Operation

Chapter points in this section:

Starting the WorshipSession software
Presenting a Session
Selecting Items from the database
Keypresses for scrolling items
Displaying the Session
The Status Line
The “Feature” feature
Transposing the displayed chords
Song Soundtracks and chord replay
Hiding verses with a star
Adding your own annotation to songs
Blanking the screen
Masking the projected screen
Displaying files and Web pages
Displaying photos and images
‘Slide show’ function
Playing music in the background
Playing video files
Playing DVD extracts
Displaying scripture verses
Search facilities
All about Loops
Information Messages
All about Groups
Printing Items
Beginning a new Session
Using the background pane
Exiting the software

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Starting the Software

WorshipSession Should be installed using the WS_Setup.exe utility, which creates a program group and a desktop shortcut. Click on the shortcut to start the system. You can create a keyboard accellerator, to start the system without using a mouse.

Presenting a Session

When WorshipSession is started, it enters “presentation mode” and displays the current Session Item. If the Session is empty or the Current Item has no display element, the screen will show the “WS_TitlePage.html” Web page, which looks like this:

Selecting Items from the database

To select an Item to be displayed, press the F12 key on your keyboard. WorshipSession displays “Item Title” with a type-in box. Enter the name of the Item you want to display, such as the first line of a song.

As you begin to type the name, WorshipSession displays matches from its Item database. You can select using the keyboard Up and Down keys to move the highlight bar. Continue to type characters to reduce the number of matches until you can see the Item you want.

Press Alt to preview the text of the Item in the Session pane, (this enables you to confirm that you have selected the right Item.)

Press Enter to display the highlighted Item. The Type-in box disappears, and the Item is displayed full-screen.

If you press Ctrl-Enter or AltGr-Enter, the Item is added to the Session, but not displayed. This allows you to ‘secretly’ enter new Items, while keeping the display unchanged.

When the displayed Item runs to more than a few lines, it may extend past the bottom of the screen. Rather than show large Items in a number of separate slides, WorshipSession scrolls them using ‘Scroll Points’.

The Scroll Points are indicated on the screen by faint blue marks at the left. When the pedal or arrow key is pressed, WorshipSession slides the Item up to the next Scroll Point, or down to the previous one.

Every song Item has a large blank space at the bottom, so once the song has been sung, it can be scrolled fully off the top of the screen, leaving the display empty. If the “next” pedal or arrow key is pressed again, WorshipSession displays the next Item from the Session File.

Nudge it

If you are using a large font for WorshipSession display, a single song verse may extend past the bottom of the screen (or lower than the audience can comfortably see). You can “nudge” the item up on the screen using the Down Arrow key.

Keypresses for scrolling items

Left arrow	Scroll the item down the screen.
Right arrow	Scroll the item up the screen.
Home	Scroll to the top of the item.
End	Scroll item fully to the bottom, showing the blank space.
1, 2, 3 etc	Scroll to the specified verse of a song.
C	Scroll to show the chorus or refrain.
Note: If you use Shift with the above keypresses, the usual “smooth scroll” effect is not used – the Item jumps directly to the destination.
Up arrow	“Nudge up”, towards the top of the Item.
Down arrow	“Nudge down”, towards the bottom of the Item.
Enter	Re-display the Item at the top.
Page Up	Display the previous item from the Session File.
Page Down	Display the next item from the Session File.
Ctrl-PgDn / Ctrl-PgUp	Select the next or previous Item in the Session, but don’t display it. Use this facility to show Items out-of-order. Press Enter to display the selected Item.

For foot pedal users, press and hold the “prev” pedal to scroll to the top, or press and hold the “next” pedal to scroll off the bottom of the item.

If you have a computer with a “Wheel mouse”, you can use the mouse wheel to scroll the items up and down.

Displaying the Session

In this documentation, “The Session” is the list of items that are displayed on a particular occasion. When you select items for display they are added to the Session.

To see the Session, press the Esc key. The Session is displayed at the bottom-right of the screen. To hide the Session, press Esc again.

On the Session list, a highlight bar shows the Current Item, which is also the “insert point” for new items. (Any Items you add to the session will be inserted immediately below the Current Item.) You can move the highlight bar, and hence the insert point, with the keyboard Up and Down keys.

If you press the Return or Enter key, WorshipSession displays the item at the insert point.

To delete the item at the insert point, press the keyboard Delete key.

You can use the insert point to re-order the items in the Session. Hold down Shift when using the Up and Down keys. As the insert point moves, it carries its current Item along with it, so you can move it past other items.

The Status Line

At the bottom of the screen, WorshipSession displays a number of text items, including the name and CCL number of the licensee, the title of the current Item, and the title of the next Item. If you are operating in Dual-screen mode, only the slave screen shows the licence details. If you click with the mouse on this status area, the Session is displayed.

WorshipSession™     NCF     CCL#000000     Who is there like you? /F     >>Bible:Revelation 3:20

The “Feature” feature

Items can include a special section called a feature. This might normally be a few words that summarise message of the song. The text in the feature section is not normally seen, but if you press the keyboard F key it is displayed using a large decorative font.

If an Item includes a feature, WorshipSession displays /F on the status line after the song title - e.g. A♫   Let there be joy /F.

We originally developed the Feature feature to support “open” times of prayer and response in church services. When the feature is displayed, the normal text of the Item is hidden. Press the F key again to hide the feature and restore the normal display.

