Living Open Source

Open Source Software:– Song Projection

Oct 6th, 2006 by Tim 6

There are literally hundreds of song projection programs designed to project song lyrics and control your data projection in church. Most of them are actually pretty poor, with terrible user interfaces and what is more - they cost the earth. At one point I began writing my own, a project still lying incomplete, but then a number of FREE packages began to emerge, some of which are truly open source.

There is absolutely no reason why you should pay 300GBP for software like SongPro to do this. Here are five open source/free candidates that do the job well.

The one I think stands out, above all these is EasiSlides, and is my personal favourite at present. The only thing I have to concede is that it isn’t strictly Open Source, but it is FREE.

Also, if you want to use PowerPoint resources, you don’t need Microsoft Office. Use OpenOffice instead - its free!

Found any others? What do you use in church?

6 Comments on the Comment Wall

1 On October 31st, 2006 at 3:24 pm mrben said:

We use OpenSong, primarily because it is open source, which is important to me (although not necessarily to the church). Sadly the development is quite slow, and there is no powerpoint integration, which is a pain. But I like the layout and usage of it very much.
2 On July 4th, 2007 at 1:48 pm Toby said:

There is also http://www.dreambeam.de it is open source and easy to use. At the moment I use the Version 0.6 beacuse 0.7 is still a littel bit buggy.
3 On December 28th, 2007 at 12:13 am Chris Witham said:

At last! Some decent Open Source presentation software. I have searched so long to find this. Thank you so much.

I really dislike the way PowerPoint fails the church community and cringe at some of the work arounds we have to put in place to try and fake presentation software because we can’t afford it.

I’ll let you know how we get on.

Thank you.
4 On March 20th, 2008 at 11:03 am Grant Diffey said:

I’m using dreambeam also but I’m looking around for something better I’m a strong advocate of free software for worship and church.

I’d really like somethign with a wiki style markup that can render into a single continuous screen for viewing.
5 On May 15th, 2008 at 10:34 pm Jon Morgan said:

We do use a specialized piece of presentation software at our church but the name escapes me right now. I am in the process of setting up a digital announcement board which will run on an old computer I’m setting up at the church. I was planning on using PowerPoint to display our information but hoped to find something a little more flexible.
6 On July 9th, 2008 at 10:46 pm Sijbrigje Hood said:

We use open song. l think it’s great as you can also produce lead sheets and transpose songs. l chose it as the functions were better than comercial products at the time. There is also a good range of bible versions to download. 0ur pastor is particularly happy to have the amplified version.