Stage Display
The Stage Display feature provides a “foldback”/“confidence” monitor so that the people on stage can receive information such as the Current and Next slides, clocks, timers, notes, chord charts, and even custom messages that only they can see.
This feature requires an additional video output from your computer. Many computers can use the standard video outs of their computer, but if your computer does not have enough outputs then you can use a USB adapter to create a Stage Display.
To enable the Stage Display output, open Preferences and select the Display tab. If all three of your displays are active, you will see three boxes on the Display preferences screen. Check the box next to Enable Stage Display; this will activate the Stage Display output.
At this point, a purple box labeled SD will show on display preferences. This box may become active on the wrong screen when you enable the stage display. If this happens, click on the stage display box and drag it to the correct box representing your stage display.
Pressing Command-3 will switch ProPresenter’s preview window to show a preview of the Stage Display instead of the normal ProPresenter output.
There are three ways to access the configuration for stage display. The first is by clicking on the Configure Stage Display button on the Display preferences screen. The second is by selecting the Window menu and choosing Configure Stage Display. The third is by pressing Command-4 (Control-4 on a PC). All three of these methods open the same configuration display that is shown to the left.
At the top of the Stage Display Options window is a listing of all the available stage display layouts that you have created. To add a layout, click the plus button on the right. To copy a layout, select the layout and click the copy button (below the plus button). To remove a layout, select the layout and press the delete (or backspace) key on your keyboard.
Anyone who is using an iOS device with the stage display app can select from any available layout. Only one layout at a time can be used with a wired stage display.
For the Current Slide, you can select to show “text only”, “static slide” or “live slide”.
- Text Only will show just a text version of the slide.
- Static Slide will show a thumbnail of all images and other objects on the slide.
- Live Slide will show the slide exactly as it appears on the output display, including video.
Slides notes are added in the Editor on the Slide Properties tab. If no notes are entered, nothing will be shown in the Slide Notes boxes.
When you enable the stage display option to show chord charts, a new box will be added to the layout. You can move and resize the box to fit your needs. Chord charts are only shown for the presentation they are associated with. When you change to a presentation without a chord chart, the box will be empty. Adding chord charts to presentations is covered earlier in this user guide.
The clock and countdown settings for stage display are linked to the Clocks window in ProPresenter. You can start any clock from the Clocks window, or if you have a Countdown Message that uses a clock that is enabled on the stage display, it will start with that clock as well.
Clocks on the stage display are useful for showing how much time is left before an event starts and for showing a speaker how much time he has left. If you would like to change the color of each clock or countdown on the stage display, you can do that from here.
Video Countdown shows the time remaining on the currently playing video. This feature is helpful for those on stage to know how much time is left in a video, such as a countdown video or intro video. When enabled, it runs for Background and Foreground videos.
Strip Leading Zeroes changes the clock display from 00:05:30 to 5:30. Clocks also support a function called Over Run, you can now have the clock change colors when it passes zero if you have Use Negative Color enabled.
The next section of options control how stage display messages are shown. Stage Display Messages are unique because these are only shown on the stage display. In ProPresenter 6, you can change the color of the box when it flashes, or you can disable the flashing effect entirely.
To access this feature, open the View menu and select Stage Display Control, add a button to your toolbar, or press Command-Shift-S (Alt-S on PC). Type your message and click the Send Message; the Message box on the stage display will show the message and flash if you have that enabled. Clear will remove the message completely and Hide removes the message from the stage display, but doesn’t delete the message.
In ProPresenter 6, it is now possible to display the countdown time, current item, and next item as linked from Planning Center Live.
To use the Planning Center Live feature, you must have a Planning Center Online account and have configured your plan using the Planning Center website.
To begin using this feature, be sure that you have linked your PCO account in ProPresenter Preferences > Services. Next, select a PCO service to link from the Stage Display Control window. From here, you can advance through elements of your PCO Live Plan. The items on the ProPresenter Stage Display will also advance if the Planning Center Live plan is updated from another device.
