FoleyPro 2.04 - Audio Bed Producer

Recently our staff at CCO attended the Drive Conference at North Point Church in Alpharetta, GA and one of the sessions that I gleaned so much from was North Point's student ministry Q & A and Showcase "Inside Out." Inside Out is the high school ministry at NPC and to just sit and watch how others do youth ministry and then to get the opportunity to sit and ask the leaders questions was so helpful and informative.


One of the resources that I took away from that session was the audio software program FoleyPro Version 2.04 for Macintosh OSX and Microsoft Windows. FoleyPro is a software designed to help make your productions and events run smoother by giving you more control over your music beds, bumpers, soundFX and Performance Tracks. I'm sure you have been frustrated with 'CD, MD, & iPod player' lag? I'm sure your services/shows have not been as tight as you would like? I'm sure your volunteers sometimes miss a queue? FoleyPro is your answer. Designed to play your music or effects instantly, FoleyPro will help you to produce a tighter service flow.

FoleyPro is designed to be easy to learn and use. It's so easy that anyone, starting from DAY 1 can use it like they've used it for years. Setup is easy, just create a library for the show or event, load it with your music and you are ready to go. FoleyPro will play all common music and sound formats: AIF, MP3, WAV, AIFC, M4A, M4P and more. It also has features like auto fade, auto mix, and a countdown display that gives your tech crew a heads up for when your audio bank is coming to an end.

System Requirements:
FoleyPro is designed to operate on either the Macintosh or Windows XP/Vista system.
Macintosh: Mac OSX, verstion 10.4.x+, 1024x768 Screen resolutions or greater, Quicktime Version 7+
Windows: Windows XP/Vista, 1024x768 screen resolutions or greater, Quicktime Version 7+ for Windows, Supported Sound Card or built -in sound hardware.

You can purchase the software HERE at nuePoint's site. Hitting this link is your best chance at finding this program. Before tracking down the creator of the software by phone I tried to do a Google search to find it and I was unsuccessful. Luckily, the Inside Out Tech Crew gave me the creators number. After speaking with him he was very helpful with explaining at that it can do and walking me through the purchase process. But once you find FoleyPro's site you will see the process is very simple. The program is a little pricey but it will relieve a load of tech frustrations during your service programs.

Hopefully this little tutorial video can give you an idea of what FoleyPro can do for you.

Create Your Own Countdowns

If you are in youth ministry then you probably use countdowns to start your services. After buying multiple countdowns from various media websites and youth leadership conferences I came across a handy little tool that allows me to create my own custom countdowns. It has been very useful. You are able to set whatever time limit you desire, add your own background images or movies, and make changes to your fonts. I even created a 30 day countdown for a series my Pastor is teaching that runs throughout the service while he preaches. The countdown program that I found is produced by a company called TRIMONIX. You can see a lot of their work on the website Stufficanuse.com. TRIMONIX is relatively inexpensive for what you get. By the time you purchase a few countdowns from the usual church media sites you could end up paying for this program. The only draw back to TRIMONIX is that it only works on a MAC computer and it doesn't export audio. So if your video background already has music on it, when you export your final countdown product, it will not have any audio. You will have to use another program like Final Cut Pro or iMovie to add your audio. Here is an example of a countdown that I created with TRIMONIX in conjunction with FINAL CUT PRO and LIVETYPE as well as a video background that I downloaded from VIMEO.com.



If you have a PC then there is still hope. Since the rest of the staff at our church have PCs they found an alternative program called COUNTDOWN CREATOR. I know it's not an original name but this program is just as impressive and it does allow you to add your own audio as well as images, videos, fonts, and etc. Here is a video that gives you a brief demo of what it can do.

Fun With Fonts!

I use Photoshop quite a bit and I love it when I find great resources for fonts. If you do any kind of graphic design then you know that fonts are a large part of the design process. I found a new font resource this week and I thought I might share it with the readers. It's a site called VTKS.com. He is a free lance designer and he has quite a few FREE font downloads on his site. He is also listed on other font sites such as FONTSPACE.com. Here are some other sites I frequent when looking for the latest and greatest fonts; DAFONT.com & SIMPLYTHEBESTFONTS.com. Happy Downloading. Once you start...It will be hard to stop....