There is no support for scrolling the feature, so when creating features you need to ensure that the text will fit onto the screen.
The following keypresses operate while the feature is displayed:

Left arrow	Hide the feature and display the top of the Item
F	Hide the feature and show the Item as before
End	Hide the feature and show the bottom of the Item
Right arrow	Hide the feature and display the next Item from the Session File
Home, 1,2, C	Jump immediately to the various sections of the current Item.

Notes:

• In Dual-screen mode, the status line displays the text of the feature for a few seconds when the song is loaded. You can re-display it by pressing ?.
• Foot pedal users can show the feature by pressing both the top and the bottom of the pedal together.
• If an Item has no feature, the F key has no effect.

Graphical Features

You can show a full-screen image, instead of text in the feature. When editing the Item, specify the name of an image file in square brackets like this:

[images/cross.jpg]

Ensure that the image file exists in the folder where the song will be stored (this is usually /songs for songs included with WorshipSession, and /localsongs for songs you have added yourself. Use the U key in WorshipSession to confirm where a song is stored.)

When using <A3>, ensure that the filename is tagged as a Feature.

Note that no scaling is applied to graphical features. You should ensure the size of your image matches the size of your screen.

Only the “Feature”

You can arrange for WorshipSession to display the feature when an item is first displayed. This enables a song to be introduced by showing its feature, and it also allows inspiring features to be displayed in isolation, without the songs being displayed at all. You might choose to use this in church services, during periods when the projector would otherwise have nothing to display.

If you press Esc to display the Session, then Alt-F, the currently selected Item in the Session list will be marked with / F - this indicates that when this item is subsequently displayed, the feature will initially be visible. Press Alt-F again to remove this setting.

In addition to Alt-F, you can use Alt-C to cause the Item to initially display its chorus or refrain, and Alt-2 .. Alt-9 to show a specific verse, should you want to start a song part-way through.

You can combine this with the use of Ctrl-Enter or AltGr-Enter, to display any feature, without first displaying the song -

• Press F12 and select the song, but press Ctrl-Enter instead of Enter.
• The Session list disappears, but nothing is displayed. The Title of the item you selected is shown at the bottom of the screen.
• Press Alt-F. The current Item in the Session list is marked with / F, but you don’t see this. You can use Esc to check it.
• When you’re ready, press Enter to display the selected feature.

Transposing the displayed chords

In dual-screen mode, WorshipSession displays chords for guitarists, and you may want to display them in a different key, for example when using a capo, or if the song is too high for people to sing!

When a song is the Current Item, press the T key on the keyboard. WorshipSession transposes the song up one semitone. To transpose down,
use Ctrl-T.

The song is transposed immediately, and the Session is also marked with the interval, so that if the song is displayed again, the transposed chords are shown. You can transpose a song that is not the Currently displayed Item - the transposition interval can be seen on the Session display, and it will be used when the song is displayed.

Song Soundtracks and chord replay

You can attach a Soundtrack to a song, so that when the song is loaded, the Soundtrack is also loaded, ready for playing. This feature provides a convenient way to play MIDI files or ripped CD tracks, when there are no musicians available. The Soundtrack is loaded, but not played - press S to start replay.

To add a Soundtrack to a song, use the <A3> Utility. Note that newly added Soundtracks will not appear in existing Items in your Session. Use F12 to add the Item again to load the Soundtrack.

For songs that have chords, you can play the chords through the computer’s MIDI synthesiser. This is a basic chords playback that’s not nearly as good as having a Soundtrack, but it is better than having no music at all. Begin chord playback by pressing N. The first chord sounds, and the Scroll Lock is activated. This changes the action of the Right arrow key, and the <next> function of the WorshipSession pedal, to play the next chord, rather than advancing the song to the next verse in the usual way. You can still scroll the song using the Space key, or use the Scroll Lock key to toggle the action of the Right arrow key. To stop playing chords, press the N key again.

After WorshipSession has played the last chord in the song, it “loops back” to the first chord in the part of the song that is currently visible - i.e. the verse or chorus that’s at the top of the screen. You can force the chord replay to jump back to this point by pressing Shift-N. To return to the beginning of the song, press the Home key first, then Shift-N. If you want to jump to another part of the song (for example to repeat the last two lines of the last verse), you can click on a chord with the mouse, and the replay jumps to that point. (Press the P key to make the mouse pointer more visible.)

For songs that have no chords, pressing N plays the single chord for the key of the song, if a key has been noted in the song details.

Hiding verses with “star”

Some songs have a large number of verses, and you don’t want to sing all the verses on every occasion. Rather than deleting the verses, you can hide them with a star.

The effect is similar to hymns printed in a hymn book, where verses marked with a star may be omitted. To “star out” a verse, display the song and scroll it until the verse you want to hide is at the top, then press *.

Notes:

• Pressing * hides the verse immediately, and also marks the Session, so that when the song is subsequently re-displayed, the verse will be hidden.
• WorshipSession displays a note on the Status Line when it loads a song with hidden verses.
• The stars are stored in the Session, not in the song. The next time you add the song to a Session, the hidden verses will be shown again.
• Songs retain their original verse numbers (accessible by the “1”..“9” keypresses) when verses are hidden. If you press “4” when V.4 is hidden, the song will scroll to the top. (Then if you press * again, V.4 will be “un-hidden”.)
• You can also use the “A3” Utility to hide verses in a more permanent way, by adding stars at the beginning of verses. WorshipSession does not display any verse or refrain that begins with a * (asterix) character.
• If the song has a repeated chorus, the chorus for hidden verses will be hidden, but where a refrain has been used, this will always be shown and can only be hidden by editing the song as described above. (This is because refrains don’t have verse numbers.)

