Mac issues
Maybe these issues are just with the Mac version but there are a few that are frustrating me as they are vital issues to my needs with this software.
1. I cannot find a way to add presentations like I find in the documentation faqs. I have both Keynote and Power Point and I cannot find a way to insert either file in media or any other option I have to add items to the service (songs, bible, image and custom).
2. I cannot add jpeg files. This really bugs me because most image files I have are jpeg, and while I'm on it there are a lot of unsupported file types when I look through my files that I want to add.
3. Themes, I keep trying to create my own since the ones through the site come up as black and I am having a huge amount of trouble getting anything to work. First, I was able to make one using our childrens church logo (I plan on using this for our CC) but I would like to use other images as background as well. Just about all the ones I have are jpeg and when I try to use them I can't, if I change the extension name the background reverts to black as it does for most themes.
I understand this is free software and I greatly appreciate all the work done on it. The software is so close to being just what I need but not quite where I need it and honestly at this point is only useable to me to play videos and verses but still forces me to go back and forth between programs.
If I could create themes that actually show up and input my presentations in either PP or Keynote it would be just fine for my needs. Is there something I'm doing incorrectly?
Comments
1. please see: http://manual.openlp.org/troubleshooting.html#i-am-running-mac-os-x-and-i-do-not-have-a-presentation-plugin
2. please see: http://manual.openlp.org/troubleshooting.html#i-have-jpg-images-and-they-will-not-work-on-my-system
3. see solution to number 2, You will in the short term need to convert the .jpg images. .png is the preferred format.
We do not have near the userbase on OS X so glad to know you are there. Thanks for using OpenLP and I'm sure these problems (except probably #1) will be solved eventually.
Wesley
Your help is greatly appreciated. I thought I was converting my jpeg files but I actually wasn't. I got a new program off the Mac App store that is actually converting them and it works beautifully now.So images and themes work great!
Is there anyway to get PP on Mac to work? If that would work I can deal with it, I prefer Keynote but I do have PP and can work with it instead. I'll keep trying to see if I can get it to work on my own in the meantime.
Again thanks, everything else works fine and i have a lot to learn with using this program but enjoy doing it.
Good news, I found a method that will work. It'll take me slightly longer but it will work.
I can make my slides in Keynote, export them as PNG images and insert them as images. I generally don't do transitions or anything fancy as I work full time in a secular job and just do the basics so this will work for us.
So until a way is found to use keynote directly, for anyone that uses a Mac this method will work. You'll just have to do your editing in keynote before exporting.
edit: I can do the same in powerpoint as well, so no matter which program you use the slides can be converted to PNG files which are useable in openlp.
I also found out, at least in PP, that you can convert the entire presentation into a movie file which can also be put into the presentation even if you have to convert it to another format. Only problem is you can't just do a click and go to next slide type presentation, but its another option anyways.
Unfortunately until we have a dedicated developer with a Mac, or someone donates a Mac to the OpenLP team, our OS X support is going to be rather minimal. We have a packager for OS X, and he does his best to solve some of the OS X-specific issues, but he doesn't have the time to get into full-blown development.
Also, as far as presentations on OS X go, until the presentation applications on OS X support automation, we cannot do anything. I've done research into Keynote, and I haven't found anything about automation for it. The last version of OpenOffice for OS X didn't include the automation component, and we haven't had a chance to look at LibreOffice yet. PowerPoint on OS X works totally differently to PowerPoint on Windows (since the platforms they run on are totally different), so we don't have much to go on there either.
About this presentation-issue:
If OpenLP cannot present slides itself, like it says here:
OpenLP itself is unable to show those presentations or load the presentation files, so it interacts with the presentation through either Microsoft PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress. In order to show the slides in the slide controller, OpenLP requests that the presentation application export the slides to images, and then uses those images as slides. This results in a large amount of RAM being used, especially in presentations with more than about 20 slides.
Wouldn't it be more useful to convert the presentation-plugin (-code) into a seperate tool or script, to generate usable images outside OpenLP?
And of course, it should be possible to "import" these prepered images back into OpenLP (which is not possible now).
Then people can generate presentation-images on another computer (Windows or Linux) and import/show the "presentation-slides" in OpenLP on Mac OS X. Perhaps also faster during presentation?
We've since reduced the amount of RAM that is used when opening the slides so this is no longer an issue.
Note it wasn't the generation of the slides that was using the using the RAM rather the slide controller when it was displaying the images, so whether the images were created via a script or within the program it wouldn't be a factor.
But it is possible to