New & Improved Features

• Sample song database
• Support for PowerPoint 2010
• Importers for Songs of Fellowship 2 & 3
• Improved song editor
• Searching for songs by multiple attributes
• Added column sorting in the song picker
• Add support for deleting multiple songs
• Display two Bible versions side-by-side
• Display verse numbers in scripture references
• Improved alert management
• Improved multimedia management

Details of the new features can be found in the updated manual.

Downloading

You can download SundayWorship 1.5 from here or visit the download page.

An updated manual can be downloaded from here.

Upgrading

Although we don’t expect any problems it doesn’t hurt to backup your song database before upgrading. To do so click File –> Export –> SundayWorship Song Database, select all your songs and click export.

As usual, upgrades from previous releases of SundayWorship are free.

Problems & Questions

Should you find any bugs or have a question send us an email to our support account. See support.

I don’t see why any church/organization will spend hundreds of dollars on a projection software. As I’ve said before I’ve tried quite a few paid and free versions of projector software and I still can’t find anything better than Sunday Worship, clean interface, not bloated but still feature rich and a responsive support staff that is always willing and working to bring Sunday Worship to it’s utopia.

But having replied I thought, “Hmm…how hard could it be?”

It turned out that the answer was, “Not very!” So a few days later we have an update to SundayWorship 1.4 that can play looping video.

Next to the Play button there is now a repeat button.

When the repeat button is grey looping is turned off. When you click it it turns blue and looping is enabled.

With looping enabled clicking the play button will cause the video to keep playing until you click stop or unclick looping.

So there you have it. Looping video. One button down, one to go.

…and a bonus button as well!

Having done that I remembered a usability issue I’d found a few weeks ago during a baptism service.

We were using SundayWorship to project video of the people being baptised as well as songs. It was all working but switching from a song to the live video from the video camera was a bit painful.

From the Songs tab I had to go to the multimedia tab, select the camera, click the “go live” button () on the Preview view, and finally click the Play button on the live view. I wasn’t impressed, and I’d written it!

I decided what I wanted was a single button by the video camera that would immediately start playing the video on the live display.

So, with one video control button added I thought I’d add another. And here it is,

On the list of video camera each camera now has a “go live” button. When you click this button the live view is switched to immediately show the live video feed from the associated camera.

Download it now!

These two changes are being delivered as a minor update to SundayWorship 1.4. You can download it from here.

New Features

• Individual song formatting
• Custom properties on songs
• New song importers for SongSelect, SongPro and Songs of Fellowship 4
• Import songs from multiple files at the same time
• New formatting options for vertical text alignment and copyright display
• Added more formatting options for scriptures including text alignment

Details of the new features can be found in the updated manual.

Individual song formatting

In previous versions of SundayWorship the way a song was presented was controlled by the global song display settings. In 1.4 we’ve added the ability to change the song display settings on each song. You can change the font, colour, size, alignment and background on each song.

Custom properties on songs

One thing we get asked is whether we can add this or that to the song information. In 1.4 we’ve made it possible to add custom properties to songs.

You chose the name of the property (e.g. Songbook, Duration, ScriptureReferences, Ratings) and give it a value. When you want to record something about a song you can just add a new property and give it a value.

Once a property is added to one song it becomes available on all songs. You can also search for songs based on their properties and the list of columns at the top of the song list can be changed to include your most commonly used properties.

Importing from SongSelect

We’ve added support for importing the .usr files that can be downloaded from the CCLI SongSelect web site.

If you’ve got a CCLI SongSelect account you can download songs and import them into your SundayWorship song database.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a problem drawing the verse list when a non-default colour scheme is used
• Opening a PowerPoint presentation that is already open in PowerPoint could cause SundayWorship to crash
• The importers list on 64-bit operating systems was empty when no license was registered
• The projector monitor was not being saved correctly on Windows XP
• Fixed copyright text being shown in very small font under some circumstances

Downloading

You can download SundayWorship 1.4 from here or visit the download page.

An updated manual can be downloaded from here.

Upgrading

Although we don’t expect any problems it doesn’t hurt to backup your song database before upgrading. To do so click File –> Export –> SundayWorship Song Database, select all your songs and click export.

As usual, upgrades from previous releases of SundayWorship are free.

Problems & Questions

Should you find any bugs or have a question send us an email to our support account. See support.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.