Just a couple of "Design Hints:"

1. Don't get too carried away when using fonts in your work. Limit your designs to 2 fonts each. In rare situations you can use more but if too many different fonts are used then your design work will loose it's impact and will also make your work too busy and difficult to read.

2. Don't load all your fonts at once. If you store all of your fonts all at once you can cause your computer to run slower than usual. Like I said, you can get carried away downloading fonts and if you go too crazy your computer has to load and search through all of those fonts when using your programs, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Pro Studio, and etc.

Here Are Some Font Design Possibilities:

Busheezy.com

Well, once again I was living out my nocturnal lifestyle and I was doing some late night web surfing and I came across this amazing website. Brusheezy.com is a website that I found that allows artists and graphic designers to download and vote for the best custom Photoshop Brushes and Photoshop patterns on the internet! This site is updated every day with new Brushes for Photoshop. It also has Vector patterns and designs that are FREE to download as well. I spent about few hours looking through pages and pages of amazing brushes and I have already started using them in some of my designs. If you use Photoshop at all or if you just like to play around with design then you should definitley check this site out and get some FREE stuff and even Submit your own! They only accept the best photoshop brushes so be sure to read the terms of use for the official rules before submitting your Photoshop Brushes and Photoshop patterns.

BECOME A BETTER DESIGNER: RULE #1: Limit Your Fonts

Part One of Seven Easy Principles to Becoming a Master Designer.

Ok, “master designer” might be a bit of a stretch – but you can at least become a “proficient designer” by following 7 easy principles. This will be the shortest, most informative series of blog posts you’ve ever read on how to become a better designer. Please note: these principles CAN be broken… these are not laws, they’re just general guides that I typically follow when putting together a design. Follow these simple design principles and you’ll be on your way to artistic excellence.

Principle One: Limit Your fonts. A big part of putting together a good design, as you’ll see, is making sure the over-all look is consistent. The best way to accomplish a consistent look to your design is limiting the number of artistic motifs (themes) that you use. The fonts you select are the first variable you want to limit. It;a good to just pick 2 fonts per design.

The first font can be fancy or artistic. This font will be used to give your design some flair, character and personality. It’s this font that sets the mood for the piece. Is it a fun font with swirls for a girl’s party, or is it a grungy evil font for a rock band? I would use this fancy font for the header copy – anywhere it’s big, I’ll use this font. The fancy font will be the focal point of the piece. You will usually have less copy in this fancy font, but it will be much bigger – so that’s what people will see and focus on.

The second font should be very basic. The audience shouldn’t take notice of this secondary font at all. This secondary font needs to be very easily legible. It’s this basic font that will be used for large bodies of copy. Obviously, it’s very hard to read large bodies of copy that are in some extravagantly artistic font. So, this second font is all about functionality. Here is an example of proper use of fonts in a design. As you can see, there is only two fonts used here. The fancy font is used as the headers and the basic font is used for the copy. It looks clean and consistent.

Here is a Bad use of fonts. In this case I used too many fancy fonts. It just makes the piece look inconsistent. The sub sections don’t seem like they match with the main header.

Having too many fonts in a design is the biggest mistake. Nothing looks worse than someone who has used 8 different fonts on their flyer. Even worse than that is using a very fancy font for your body copy. Here is a sample of font use at it’s worst:

That’s it for this quick post. Thanks for reading. Keep an eye out, 6 more posts coming in this series!

The Future of Worship Media

Now this is trippy...It's a visual worship loop that you control the speed, direction, and motion of with the slight movements of your mouse. Check it out and fun by clicking here.

YOU SEND IT

Many of you might know about this site but for those of you that don't...CHECK IT OUT! It's not flashy looking or aesthetically impressive but it's capabilities are very useful. For someone like myself who has to send and receive large files such as videos and graphics this site comes in handy. Almost all e-mail servers limit your file transfers and yousendit.com gives you the ability to upload your file and e-mail it to someone through the yousendit.com website and YouSendIt will e-mail your recipient a hyperlink to their site to download the file. The FREE version of this allows you to send 1GB of files every month and you can upgrade your file transfer limit for a cost and you can see those prices and details here.