Adding your own annotation to songs

One great advantage of paper songbooks - you can write on them with a pencil! You can add notes about how the song should be sung, scripture verses, medley ideas and so on.

When running in dual-screen mode, WorshipSession includes a “leaders’ notes” box to the left of the song display, and you can write anything you like in it. Press Tab, and type whatever you like. To finish writing notes, press Esc or Enter. WorshipSession saves the note and re-displays it the next time the song is displayed.

If you want to put a blank line in your annotation, press Shift-Enter.

Blanking the screen

Sometimes you may want to hide whatever the screen is currently displaying. Press the B key on the keyboard to blank the screen. This is similar to pressing End to scroll the item to the end, except that if you press B again, the display will be restored as before. If you press the pedal or arrow keys or pedal while B is in use, the display is automatically restored.

Pressing Ctrl-B hides and shows the Background Pane in a similar way.

If you want to make the WorshipSession screen completely black, use Shift-B. This sets the background colour to black, and also hides the status line.

Making the Session display more visible - If you pressB while the Session is displayed, WorshipSession will place an opaque background behind the Session, making it easier to see. Press B again to restore the transparent “lo-vis” background.

Masking the projected screen

WorshipSession can mute, or “Mask” the projected screen, while continuing to show normal output on the musician’s screen - you may want to do this to confirm a song selection before you display it.

Press F3 to operate the mask. WorshipSession shows the church logo on the projected screen, but the “on stage” screen continues to work as normal. You can perform any WorshipSession operation (with the exception of Message Overlay) while the Mask is in place. To “Un-mask” the display, press F3 again, or M.

Displaying files and Web pages

You may want to display Items that are not included in the Item database. WorshipSession is based on Internet Explorer™ - it can display any Web site or any HTML file. It also offers limited support for other file types such as PowerPoint, MS Word, Acrobat, and plain text. In principle, any file that can be displayed by a Web browser can be shown in WorshipSession, but you need to take care with Items that grab the Keyboard Focus, or display on the full screen. These Items could make it impossible to interact with WorshipSession.

To display any HTML file or Web page, press the F11 key. WorshipSession displays a list of files in the WorshipSession folder. Folders are displayed with [square brackets]. As you begin to type the name of a file or folder, the list is refined to include only the matching files (very like the selection of songs).

Press Alt to preview the Item in the selection pane before displaying it (This enables you to confirm that you are selecting the right Item).

Use Up and Down to move the selection bar. WorshipSession displays the attributes of the selected file in the status line. Folders are shown in [square brackets]. You can ‘browse into’ a folder by pressing the / or \ key. To display an Item, press Enter.

Note it’s possible to browse “Up” from WorshipSession’s area by selecting
[ ..(parent folder) ], or you can type an absolute path like c:\MyFile.html.

Shortcut - if you use F11 to navigate to a file that’s several levels down the tree of folders, and you want to add another Item from the same folder, you can return to the folder by pressing F11 ./.

You can enter a path to a floppy disc, such as a:\MySermon.ppt, but because the transfer rate from floppy is slow, there may be problems when the Item is displayed. It may be better to copy Items to your fixed disc, and display them from there. The data rate from CD-ROM is better, but there may be a delay while the drive “spins up”. We like to use the new “pen style” USB memory devices - they’re convenient, high capacity and the data transfer rate is fast enough for most purposes.

Sometimes you may want to select a file for display, but not display it immediately. If you press Ctrl-Enter or AltGr-Enter, rather than Enter, the file is added to the Session but not displayed. This allows you to “secretly” add new Items, while keeping the display unchanged.

“Live” Web sites

You can enter the URL of a page on the Internet, such as http://www.worshipsession.info - This causes WorshipSession to access the page live when the Item is displayed. The page will not be cached or copied, so you will need a live Internet connection to display it. Live Web sites don’t usually work well in dual-screen mode. Note that if you display a Web page, then follow a hyperlink to another page, you will normally lose keyboard control of WorshipSession, as the Web page assumes control of the keyboard. Click the mouse on the status line to restore normal operation.

Finding files “Windows style”

As an alternative to F11, you can display a standard Windows “File Open” Dialog Box using Ctrl-O. Obviously this function should not be used on single-screen systems during a “live” session. Ctrl-O is a standard keypress that works with most Windows applications. Note this function is supported on XP and newer Operating Systems.

Displaying photos and images

WorshipSession includes support for displaying photos and other images. If you press F11 or Ctrl-Oand browse to an image file, WorshipSession will stretch or shrink it as necessary to display it full-screen. You can zoom the image with the up and down keys, and reposition it by holding Ctrl or AltGr, and using the arrow keys. You can also drag the image using a mouse, and zoom it using the mouse wheel.

To reset the image to full screen, press Enter.

You can also show Macromedia Flash (SWF) files. WorshipSession displays the presentation full-screen. When displaying Flash presentations, note that if you click with the mouse on the presentation, it may accept “Keyboard Focus”, so WorshipSession won’t receive commands such as Page Down or Page Up. To restore WorshipSession’s keypresses, click the mouse on the status line at the bottom of the screen.

Flash animations always display in the foreground - although you can put a Flash file on the background pane, it is not possible to display songs or Bible readings in front. Part of the Session display may also be hidden by the Flash presentation.

