Control Screen & Display Screen: Although you can run MediaShout on a single-screen computer system, to take advantage of all it has to offer, you'll want to run it on two screens. The control screen appears on your computer monitor, for your eyes only. The display screen is the one the audience sees. This dual-screen approach ensures that the audience sees only what you want them to see, not the computer software that makes it happen. To learn more about the display screen and how to use the overlay display when you're stuck with just one screen see Displaying Your Presentations.
Scripts & Cues: If you've worked in live theater, you already understand the two most important components of MediaShout. In theater, the script is the blueprint to the production, describing what, when and how things happen. During the performance, the script is supported with cues that tell cast and crew when to make an entrance or deliver a line or change the lighting or drop the curtain. MediaShout is designed to support live performances in ministry settings, so it makes sense that it uses scripts and cues too.
A MediaShout Script is a list of what, when and how media will be performed in your program. When a Script file is opened in the MediaShout control screen, it looks like a table: Each row represents a cue. Each column contains information about the cue. Scripts can be created, opened and saved with choices in the MediaShout File menu.
Each item in a Script is a cue. Think of a cue as a programmable shortcut. When you fire a cue, the cue itself tells MediaShout to find and play media located elsewhere on your computer. Read that last part again it's big. A cue isn't like a slide found in other presentation programs: A slide typically contains the media it plays. A cue contains no media itself. It's just a shortcut to the media, with settings that determine when and how the media will be played.
Cue Types & Cue Properties: MediaShout offers several types of media cues, each designed to play a specific type of media Lyric cues for song lyrics, Bible cues for scripture passages, Text cues for text screens, etc. So to create a cue, you must first tell the program what type of cue you want. Then you can choose the media the cue will play: a particular song, Bible passage, document, image, video, sound, or whatever. And finally, you can choose the settings, or properties, that tell the computer when and how to play the media: font, layout, background, transition, advance, soundtrack, and so on.
For example, to create, or insert, a Graphic cue, right-click in a Script and choose Insert > Graphic from the pop-up menu. Choose a graphic file in the Select Image dialog that appears. Then choose the cue's properties in the Graphic Cue Properties dialog that opens. Click OK when you're done. The cue is ready to play. It's that simple.
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By the way, a cue's properties can be changed at any time. To open a cue's properties dialog again, right-click the cue and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.
Cues & Media: Since a cue is merely a shortcut to media located somewhere on your computer, to insert a cue you must first create or load the media it points to. MediaShout is preloaded with lots of backgrounds, videos, sounds, song lyrics and Bibles, but of course you'll want to create and load your own media too. Some types of media can be created within MediaShout; for others, you'll need to use another application. Here's the rundown:
song lyrics: Use ShoutSinger (the song management application included with MediaShout) to write, import and edit song lyrics for display from Lyric cues. (See ShoutSinger.)
scripture passages: Use MediaShout's Bible library to display passages from Bible cues. (See Bible Cues.)
text screens: Use ShoutWriter (the word processing application included with MediaShout) to create and edit documents to play from Text cues. (See ShoutWriter.)
graphics: Use just about any graphics application you may already have to create graphic files to play from Graphic cues or as backgrounds to other types of cues. (See Creating Graphics in Other Applications.)
animations: Use an animation application to create .swf files to play from Animation Cues. (See Creating Flash Files in Other Applications.)
videos: Use a video editing application to create video clips to play from Video cues. (See Creating Videos in Other Applications.)
sounds: Use Windows Media Player, CD-ripping software, or some other sound editing application to encode or edit sounds to play from Audio cues or as soundtracks to other types of cues. (See Creating Sounds in Other Applications.)
Note: MediaShout includes lots of backgrounds, videos and sounds that you're free to use in your presentations. You'll find collections of these files in the My Shout\Shout Media folder. For more ready-to-use media, look for media and teaching resources bearing the Shoutable logo: These products contain media that's been tested and approved for optimal playback in MediaShout. You'll find a list of Shoutable products on the MediaShout website.
Current Cue & Selected Cue: MediaShout's dual-screen design lets you play one cue on the display screen while you're working with another cue on the control screen. The cue on the display screen is called the current cue. To make a cue current, you fire it. There are lots of ways to play, or fire, a cue, but the simplest is to double-click it on the control screen. To fire the next cue in a Script, press Space on your keyboard. Typically, the current cue is indicated on the control screen with yellow highlighting.
The selected cue is the one that's ... well, selected on the control screen; it appears there in reversed text. The selected cue can be edited, copied, moved, previewed or deleted without affecting the current cue. Which means you can create or edit a presentation even while it's running. To select a cue, click it once. Once selected you can ...
move it: click and hold down the left mouse button, then drag it to a new location
cut or copy it: press Ctrl+X or Ctrl+C, respectively (Ctrl+V to paste it)
preview it: click a ShoutMonitor's Script or Box source button
edit it: right-click and choose Properties to open its properties dialog
delete it: press Delete
insert a new cue below it: right-click and choose Insert
For more on cues and all that you can do with them, see Working with Cues.