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PowerPoint is both powerful and limited when it comes to presentations. It is powerful with all the bells and whistles that you can use, even when just displaying songs from The Paperless Hymnal. Have you looked at all the slide transitions available? Go through them sometimes and get it over with. My suggestion is that you not use a slide transition between song slides. Two very good reasons: (1) the activity causes the brain's attention to turn away from the song to what is happening on the screen and (2) it slows the transition down between slides. The time between the end of one slide and the beginning of the next slide should be as short as possible so the singer has more time to become focused on the new slide and find their place. A third reason comes into play if you are using presentation software like MediaShout or EasyWorship. None of the software companies reinvent the wheel when they produce their software. Both of the mentioned software programs, and probably most others, incorporate Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer to show PowerPoint files. Microsoft's 97 viewer has been in use for several years but recently they have had to update the viewer to accommodate changes made in the full PowerPoint program, thus Microsoft 2003 Viewer. Sometimes, if you are using a transition between song slides of The Paperless Hymnal, these programs would hang up, caused by the older viewer. What EasyWorship suggest is to enable using the full PowerPoint version instead of the viewer. In doing so, this can cause another problem. If you use EasyWorship to build your presentation, having each song be a separate item in the schedule, you cause your PC to load a new PowerPoint program into memory for each song. This can eat up memory in no time. These two companies now have new versions that incorporate PowerPoint Viewer 2003 but you have to upgrade to get it. Hopefully, this will solve the problems, at least until Microsoft changes things again. Therefore, if you are using EasyWorship or another presentation program, it is recommended that you build your song presentation in PowerPoint then load it into the presentation program. And don't use a slide transition between song slides. Your PC will be much happier with you. |