I am trying to convert our church to Linux and our music director wants to purchase Easyworship for Windows ($400). Is there an equivalent for linux.

If I can find an equivalent I think I can convince the church to switch.

These are the specs for easyworship:

Spontaneous and scheduled worship
Dual monitor support for distraction free worship
Over 100 smooth transitions including an organic blend
Quickly locate and display an unscheduled song or scripture
Scripture support standard with KJV and ASV
NASB, NKJV, and NIV Bibles available for an additional fee
Hot key navigation for songs chorus and verses
Nursery alert that can display multiple numbers at one time
Message alert with priorities and optional scrolling text
Optimal display quality with shadows and outlined text
Rich collection of media including animated background footage
Integrated SongSelect 3.0 and Lyric Service interface
Video support for MPG, AVI, DV, and many other formats
Customizable text by song, globally, or by background

Thanks

Wow, thats a pretty hefty program... I google'd for a little while and couldn't even come up with bits and pieces for that. I did get some bible programs (including a great one for kde which I might install) but nothing that comprehensive. I might say that wine or crossover office might help . . . but that sounds like a pretty complex program . . . All I can say is good luck.

I'm looking for exactly the same thing...

Haven't found anything for Linux yet, but to save you $400, try Easislides (www.easislides.com)
It's got most of the functions you listed, and it's free... only problem is it's still not helping us towards converting the church over to Linux

We're getting there. There are a couple of open source examples now available. The one that looks most promising is OpenSong http://opensong.bluecup.net/
It's written in RealBasic, which I've no experience of, but apparently it's good for cross-platform conversions.

Sounds like OpenOffice impress, which is like MS PowerPoint.

You should get a trial version of the program, and see if it is really
worth the 400 dollars. It might not be much more than a presentation
program.

Our church uses PowerPoint and Windows for showing praise music lyrics.
I don't think the leadership would
convert to Linux, because they use their laptops for private use.

I am, however, thinking about donating a PC to another church. In this case,
I would have Linux or FreeBSD on it, so their won't be any viruses, trojans,
worms, spyware, and the computer won't be used as a toy.


Ekkume

Maybe its late or I am really strung out on coffee, but "converting the church to linux" really made me laugh. Thanks

while it isnt a linux based program, my church uses MediaShout

which i think is an absolutely amazing program, and also anyone who buys it now gets the next upgrade for free(which normally costs a good 90$

anyway, it allows you to do video backgrounds for lyrics(they have videos called worshipscapes which loop seemlessly) and theres also about 15 bible translations including a few in other languages, as well as the popular ones, it allows you to see exactly whats going up with out ever throwing it on the screen, and all sorts of other things i cant remember... 'bout the same price as easyworship.

anyway, yeah not helping its a windows program, but unfortunately windows is just more useful in situations like that... i know over half the people who use our computers and media shout, would never touch linux with a 10 foot pole.

I have mediashout and am OK with it. However, as a company,they are really shady. I needed text over dvd. i ordered ms early in lent, with the promise that 3.0 was coming 'really soon'. They have been promising 'really soon' since December. Well, I didn't have it for Palm Sunday like I needed and I still don't have it. I would have bought something else if I knew the features that I needed would not be available for 6 months. I think they know that and that is why "really soon" will always be their answer.

What I really want is a command line script. Does anyone know if there is a command line media player where I can type something like "play dvd 1:30:04 - 1:31:00" or call up .pdf or graphic files full screen on a second monitor?

I dont think its that shady, they've had alot of hangups regarding the program.

There already going to eat it big by giving away the 3.0 version to a large amount of there customers.

Not to mention, the owners of the media shout company, actually have other full time jobs to attend to, they make so little money doing media shout they cant even support themselves, every dime earned goes right back into the company.

While i do agree its been a while, i kinda feel for where they are at. Sometimes you can only do what you can.. and thats where they are.

I could understand falling 1 month- 2 months - 3 months - maybe even 4 behind schedule. Beyond that, it seems to be beyond misguided optimism. As for the "taking a hit" on the $10 upgrades, I am less sympathetic. 2.5 is buggy. I have had it crash in more than 1 manner during several different worship services. A free upgrade to non-buggy software is not unrealistic on a $400 media presentation program. On the flip side, my props to whoever it is that codes it because it is pretty nifty when it works and is superior to comparable programs. I am just sore at spending a huge chunk of the worship budget on a program that doesn't do all that I want it to do.

what are the specs you run it on? i've experianced almost no crashes, and i do the worship lyrics for about 3 services a week.

i could possibly give you some insight into working around a few "quirks" the program has.

I'm rather surprised I haven't seen Lyricue mentioned here yet. It is almost as good as Easyworship. But considering I think there are only two guys doing most of the programming it could be a lot worse. I was going to attempt to build my churches projection computer and put Ubuntu and Lyricue on it but unfortunately our assistant pastor is a programmer and thinks Windows is the best thing going so they ended up spending about $1000 on software alone (and that's just the OS, Office, and Easyworship) when they could have not paid a penny and still had as good or better of a system. Sad thing is I'm still gonna have to put OpenOffice.org on it because the guy responsible for activating MS Office will probably never get it done.

Anywho, Lyricue is a pretty decent program. http://www.adebenham.com/lyricue/. The only included Bible is the KJV because there are licensing issues with the NIV. You can get around this by emailing the guy who wrote the program with proof that you own an NIV Bible. Not to sure about other versions of the Bible though. You can even make a Live CD to run. Unfortunately the Live CD doesn't support dual monitors yet. It's worth a gander.

OpenOffice.org Impress doesn't do it all, but version 2.1 (due December 2006) gets one step closer with support for multiple monitors. It's already available for testing.

As for Bible versions, it should not be hard to write an OpenOffice.org macro to pull Bible data from the disk or a web service. It's possible to also write a song database extension for OOo.

Also, the latest Wine 0.9.24 adds support for multiple monitors, so I wonder whether MediaShout, Zionworx, etc. would run under Wine?

Our church is a large Methodist church, and the adult services have been using PowerPoint until very recently. So, I guess Impress would work just as well for them.

Has anybody managed to get easyworship going under Linux (preferably Fedora). Please email if you have. Ta.