worship tricks [first series]

no 47 : arkaos

arkaos is a VJ programme. i mentioned it a whle back. but whilst in canada i have been trying it out for presentations and it really is good!!! thanks to andrew jones for putting me onto it.

the way it works is that you can put either still images or movies (quicktime or swf) in a visuals window. you then simply drag these onto a key on a visual representation of your keyboard. there are also a series of effects (movie effects, transitions etc) that you can also drag onto keys. so you can see this keyboard here has a series of pictures and effects on it that i have set up for a presentation (you can have either an effect, a movie or image, or both on a key). then you simply press the appropriate key to play what is on it or use the effect that is on it. it really is simple but very powerful. it's good both for running visuals, but i also used it with words - a little tricky in that you have to set the words up as jpg files. but the beauty of it is that unlike powerpoint or appleworks where you have to run things in sequence you can do the keys in whatever order you like. and you can layer them i.e. overlay words over a video.

here's a couple of screen shots. now i've only just tried this out so i've a long way to go. the good news is you can download a 20 day trial which is the full version (it's 40mb so make sure you have a fast connection!). the bad news is that it isn't free - it's about $250 i think. anyway try it out and see what you think...