Previewing image files

While searching folders for an image using F11, you can use Alt to show the selected image in the selection pane. Alternatively if you use Ctrl-O to display the Windows “File Open” Dialog, you can select “View, Thumbnails” to see small previews of images.

WorshipSession can show a page of “thumbnails” of all the images in a folder, so you can select the right image. To see the preview, use F11, browse to the folder containing the images, and press ? then Enter.

On dual-screen systems, the preview is shown only on the “master” screen. If you click the mouse on an image, it will be added to the Session and shown full-screen in the normal way.

You can preview images for the Background Pane in the same way. Press Ctrl-F11, browse to the folder containing the images, and press ? then Enter. The preview appears on the Background Pane, and you will usually need to press B to clear the foreground content, before you can click on an image. (Note the Windows “File Open” Ctrl-O option cannot be used to place contect on the Background Pane.)

If you hold the Ctrl key down while clicking on a thumbnail, the image will be added to the Session, but not shown. This makes it possible to select a sequence of images in one go. (Note this feature is not supported on the Windows “File Open” Dialog.)

‘Slide show’ function

You can show a whole folder full of images in one operation. WorshipSession displays the images one after the other in alphabetic order, with a random transition between each image. There is a fixed 5-second delay between images, but you can also elect to advance the slides manually.

To show all the images in a folder, use F11, browse to the folder containing the images, and press * then Enter. (Note the Windows “File Open” Ctrl-O option cannot be used to show a slideshow.)

The slides advance automatically, but you can take manual control by pressing the pedal, the A key, or any of the arrow keys. Images can be panned and zoomed using the arrow keys, and you can resume automatic operation by pressing A.

Slideshow keypresses:

Left arrow	Show the previous slide
Right arrow	Show the next slide
A	Set auto or manual slide advance
Up arrow	Zoom in the image (sets manual mode)
Down arrow	Zoom out the image (sets manual mode)
Ctrl-Left arrow, Ctrl-Right arrow, Ctrl-Up arrow, Ctrl-Down arrow	Move the image
U	Display the filename of the current image
Page Down	Show the next Item in the Session

The slideshow function has been designed to show digital camera images, and can display images directly from the camera. If the camera appears as a storage device in Windows, you can use F11 to browse directly into the camera’s memory, without needing to first copy the images onto your fixed disc. This enables “instant replay” of digital photos.

Pedal operation: because the pedal <previous> and <next> controls slide advance, you need to press both <previous> and <next> together, or use Page Down, to show the next Item in the Session.

‘Juke box’ for Background audio

The slide show function can also be used to play a series of audio files in the background. If you press F11, navigate to a folder containing audio files and press *, they will all be added to a ‘playlist’ for the Background Sound - WorshipSession plays them in alphabetic order, to the end of the folder or until you press S to stop the Background Sound. If a folder contains both audio files and images, you will see the slideshow and hear the background music. See below for more about Background Audio.

Playing Music in the Background

Audio files

You can easily include music or other sound effects in your HTML pages, and WorshipSession also offers the option to play audio files directly using F11 or Ctrl-O. If you browse to an audio file, WorshipSession plays the sound without changing what is displayed on the screen. You can then display other Items on the screen without affecting the audio replay - the sound continues in the background. This allows you to “mix and match” sounds and pictures.

WorshipSession plays WAV, MPA, WMA and AIFF format files.

It’s convenient to add a whole folder of audio files into a “Playlist”. See above for details.

If you display an HTML Item that includes sound (with a <BGSOUND> tag in the HTML) while a Background Sound is playing, the Background Sound will not be stopped, and you will usually hear both sounds together, which may not be what you want! To avoid this problem, you can write HTML Items that use WorshipSession’s BackgroundSound object instead of using <BGSOUND>, by calling a function inside WorshipSession, as in this Javascript example:

window.parent.SetBackgroundSound ('Kidz Klub/Audio/funky.mp3');

If your HTML Item is “interactive”, you can use the backgroundsound attribute to create the same effect. See Use E1 to create self-singing songs for details.

If you use the SetBackgroundSound function or the backgroundsound attribute, WorshipSession stops any BackgroundSound that’s currently running before starting the new sound. Note that the Background Sound URL must be relative to the folder in which WorshipSession is installed, not to the URL of the HTML Item. See the example Interactive HTML files supplied.

The sound continues to the end, or until you choose another sound. You can silence it by pressing the S key on the keyboard.

Note: The S key includes a gentle “fade out” effect. If you want to cut the sound immediately, use Shift-S instead.

CD tracks

You can play a track from a CD in your computer’s CD-ROM drive. Type F12 then CD:, then the track number you want. (If you are connected to the Internet, WorshipSession attempts to retrieve the track titles.)

The CD replay continues to the end of the track, or until you press the S key on the keyboard.

Note: The S key includes a gentle “fade out” effect. If you want to cut the sound immediately, use Shift-S instead.

If you want to play a number of tracks together, you can specify a range,
like CD:3-5. To play all the tracks on the CD, type CD:1-.

Controlling Sound with the S and L keys

When you press S, the sound fades out, then goes to “pause”, so that you can bring it back by pressing S again. This applies to both sound files and CD tracks. While a sound is playing, the “Time” display at bottom right shows the elapsed time of the sound. If you want to stop the sound prematurely, and restore the normal “Time” display, press Ctrl-S.

