A good day for MediaShout

  • Posted by Shellie
  • Sunday, February 5, 2006

In the past, I have used MediaShout 2.5 and was very satisfied with its performance. Recently, NMCC upgraded to MediaShout 3. We were not using MediaShout prior (I used 2.5 in another ministry). It has been 3 months now, and this morning was the first time I didn’t feel like throwing the computer across the gym.

Version 3 has been nothing but a headache to implement. It would frequently crash (the program and the computer). The system was custom built the same time we upgraded, so I felt it had to be a hardware issue. I had a “workaround” for most of the glitches, so I was just dealing with it thinking the bugs would be addressed in a patch.

The problems were all video related. Sometimes it would play the video 4x too fast. Normally, it would just crash when switching from one video to another.

Last week was the Youth led worship. They have SUCCESSFULLY been using MediaShout 3 for several months before we upgraded. During the youth service the computer died no less than 8 times each service. I was so embarrassed. The youth media workers were frustrated. I thought for sure it was a hardware problem.

After many hours last Monday night (the night before I opened this blog) I finally got MediaShout to stabilize. The fix surprised me. It wasn’t a hardware issue. It wasn’t even a MediaShout issue (entirely). The problem was a video driver.

Now, common sense would say… update the drivers. That actually didn’t help. I had to roll back the drivers. I had to roll them waaaay back. I had to downgrade to 11 revisions prior to the most recent driver (and I tried every one in-between). MediaShout finally stabilized and started to function like it should.

I took a leap of faith this morning. We have been burning all our videos to DVD’s and using the video mixer to control the feeds. Today, I gave MediaShout the benefit of the doubt. We didn’t even have a DVD backup. Everything worked just like it should.

There is no precedent for this behavior on the MediaShout forums. So this week’s discussion topic: How does your media team handle disaster recovery? Is the instant answer to throw new/different hardware/software at the issue to get it resolved quickly? Do you plan a workaround and just call it status quo? Other?

I’m sure MediaShout will serve us well the next 3 years. But at this point I’m almost completely certain when we build our auditorium, we will not be using MediaShout in primary production.

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February 5th, 2006
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Shellie
Posted on:
Monday, February 6, 2006 at 4:55 pm

For the record, I don’t think MediaShout is a bad program. It has just been a frustrating implementation.

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
Anthony D. Coppedge
Posted on:
Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 9:51 am

The main screen graphics are what I call “mission critical”, meaning that it will be a major distraction if it fails. Therefore, spending some extra money is easily justified because “the service must go on”.

A second CG (or in your case, MediaShout) system should be used at all times. Basically this user is following along perfectly in time with the main operator. But if the main unit fails or if the main operator makes a major mistake, the switch (interval switch for video or a seamless scaler for graphics only) is made and the audience shouldn’t be aware a major problem.

Yes, this means more money, more hardware, another software license and another operator. But there comes a point where a church can’t easily pass off a failure, and when that time comes, redundancy is the key.

Finally, as to backups, it’s smart to have a backup done each week of the song lyrics database, especially if your MoM changes the words. A simple backup to DVD is easy for this purpose. A monthly backup of the computer, using something like Norton Ghost, is helpful becuase it doesn’t require reloading all software and user settings if the hardware needs to be replaced.

My 2 cents,
Anthony

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Shellie
Posted on:
Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 6:19 pm

That was worth more than 2 cents. :) However, it seems to ask a lot. I agree with your logic. Redundancy seems to be a good answer. Although we are not’t in a position to mirror, I do think I can put together something acceptable in case of emergency. At least so it might look planned and not like a blatant outage.

Backups (esp. ghosting) is very crucial. I’ve already discovered that one the hard way. Being the cheap person I am, I used G4U. It’s a freeBSD based solution. Although I have some gripes with it, it will make an acceptable backup until we break down and buy Ghost.

As far as CG software itself what are some alternatives? I’m not looking to ditch MediaShout, however it’s always good to know what’s out there. It seems to me like the personality of the church really drives what should be used. I’m not sure if there is a packaged answer to that question. To each their own I guess. I am looking forward to getting my personal Mac so I can play with ProPresenter.

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
Rick
Posted on:
Wednesday, February 8, 2006 at 11:03 am

Hey, great blog you’ve got here. We’re a small church out here in Oregon looking to grow and expand, and we’re going to be looking at some media solutions in the coming weeks and months. I will definitely bookmark you and come back as a resource. Thanks for being online.

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
Shellie
Posted on:
Wednesday, February 8, 2006 at 9:05 pm

Welcome! It’s always great to have more people to share and learn from.

Comment Number:
6
Written by:
Chuck
Posted on:
Monday, February 27, 2006 at 4:02 pm

I’ve been using Easyworship for quite awhile but after it crashed the second time, I’ve been using the trial version of Mediashout. Easyworship died when for no apparent reason, the songs database dissappeared. This pas Sunday using Mediashout, two of the videos would not play. The audio came through but not image. Both worked fine the night before and even the last Sunday. Any ideas? Should I consider SongShow Plus next?

Comment Number:
7
Written by:
Shellie
Posted on:
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 at 8:31 pm

They (NMCC) never had any difficulty with SongShow Plus. I just refused to try it. I didn’t like the website. I wasn’t impressed with the features. I didn’t like the layout. I had used MediaShout prior. It was my call and that’s what I wanted.

After much work, I have ironed out all the bugs in MediaShout except one (video will skip and look jerky). This bug, however, only happens on a certain video…so i’m hoping it’s an encoding problem with the video. MediaShout has been working well since my little spat with the computer. Again, remember it wasn’t actually MediaShout’s fault (although, it still should have worked).

If you have the time and patience, play with the settings and drivers. I’m sure you can find a sweet spot like we did. Now that it’s working, I’m really starting to appreciate what it offers.

If you chose to play with it, I’ll help however I can.

Comment Number:
8
Written by:
Will
Posted on:
Saturday, January 5, 2008 at 11:05 pm

Shellie, you certainly aren’t the only Mediacomplete customer having video problems with Media Shout 3.x. I’m sure that eventually their updates will fix the problems that you, me and many other churches and individuals are having, but the fact is that the product (3.5) went on sale before the bulk of the glitches were worked out.
Redundancy is great, but the fact is for most ministries it simply isn’t practical.
I have no problems sticking with 2.5 until they work out the kinks in 3.5. I find that if I’m having to use several workarounds to make some piece of software function, then I usually get another one.
Just thought I’d offer my sympathies - and this blog has been helpful to me as well. Thanks for putting it up.