This blog isn’t the place to announce all things tech. However, we did want to mention one very cool advancement that Microsoft has made in their beta release of Office 2010. It has a direct impact upon how churches and other users can use more powerful media.
The Important Change
Obviously, Microsoft Office 2010 has a lot of new features and goodies. The one that makes a real difference for church media is the upgrades to PowerPoint. In previous versions, users could not insert and edit video right within the PowerPoint program. What’s more, you couldn’t put text on top of the video. In short: video functionality was nil. In order to do cool stuff with videos, church media personnel had to have expensive video editing software if they wanted to use videos with their existing PowerPoint platform. Needless to say, most churches don’t have soaring media budgets.
All that has changed.
Now, in the new version, users can insert, edit, tweak, alter and do a lot with videos–right within PowerPoint! As Mr. Microsoft Office himself (Stephen Elop) stated, “Within PowerPoint you can now insert and edit video right in the context of PowerPoint, without using any third party tools. You can just do it right there.”
What You Can Do with Video
The video change means that you can trim sections of video within your PowerPoint. You can play the video directly in PowerPoint, rather than merely having it pull from a remote file on the drive. You can create fades, you can alter the sound, and you can even place text on the video.
What This Means
One of the best forms of church media is video. While PowerPoint sermons probably aren’t going away anytime soon, there is something particularly attractive about a moving worship background. Sharefaith has a vast collection of videos that can be used in a variety of ways–as a background for song lyrics, as a way of making announcements, for the background to sermon notes, etc. With the recent changes, Microsoft Office 2010 users will have a lot more options, power, and creativity to use videos in their worship media.
Of course, all the Mac aficionados are probably snickering, realizing that Keynote (The Mac version of PowerPoint) has had video capability for a while…https://www.sharefaith.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=692&action=edit&message=10
Want to Give It a Try?
You can. Just download the beta version of Microsoft Office 2010. Click here to visit the download page. It is a free, fully-functional version that is available until October. Then, check out some of Sharefaith’s videos to see how it works.
(By the way, if you haven’t seen Sharefaith’s new Father’s Day Music Video, we recommend you check it out.)