While a Background Sound or CD track is playing, you can press L to make the sound loop indefinitely. This feature is particularly useful with MIDI files, which may be just for a single verse of a hymn. Press L again to cause the sound to stop when it reaches the end.

The Background Audio and CD replay features rely on Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, and require version 9 or greater. If you bought WorshipSession on CD-ROM, you should install Windows Media Player 9 from the same disc. Otherwise you can download the latest Media Player from Microsoft.

Playing video files

If you browse to a video file, WorshipSession stretches it to full-screen, and plays it straight through.

Keypresses for video replay:

V	Pause / play the video
Ctrl-V	Stop replay
L	Set or stop looping

If you need more specific control your video, you should embed it into a Web page that includes a button panel. There is an example of this in the /video folder.

Looping video backgrounds

Some video backgrounds are designed to loop indefinitely, and you can specify in the Session that a video should be looped:

• Press F11 (or Ctrl-F11) and browse to a video file.
• Press Ctrl-Enter or AltGr-Enter to add the file to the Session, but not display it.
• Press Alt-L to specify that the Item should be looped.
  (WorshipSession marks the Session Item with / L.)
• Press Enter to display the video. It will loop until you press L or V.

Video files can be huge. If you’re displaying a very large video, you may want to leave it on a CD, rather than use space on your fixed disc. You can enter d:/myvideo.mpg, but you should always check that this works properly on the computer that’s running your presentation, because the data transfer rate from CD varies between different computers. In any case you should be aware that where the video is being read from a CD, there will be a short delay while the disc spins up.

Playing DVD extracts

WorshipSession can play video from DVDs - anything from a few seconds to an entire disc. Using WorshipSession it’s possible to quote just the section you want from a feature film.

To play chapter 4 from a DVD, press F11 and type dvd:4 - press Enter to play the chapter now, or Ctrl-Enter to schedule the chapter, but not play it yet. There are many ways to specify the clip you want to show:

dvd:5-	Start at chapter 5 and play to the end
dvd:6-11	Play chapters from 6 to 11
dvd:31:04-33:16	Play a section bounded by times
dvd:51:00	Start at 51 minutes and play to the end
dvd:5-25:14	Start at chapter 5 and stop at the given time
dvd:25:15-5	Play from the given time to the end of chapter 5

DVDs are great for illustrating a sermon or children’s talk, because they are “non-linear” - using WorshipSession you can include a number of different sections from a disc, in any order, without worrying about cuing up the video (although see below for notes on initial cuing up of the DVD.)

Setting up your computer to play DVDs

To play DVD video in WorshipSession you need -

• A fairly fast PC with (obviously) a DVD drive.
• An “MPEG2 Codec”, which is a software Utility that comes with software DVD players. If you can watch DVDs on your computer, you already have this.
• Windows Media Player, v10 or greater. WorshipSession uses this internally to play DVDs.

Since WorshipSession uses Windows Media Player (WMP) internally, you can use WMP to test the DVD capability of your system. In WMP, select Play, then DVD to show a DVD in WMP. You can also use the WMP User Interface to find the section you want to use - the chapter numbers and times (mm:ss) shown by WMP can be used in WorshipSession.

DVD initialisation

It is common for DVDs to have a prologue at the beginning - apart from the requirement to choose a language for the soundtrack, there may be several copyright messages, and commercials for other films and video games. (Disney DVDs are the very worst offenders in this respect) Unfortunately WMP must usually show all these before it can show the main feature, which tends to make DVDs difficult to use in a church setting.

To get around this problem WorshipSession can be set to play all the prologue sections in advance, muting both the picture and sound, so that you can continue showing songs and Bible verses as normal while the prologue plays silently to itself. By the time you want to show a particular section of the DVD, it should be ready to go.

To initialise a DVD, press F11 and type dvd: and Enter.

WorshipSession shows the DVD control panel, and the prologue is displayed. You may need to select a soundtrack language by clicking with the mouse. WorshipSession tries repeatedly to display the disc’s main menu, even after you move away from the DVD display to show something else. Once the Title menu is reached, WorshipSession displays “DVD Ready” on the Status line, and it should then be possible to jump quickly to any part of the feature.

Comments in DVD Items

When specifying DVD extracts, you can add a comment in brackets, to help identify the Item, or to remind you which disc should be used. WorshipSession ignores anything after a ( character, so you can make entries less cryptic like this:

DVD: (Chicken Run)
DVD:1/5-14:00 (They are NOT organised!)

Displaying Scripture verses

WorshipSession can display Bible verses, ranging from a single verse to a whole book. To display Scripture, press the F10 key on the keyboard, and type in the Scripture reference. As you type, WorshipSession displays the selected verses in the selection pane.

Use a colon, semicolon, or dot to separate the chapter and verse, and if you want to specify a range, use the - key. You can use common abbreviations for the names of books. Some example references are given below.

jn3:16	2ti2:8-10	Lk8
1ki 17:12	Mt5:5	zep3.17

Re-editing Bible references

You can change the reference for a Bible passage after it has been displayed. For example if you display Eph2:21, then you realise that you should have displayed Eph2:21-22, you can press Ctrl-Enter or AltGr-Enter, re-edit the reference and press Enter. Note that the new reference replaces the first in the Session. If you press Esc while re-editing, the reference will be deleted from the Session.

Installing alternative Bible versions

WorshipSession works with Bibles formatted in HTML. You can download some Bible versions from the Website, while others are supplied on the WorshipSession CD-ROM.

