The Stage Screen in ProPresenter is a powerful tool. It can be used to provide those on stage with a confidence monitor showing current and next slide text or even to show a custom designed layout to show your ProPresenter operator the information most important to them. To access the window used to edit these layouts, either select the Screens-Edit Layouts option in the menu bar or press cmd+4 (on Mac) or ctrl+4 (on Windows).
If this is your first launch of ProPresenter you will see one layout that we have pre-loaded (as it looks in the screenshot above). You can right-click on any layouts here and copy, paste, duplicate, delete, or rename them!
Creating a New Stage Display Layout
To create a new Stage layout, click the + icon next to the Stage Layouts heading. When you do this it will give you options of applying one of our pre-loaded Stage Layouts to start from or adding a blank one.
You can use our pre-loaded layouts as is or you can use them as a starting point and add/delete items, rearrange them, or change their attributes. Or, as I mentioned before, you can create a blank layout. If you are starting from blank or using the pre-loaded layouts as a starting point, you will likely want to add different items. To do this, click the large + icon in the upper left of the window.
The Basics
The first options relate to the current and next slide content. You can add text-only of either, a preview image of the slide, or the slide notes you entered in Edit Mode for that slide. You can also add a “Screen Preview”. This “Screen Preview” can be of any of your audience or stage screens from the screen configuration window. This replaces and expands on the idea of the “live slide” feature you may have used previously in ProPresenter 6.
Next, you can add a Chord Chart (that you add to slides inside of Edit Mode), the Stage Display Message (that you can fire from the toolbar with the Stage icon), the Planning Center Live timer, any of your clocks and timers that have been created, the system clock, a video countdown timer, an object filled with the group color and name of your current or next slide, or an object with the capture status (if you are streaming or recording with ProPresenter)
You can also add shapes or text boxes to any of your stage display layouts. One way this will be extremely helpful is if you wish to label different sections of the layout!
When you add an item, it will add to the center of the layout, just as it would in the presentation “Edit Mode”. You can then adjust the size and position by dragging or using the “Shape” tab on the right side.
Editing Text Appearance
One of the great features of this new version of ProPresenter is that you have full edit capabilities over the appearance of any text on your Stage Display layouts. So, when you select a shape on your stage layout that contains text, you will have a shape and text tab appear on the right side of the editor. If you open the text tab, you will notice it looks identical to the text tab in the Edit Mode of presentations.
From this window you can change the font, the font style, font size, attributes, color scaling options, alignment, as well as add a stroke or shadow, adjust your lines, apply list attributes, or change what text is linked to the box.
Advanced Shape and Text Options
As mentioned above, you can add a shape or text box to your stage layout. The shape can be filled with a number of different things via the shape tab on the right. Just check the box next to fill and choose your desired option (see below)
You can fill the shape with a color, gradient, a media element, a web page, a video input, a specific slide object, the current or next slide image, a screen preview, chord chart, Planning Center Live timer, Group Color, or the Capture Status Color. Most of these are available via the menu that pops up when you click the large + button in the layout editor, but you can quickly adjust what a shape is filled with via this fill menu in the shape tab.
For text, you can change what text is “linked” to a shape via the text tab on the right. Just check “Linked Text” and choose your desired option from the source menu
Most of these follow the options in the main menu when you are adding an element to the layout, but like the fill option on the shape tab, you can quickly change what text your object is linked to via this menu and there are some additional options as well. See below for some more information about a few of these:
Slide Count- With this linked text option, you can show what slide number you are currently on, how many slides are remaining in the selected presentation or just the total number of slides.
Playlist- With this linked text option, you can show what the name of the current item is, what the name of the next item in the playlist is, the current header your presentation is under in your playlist, or what the next header is.
Auto Advance Time- With this linked text option, you can show the time for any set auto advance on either the presentation or announcement layer.
Operator Notes- With this linked text option, you could display any operator notes you have for the currently selected item.
Capture- With this linked text option, you can show either the current status of your capture or the elapsed time if it is active.
Sending Your Layouts to Your Screens
Once you have set a stage layout, you can actually go ahead and assign it to one of your stage screens directly from this window. To do this, click on the “Show” button in the bottom right of the window and choose which of your Stage Screens to apply this layout. To learn more about assigning your screens, go here.
Another way you can determine what stage layouts go to which screen is by adding an Action to a particular slide. You can do this by right-clicking on a slide, hover on “Add Action”, and choose “Stage Display Layout”. A small window will pop up with an arrow pointing to the slide you are applying this action to. From here you will see your Stage Display screens listed with a drop-down menu next to each, where you can choose your desired layout.
The last option here relates to where you want this (and subsequent if you choose) slides to send. You can select “Stage Only” which will mean that the last thing sent to your audience screens will stay there even as you click through this (and subsequent if you choose) slide(s). When you want to change this back you would add an action to the first slide you want to be sent back to the audience screens and choose “Stage + Audience”.
Note: Stage Display Layout actions will stay applied until you manually change the Stage Display Layout in the Layouts Editor or another slide with a different Stage Display Layout Action is selected.