Monthly Archives: March 2014

The Visual in Worship – openlp info

When the OpenLP program installs it creates a folder called ‘Data’. To replace the list of songs on the inital install with my song database do the following.

1. Firstly download the new ‘Data’ folder from here,
http://www.pengelly.info/downloads-and-resources/
Click on the link to the data folder and ‘save file’. This will ask if you want to download the ‘zip’ folder. Say yes and note where on your system it gets placed (probably your users ‘downloads’ folder)
You will need to ‘unzip’ that folder before you can use it. Ask me if you need help with this.

2. Open the Openlp program and on the menu at the top choose: Tools –> Open Data Folder.

This will open up a file browser window and it will show you where on your file system openlp is placing the ‘data’ folder. You will be looking at the contents of the data folder (which usually contains a list of 6 or 7 other folders called things like ‘songs’ ‘themes’ etc). NOW CLOSE THE OPENLP PROGRAM DOWN!

3. In the file browser, which shows the current openlp data folder, move up one directory level. This should mean that you then view the folder called ‘data’. Using a right mouse click, rename that data folder to ‘dataold’

4. Now copy the new downloaded ‘data’ folder into the same place as the renamed old data folder.

5. Restart openlp and if you’ve got it right (!) you should now have a longer list of songs (and more themes).

If you have problems don’t feel bad, just post a comment/question on the blog below!

Note this song database can only legally be used when Churches have the appropriate CCLI licenses!! Please be legal as far as copyright is concerned!!

The Visual in Worship – Session 2

The second session is going to introduce you to ‘worship presentation software’. There are many commercial and opensource alternative that work on windows, mac and linux.

We’re going to look at an opensource (free) one that I’ve been experimenting with since Autumn 2013:
http://openlp.org/
It works with all three of those OS’s mentioned – Go ahead and download/install it if you like.

OpenLP has nice ‘remote control’ capabilities using either an iphone/ipad/ipod-touch:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/openlp-remote/id730847052?ls=1&mt=8

(as often in the mac world the above is not free – $3.99!)

but the Android phone/tablet equivalent is, and I’ve used this sucessfully:
http://manual.openlp.org/android.html

Note you’re going to need a wifi network to allow the remote control device to communicate with your laptop; not a facility in most of our churches – yet!

The Visual in Worship – Session 1

Here’s some links to help those at the ‘Visual in Worship’ training:

The slides I’m using: (in both MS powerPoint and OpenOffice impress format)
http://www.pengelly.info/uploads/mp_downloads/visualinworship.odp
http://www.pengelly.info/uploads/mp_downloads/visualinworship.ppt

A link to my booklet the Methodist Church published:

http://www.methodist.org.uk/downloads/ca_technology_0504.pdf

Link to an Epworth Review paper about Opensource software:
http://www.pengelly.info/uploads/mp_downloads/Epworth%20Review%20article%20pengelly%20pub1.pdf

Link to the openlp worship projection software:
http://openlp.org/