OpenSong ... which he thought was a sweet find.

Now, someone try to convince me God had nothing to do with that ;-)

So I figure I should mention OpenSong in case their are other's of you out there, like Taylor, that might benefit from what OpenSong appears to offer.  It's free so there's really nothing to loose giving it a try.

I have NO experience with OpenSong what-so-ever ... I'm just passing along info.  I would be curious to hear back from anyone that's given it a test drive or is using it on weekends full time.  FWIW, we used PowerPoint at GCC up until about a year ago when we switched over to ProPresenter.

Comments

[Ratcliffe]

We just switched to ProPresenter. We were using OpenSong prior to that for about 9-months. Our experience with it is that it isn't very user-friendly.

Many kudos to the people who came up with OpenSong, and even more for it being open source.

However, our volunteers were super-excited to get rid of it.

[Tim Smith]

I used OpenSong successfully at my daughter's baptism last year (bribing the vicar's teenage daughter to sit with my notebook and press buttons!) and thought it was very good, especially considering it is free.
A couple of caveats though:
* It was rather resource hungry. I was using a 2Ghz P4 with 512MB of RAM and a mobility Radeon and some of the transitions were a little jerky
* I had fun finding the right folder for moving songs from one computer to another. I was not amused after spending a couple of hours entering in the words. I'm afraid I can't remember the right folder now but it is possible.

Still I had a positive experience and it's only a slight lack of organisation that has prevented my church from using it full time.

[Donnie Schexnayder]

We use SongScreen (our AV/Tech Director actually created it). It's not free, but it works great:

http://www.songscreen.com/

[Brian Glass]

I've been keeping my eye on various open source church presentation programs for quite a while. I tried OpenSong once and while it might be more than adequate for someone who is used to PowerPoint, if you come from something like MediaShout or SongShow you'll be pretty disappointed.

If you plan to use something like this, you should also check out http://www.openlp.org/. I think it is the most advanced of the open source church presentation packages.

I've also kept my eye on Lyricue (http://lds.sourceforge.net/) Back when I was developing my own church management system, I had plans for setting up communication between Lyricue and my check-in system so that missing kids could automatically be displayed on the screen during the service. Alas, that never came to be.

None of these are adequate for our needs. Crossroads is currently using MediaShout, but we're frustrated with the latest version. It seems pretty buggy. We're currently eying ProPresenter.

[Brian Peat]

So....your use of ProPresenter gives away what platform you're using to project with :)

ProPresenter 3 is totally the app to watch for the mac. The new rebuild is looking really good.

by the way, I wasn't sure if you knew I maintain a list of church preso apps on my website:

http://www.thepeatgroup.com/MforM/presentation.html

I'm working on adding some javascript stuff so that you can expand and collapse the features, instead of having to open the pop-up windows, so just bear with the current version of the page.

[pbhj]

Hey, just surfed on by .. I've written a review of a complete install of kubuntu and opensong on a toshiba laptop. I'd seen several posts about people having problems with opensong on linux, but it seemed quite straight forward really.

Haven't settled on a final choice yet, am also looking at openlp and lyricue ... have installed lyricue now but not tested yet ...

See http://pbhj.alicious.com/opensong-kubuntu-digital-projection for more.

[Benji]

Sad that many people put down Opensong. It is a great software, you just have to learn how to use it, but once you do, it does what it has to do very well. We use it all the time, because our small church is not at the stage to invest in expensive projection software.

Opensong I believe if I remember correctly from many years ago is a software written by a worship leader/pastor, and it is free. C'mon, its free!!! Yeah it doesn't project videos as backgrounds and doesn't have many super options, but for daily projection needs, its pretty awesome. and ITS FREE!!!