VIMEO VIDEO

I know this is the age of YouTube but I have just discovered an amazing website that is free of charge that delivers much better quality, options, and a better looking result. It's a site called VIMEO.com. Vim (rhymes with him) ee (rhymes with bee) oh (rhymes with go). Vim-ee-oh is the correct pronunciation. I first noticed VIMEO when I watched a video on Ed Young's church site. You can see this video a few blogs below but I noticed that his videos were extremely clear and clean looking. I did some searching and found the site that he uses to post videos on all of his sites. At the end of my searching I found VIMEO. Let me just tell you some of the great features this video blogging site allows you to have creative control over. First off, the upload process is very quick and easy to follow and while your files are uploading you are still able to roam the site and make setting changes to the video that is currently uploading. Once the video has completed uploading to the site you can now add search TAGs to the video to help others easily find it. You can change privacy settings such as, making it private or public. You can allow others to post comments on your video or not. You can give viewers the option of downloading your video to their computer. You can allow others to add your video to their "channels" or websites by grabbing the html code right of the video window. You can credit people that appear in the video. The options are considerably greater than other sites. Another great feature I found cool on VIMEO is the option of choosing your preview screen or your video thumbnail. Previously, with other video blogging sites, your video thumbnail was just determined by whatever image was on the screen at a certain time lapse into the video you posted. You never knew what it could be until after you had posted the video.
I have had videos in the past that got stuck with a freeze frame of someone's face in an awkward position and it just becomes a horrible first impression when people are browsing your site to see videos. VIMEO gives you 12 freeze frame options that are randomly selected from your video as seen to the left and you also have the option of uploading an image or graphic that you choose to be the thumbnail. Not only does VIMEO give you countless options in uploading your video but it also gives you multiple choices with how your video is presented when posted to other sites. VIMEO gives you the option of changing size and format of your video while still keeping the aspect ratio. It also allows you to change the color of the buttons displayed and an amazing feature that this site has that others sites like YouTube does not is the ability of clicking an expand button on the video window that will expand the video playing to full screen. If you are in youth ministry or you just use video quite often in your video blogging and website designs, this is a site you definitely want to check out. VIMEO allows you to create small video galleries that can be placed on your websites so that your site's pages aren't cluttered with video windows. You can see an example of this on my blog's home page. The only complaint I have about VIMEO is that the site limits your "weekly" upload to 500MB. I have been reading up on the site and there will possibly be a professional upgrade to expand your weekly limit. Other than that it is a great site for being free of cost and since I have been using it I have noticed that quite a few large churches and organizations use VIMEO for their website video posts. I highly endorse it and seriously hope that you check it out. HAVE FUN!!!

Relevant Marketing

We had a band come and play at Identity Student Ministries the other day and as they were setting up their merchandise they observed our youth t-shirts a made a surprising comment. They said, "These are the first youth group tees that we've seen that we actually like." They went on to say, "I even want to by one. So many youth groups have such cheesie tees." Remember, these are their words and not mine but I think is something we (those in ministry) can all think about. I have made it a point to create t-shirts and graphics that our students will wear and use. Too often people choose a cheaper priced tee and graphic and the quality of the product suffers. We have to remember..if they don't thinks it's fashionable then they will probably not wear it. And if they won't wear it then your ministry won't get the exposure that you probably are hoping for. A lot of people have asked me how do I make the graphics and t-shirts for our youth ministry and it always amuses me. The reason is...I can't take complete credit for everything that I do. I use graphics from everywhere: iStock, Google Image, wallpaper sites, graphics exchange, iChurch Photo, Relevant Magazine, Deviant Art, and more. A key thing that I tell everyone is to keep a library of starter graphics that can act as a base or foundational background and then add to those to make them your own. Who has the time to start from scratch? Anyone in ministry knows that your time is spread thin in many different areas of ministry and so we have to use our time efficiently. That's why it is important to always keep your eyes open for great graphics and fonts EVERYWHERE you look. Just a few types of medium and media that I have pulled inspiration and graphics from: Magazines, other church websites, other secular websites, clothing, photography sites, and so on...You can pull inspiration from everywhere. Just start collecting stuff that grabs your eye. Here are just a few things that I have created for our youth ministry in the past.