The Anglicised NIV Bible is available, but for copyright reasons cannot be downloaded - it is available only on CD-ROM.

To select a Bible version in WorshipSession, press Shift-F10. WorshipSession displays the abbreviations for all the versions you have installed. Use the Up and Down arrows to select the version, and press Enter.

The selected version will become your ‘default’ version for display of Bible passages, and for searching as described below. You can override this default by specifying a version in brackets after the reference, as shown here. (Obviously you must ensure that the specified version is actually installed on the system.)

Search facilities

WorshipSession includes “free text searching” to help you find Items, either songs or Scripture passages.

If you want to search the song database, press Ctrl-F12 or AltGr-F12. Type a few words, such as “at the throne” and press Enter. The type-in box disappears as WorshipSession searches in the background. When the search is complete, the Item selection box appears with all the songs that contain the search string. Use the Up and Down arrow keys to select the Item you want.

You can also use this feature to display all the songs by a particular author or publisher.

If you want to search the Bible, press Ctrl-F10 or AltGr-F10. Type a few words, such as “in very nature” and press Enter. The type-in box disappears as WorshipSession searches in the background. When the search is complete, the Item selection box appears with “chapter and verse” selections suitable for immediate display. Use the Up and Down arrow keys to select the Item you want. WorshipSession briefly shows the text of the verse in the status line to aid your selection.

The list of matches shows single verses, but you can easily change, e.g. “Philippians 2:6” into “Philippians 2:6-” to display the whole passage starting at the matching verse.

Note: The Bible search looks through the text of the currently selected Bible version. If you want to look for matches in another version, you should first use Shift-F10 to select that version.

WorshipSession searches in the background, so you can continue to display songs, etc during the search. For most purposes this is unnecessary, because the search completes in just a few seconds (depending on the speed of your computer). Also note that searching places heavy demands on computer resources, so the PC may be quite unresponsive until the search finishes.

If a search produces more than 70 matches, only the first 70 are shown, but the total number of matches will be displayed. Also note that when a large number of matches is produced, the search takes longer.

You can cancel a search while it is running by pressing Esc. (This also displays the Session, as it normally would. Press Esc again to hide the Session.)

All about Loops

WorshipSession can show a series of text items, one after the other, and repeat them in a Loop. Although primarily designed for showing announcements, WorshipSession’s Loop facilities are versatile and powerful.

What is a Loop exactly?

A Loop is a simple list of text Items, stored in a Loop file. When you press F11 and browse to a Loop file (with a wsl file extension), WorshipSession displays each Item for a predetermined period of time, then shows the next Item. At the end, WorshipSession loops back to the top. Loop files are normally stored in the /loops folder, and their appearance is controlled by a stylesheet - /loops/ws_loopstyle.css. You can also embed formatting instructions into Loops to vary their appearance.

Managing Loop files

In WorshipSession, Loop files are managed using the F9 key. Begin by pressing Shift-F9, to select which Loop file you want to manage. WorshipSession shows a list of all the *.wsl files in the /loops folder. Use the arrow keys to select a file, and press Enter to open it.

Editing Loop Items is very simple. Use the Up arrow and Down arrow keys to select Items, and edit them in the type-in box.

Keypresses for editing Loop Items:

Enter	Save your changes
Esc	Exit without saving
Shift Up Shift Down	Re-order Items
Ctrl-Insert	Insert a new Item
Ctrl-Delete	Delete the current Item
In addition to the above WorshipSession keypresses, the following standard Windows keypresses are useful for editing Loop Items:
Home	Cursor to start of line
Ctrl-Home	Cursor to start of Item
End	Cursor to end of line
Ctrl-End	Cursor to end of Item
Ctrl-Left arrow	Cursor to previous word
Ctrl-Right arrow	Cursor to next word
Ctrl-Backspace	Delete word to the left of cursor
Note that in the above standard Windows keypresses, you can’t use AltGr instead of Ctrl.

Creating a new Loop

Creating new Loop files is very simple. Press Shift-F9, and instead of using the Up arrow and Down arrow keys to select an existing file, just type the name of the new file. The file will be initialised, and you can immediately start to type Loop Items.

Showing Loops

Loop files can be shown in WorshipSession using the F11 key, and you can also use the Add Item ("A2") Utility to add a loop to your index, permitting immediate access with F12. WorshipSession does not start at the beginning of the loop - it shows the Current Loop Item, which is generally the next in sequence. Just like the current Session Item, the current Loop Item is remembered when you stop showing the Loop.

Formatting Loop Items

If a Loop Item begins with a # (hash) character, the Item will be interpreted as a command, rather than being displayed. You can embed commands to change the background image behind the text, the time each Item will be shown, and many other parameters. Loop Item commands look like this:

#Align left #Font 36pt #Width 50

WorshipSession does not apply an inter-Item delay to embedded commands, so these three commands will be applied simultaneously, to the next Item displayed.

Here is a list of embedded commands for Loop Items:

#Delay	Time in seconds, that each Item should be displayed.
#Style	Scroll (default), Jump or Transition. The transition style is controlled by the filter rule in /loops/ws_loopstyle.css.
#Align	left, center or right.
#Class	Invoke a set of style rules in /loops/ws_loopstyle.css.
#Font	CSS font rule to augment or replace rules in the stylesheet. Examples: #Font 72pt #Font italic 36pt "Swiss"
#Background	Show this image behind Items. If no path is given, the image is assumed to be in the /loops/images folder, or in the /backgrounds folder. If no file extension is specified, .jpg or .gif will be applied. To restore transparent background, use #Image none. Note: the image is not scaled, so its size must match your screen (especially on dual-screen systems).
#Image	Show this image as a Loop Item. (Note this is the only embedded command that implies a delay, like a normal text Item.) If no path is given, the image is assumed to be in the /loops/images folder. If no file extension is specified, .jpg or .gif will be applied. Example: #Image:Church logo Note: the image is not scaled, so it must fit in the available space.
#Left	Push the text to the right by this amount (in percent). Essential when using “side bar” backgrounds. Default is 0. Note that you will need to specify #Width, to avoid the text spilling off the right side (especially on dual-screen systems).
#Top	Specify the level (in percent) where the text should begin drawing. #Top=50 will leave the top half of the screen free (for the background image). Default is 0.
#Width	Specify the width (in percent) into which the text should wrap. Default is 90. If #Left has not been specified, the text area will be centered on the screen.
#Manual	The automatic loop timer is disabled, so the current Loop Item remains displayed. Press A to restore timed operation.
#Next Page	WorshipSession will advance to the next Session Item - note this makes a “non-looping loop”!
-text	Omit this Item. Any Item that begins with a dash will not be displayed, so you can suppress the display of an Item without deleting it.

Automatic “catch-up”

When a Loop is shown in WorshipSession, it does not begin at the beginning, but after the Item most recently displayed, whether the previous display was a few seconds, or a few months ago. However this does not mean you need to repeat your formatting commands down the Loop file, because WorshipSession “catches up” all the commands from the beginning of the file to the Current Item, before it begins display. You only need to be aware that any commands specified at the end of the file will not be applied until they are encountered, and these could affect the display of Items at the top of the loop, when it repeats.

Using HTML in loops

You can type HTML into loops, although this needs to be used carefully because of the “3D effect” that is added to the text when it is displayed. Elements such as <U> (underline) and <Q> (quotation) can be very useful. In the stylesheet, rules defined for the <Q> element make it suitable for displaying the scripture reference for verses. You can see the effect in the Joshua 1:7 image above. When using HTML in Loops, you should always check the effect before showing it “live”, especially if you have a dual-screen setup.

Controlling loops manually

You may want to control the display of Loop Items - for example to co-incide with a speaker. If you press A, or include the #Manual Loop Command, the automatic timer is disabled, and the currently displayed Loop Item remains displayed.

Notes:
• If a #Manual Loop Command is the first Item in the Loop, the first non-command Item will be displayed.
• Both the A keypress and the #Manual Loop Command toggle the auto / manual mode, so you can have a Loop that’s partly manual and partly automatic.
• Because the function toggles between auto and manual, it's usually best to have an even number of #Manual Loop Commands - otherwise the auto/manual behaviour will be reversed when the loop repeats.
• Automatic catch-up (see above) applies to the #Manual Loop Command, so if a Loop is started part-way through, it should behave appropriately.

Information Messages

WorshipSession offers a convenient way of presenting time-critical information, without having to disrupt a church service to do it. Information Messages are shown in the top-right corner of the screen, and the normal display of songs and other Items is unaffected.

To create a Message, press Shift-F11, then type the text of the message and press return. The message is displayed immediately at top-right, and remains displayed until you hide it by pressing M on the keyboard.

Note that the Message is added to the Session like any other Item. This means you can pre-plan Message displays, and you can return to previous Messages.

If you press M again, the most recently displayed message is re-displayed.

You can specify the display style for Messages. The default style shows red text in a red box. To change the style, type “hash digit” at the beginning of the Message text, for example

#2Message in blue box

The #2 is an instruction to WorshipSession to use style number two. These two characters are removed before the Message is displayed.

The defined Message styles are:

#1	Red text in red box (default style)
#2	Black text on a blue background
#3	Italic text with animated colour-change effect
#4	Pink text with right-to-left scrolling effect
#5	Huge text suitable for Titles. Clear the screen before using this

Note: the Animated Message styles require some processing resource from your computer. If your computer is slow, you will notice a decrease in performance while the Message is being displayed.

Users who are expert in HTML can tweak the various Message styles, or add their own styles. Contact the WorshipSession team for details.

Messages are not displayed over the top of Flash or PowerPoint presentations.

Re-editing Messages

You can change the Message after it has been displayed, for example to correct spelling mistakes or change the display style. If the Message is still the Current Item, press Ctrl-Enter or AltGr-Enter, re-edit the Message and press Enter. Note that the edited Message will replace the original in the Session. If you press Esc while re-editing, the Message will be deleted from the Session.

All about Groups

WorshipSession can “Group” Items together, so that they display on a single scrolling page, instead of as a series of separate slides. A group can be assembled from many different sources, but it appears as one document when it is displayed.

“Grouping” is primarily intended to support the display of liturgy, and it is also useful for song medleys, bible verses, and sermon notes.

To create a Group, press the [ key. You can type a name, or comment for the group, then press Enter. WorshipSession creates two Items in the Session - the first begins the Group, and the second ends it. Any Items inserted between these two “bookmarks” will be Grouped (i.e. shown on a single page) when they are displayed.

The two Session Items represent the top and bottom markers of the Group. When you display the top marker you will see the first group Item. If you select the bottom marker, you will see the blank page you would normally expect at the bottom of WorshipSession Items.

NOTES:

• Items displayed in Groups use a separate stylesheet - /style/ws_group.css.
• The ws_group.css stylesheet hides “copyright” and “intro” elements, and also shrinks the “end” elements between Items, to show them close together.
• In the current version there is no 3D effect on grouped Items.
• If you include an image in a group, it will not be scaled to full screen, but appears centered, at 1:1 scale.
• Songs cannot be transposed, and verses cannot be hidden with *, while the song is in a Group, although it is possible to apply these effects to an un-grouped song, then move the song into a Group. You cannot show the feature for Grouped songs.
• If you include a Background Sound in a Group, it will begin to play when the first Item in the Group is displayed. If any Item in the Group includes a backgroundsound attribute, only the last Background Sound in the Group will ultimately be effective.

Printing Items

To print the current Item, right-click the mouse on the text of the Item, and select “Print”. WorshipSession formats Items according to instructions in the @media print section of the current style sheet. If you are using the style sheets as shipped, songs and Bible passages will be printed in a format suitable for making overhead projection acetates. If the current Item has no @media print in its style sheet, it will be printed as it appears on the screen.

For dual-screen systems, it is usually best to switch off the dual-screen display (using the "D3" Utility) before printing Items.

The header and footer on the printed page will be those set in Internet Explorer. For a completely clean printout, start Internet Explorer and select File, Page Setup... then delete the codes in the Header and Footer boxes. Press OK, close Internet Explorer then re-start WorshipSession.

Beginning a new Session

When you’re ready to clear out all last week’s songs and begin a new Session, press F4. You will be asked to enter a name for the new Session. This name will be used as a filename to store the Session in the /ws_session folder. If you don’t enter a name, just today’s date will be used.

You can configure the new Session to contain “standard Items” that you use every week, such as your welcome message, church logo or whatever. See the B3 Utility for details.

If you want to restore an old Session, press Ctrl-F4 and browse to the Session file in the /ws_session folder. Your current Session will be saved before the old Session is opened.

You can also add the Items from a previous Session into the current Session, enabling you to prepare standard “template” services. To Add Items from a Session, press F11 and browse to the Session file. All the Items in the Session will be imported at the current Item position.

Working with the Background Pane

In WorshipSession, the songs and Bible passages are written onto a transparent Display Pane, and the Background Pane is visible behind the text. You can change the colour of the Packground Pane, or load an image behind the text.

Multi-layered HTML display

WorshipSession’s display makes extensive use of transparent panes, which are layered one on another as shown. The Background Pane is opaque, and can be loaded with any colour, image, video or Web page. Transparent panes are stacked in front - the Display Pane, the Message Pane, and finally the Session display.

When you press F11, you can load any HTML file or image into the Display Pane. Unless the content is transparent, it will obscure the Background Pane. If you use Ctrl-F11 instead, you send content to the Background Pane.

Changing the background colour

To change the colour of the background behind songs and Bible passages, press Ctrl-F11 or AltGr-F11. WorshipSession displays the ‘browse folder’ box just as if you had pressed F11, but instead of entering a filename, press #, then the name of a colour. (The colour names are those recognised by CSS. There is a huge range of colour names ranging from completely obvious to really obscure.) Alternatively use a colour reference expressed in Hex, either three digits like #006, or six digits like #404000.

For more information on specifying HTML colours, see this section in the article ‘Establishing a House Style’.

Your colour selection is shown in the Session with square brackets, like this [Background colour - darkblue], and it remains in force until you place another colour, or some other HTML content, onto the Background Pane.

Shortcut: To restore the default background colour defined by your stylesheet, press Ctrl-F11, then # on its own, then Enter.

You can also use the ‘#colour’ form to generate solid colour on the Display Pane, using F11.

Setting a background image

Showing an image on the Background Pane is just like showing it on the Display Pane - press Ctrl-F11 or AltGr-F11, navigate to the image, and press Enter. The image will be shown behind the Current Item in the Display Pane. NOTE: if the Display Pane content is not transparent, the background image will not be seen.

The background image is shown in the Session with square brackets, like this [Image - AngelTrumpet], and it remains in force until you place some other content onto the Background Pane.

You can also show a whole folder of images in a slideshow. press Ctrl-F11 or AltGr-F11, navigate to the folder containing the images, press *, and Enter. See ‘Slide show function’ above for details. Note that the slideshow has no manual control option when displayed on the Background Pane.

The image on the Background Pane is stretched to full screen, and cannot be panned or zoomed.

Setting a background video

You can use the Background Pane to show a video behind text. In general we don’t recommend the use of video behind worship songs, but there are situations where the combination of video and text can be very powerful.

Showing a video on the Background Pane is just like showing it on the Display Pane - press Ctrl-F11 or AltGr-F11, navigate to the video file, and press Enter. The video will be stretched to full-screen, and shown behind the Current Item. NOTE: if the Current Item is not transparent, the video will not be seen.

If your ‘background video’ appears on top the Display Pane content rather than behind it, you need to tweak your computer’s video settings as described in Showing video clips.

The video is shown in the Session with square brackets, like this [Video - blue waves], and it continues to play to the end, or until you place some other content onto the Background Pane. Shortcut: To restore the default background colour defined by your stylesheet, press Ctrl-F11, then # on its own, then Enter.

Keypresses for video replay:

V	Pause / play the video
Ctrl-V	Stop replay
L	Set or stop looping

Exiting the software

To stop WorshipSession, press Alt-F4. WorshipSession remembers your Session including the current Item position - when it is restarted the current Item will be reloaded.