Stop Guessing What's On Your Screens! 👀 ProPresenter Multi-View Setup Tutorial

Have you ever been running ProPresenter on Sunday morning and found yourself constantly thinking, "I wonder what's showing up on the back screen right now?" Or, "Did those lower thirds actually show up properly?" Or maybe you've been in that frustrating situation where you click on a slide and you think it went to the right output, but you're not really sure because you can only see one preview at a time. So you're switching between different preview windows, trying to keep track of 4 different outputs, and honestly, it's stressful. You shouldn't have to guess what your audience is seeing. Thankfully, in ProPresenter, there's a way for you to see your main screen, your lower third output, your back screen, and your camera input all at the same time in one preview window. No more switching around, no more guessing, no more wondering. Well, hey everybody, I'm Joshua Riggs, the founder of worshipresources.church, and this is video 4 in our 5-part series, 5 Hacks Every ProPresenter Volunteer Needs to Know. Today we're solving the problem of not being able to see all of your outputs at once. So I'm going to show you how to set up a multiview display right inside of ProPresenter that allows you to see every output in ProPresenter. Be sure to stay to the end, and that's where I'll show you a few tips on how to make sure that your multiview stays exactly the way you configured it, even when other volunteers are scheduled to serve. So let's dive right in and I'll show you how to set up multiview in ProPresenter.

This is a typical setup with your main screen output, your lower third output, and then your back screen or your stage display. But I want to see all three of these screens, and I also want to see our video input. I'm going to press Ctrl+V, and I want to see our camera input as well, all on this preview monitor. So this is how it's done. I'm gonna press Ctrl+V to get rid of the media bin. I'm gonna go up to Screens and then click Configure Screens. From there, I'm going to add a new stage screen. So I'm gonna click the plus button and I'm gonna do a placeholder, new placeholder, and I'm gonna do custom size. Now this is helpful depending on how you want your screens to be. If you wanna have 4 screens in a quadrant, or if you wanna have them all stacked on top of one another, you can format it however you want to, but this custom size will be beneficial. I'm gonna go ahead and stack mine on top of one another, so I'm gonna have to do some math. First off, we're gonna call this MultiView. I know the width is going to be 1920, and then my height is going to be determined how many outputs I wanna display at the same time. So a typical display is 1920 by 1080.

So I'm going to take 1080 times 4, and that's 4,320.

I'm going to click OK, and you can see this will be the size of my MultiView window. I'm going to go ahead and label this MultiView here so it's clear. Now I'm gonna close out of that and I'm going to go to the More tab and click Stage Editor. And this is where I need to create a stage display with all of my outputs. So I'm gonna click the plus button, click blank, and from here I want the size of this to be the same size as my MultiView. So you can see right now my size is 1920 by 1080, but I'm gonna choose my new MultiView screen, 1920 by 4320. I'm gonna go ahead and change this background color. Instead of making it black, I'm gonna make it this light gray. And from here, I'm going to add in some windows.

There are multiple ways to add these preview windows.

You can do the current slide text or the current slide image or the current slide notes. You can do the next slide text, image, notes. But what we want is the preview window. We're gonna preview the main screens, the lower thirds, and the back screen. You also can do this with a shape. If you were to add a shape, and then you can adjust the size of the shape to whatever you want it to be. And instead of filling it with color, you can fill it with the screen preview of main screens, and it will fill that way. But I'm just gonna use this because it's simple. I'm gonna click the dropdown and click main screens. So now I'm gonna go ahead and make this my, the correct position. So I want this to be a 1920 by 1080. And now I'm gonna hold down the Shift key and drag this window in to make this a little bit smaller so that it fits easily inside this box. Remember, we're gonna do 4 different outputs on this multiview. So I'm going to go ahead and drag this all the way up to the top.

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I'm gonna zoom out a little bit, make that 15% so I can see the entire window. So now I'm going to hold down Option and drag and copy this slide, making sure that it's evenly spaced. So it looks like I need to adjust a little bit, and now they're all evenly spaced. So now I can grab all, all of them by holding down Command and position them center into the window. So I have my main screen here. Now I want to have my lower third, so instead of filling with the main screen, I'm going to fill with lower thirds. Here I'm going to make this the back screen, so I'm gonna fill with the back screen. And this one I'm gonna fill with my camera input. So I'm gonna go to video input and I'm gonna choose camera 1. I only have one camera. Camera 1 is what I want it to show up as. So now we're, we're well on our way, but I'm going to format this a little bit more to make it really stand out.

I'm going to go ahead and add a stroke to this box.

So I'm going to make that 5 and let's make this blue. It can be whatever color you want it to be. I'm going to do the same for here, make that 5, and I'll make this one yellow. Make that 5, and we'll go green for the back screen. And then one more, and we'll add the stroke, 5 width, and we'll make that red for the camera input. So now let's go ahead and, uh, really up our game by adding some text to indicate which screen is what. So I'm gonna click on the text box. So we'll call this Main Screens. I'm going to drag this and go ahead and increase the font size of this. Uh, that looks good. And let's go ahead and make it all caps. And I actually want to choose Helvetica, uh, bold. So now we could put this anywhere, but I'm actually gonna put this over here on the side. So first I'm gonna copy these and move these over so I have some more space. So I'll click main screens and I'll rotate this text block. So go to shape and it will rotate this 90 degrees. Gonna go ahead and shrink this so it fits in the bounding box and then put it right there. So I'm gonna hold down Option key, drag, and I'm gonna add 3 more. And of course we will rename these. So I'll click on this one and rename this, uh, camera. This one is back screen, and this one is lower thirds. Okay, so now we have our multi-view setup. So now let's see how we can view it. So I go back to Show, and instead of me clicking on the main screen, I'm gonna change this to multi-view. And you can see that it doesn't quite look right. Right now I'm just seeing the back screen.

And that's because I haven't applied the stage screen to the multi-view output.

So if I click on Screens and go to Multi-view, currently the stage screen is set to Current and Next. So just so I'm clear, if I go back to the Stage Editor, we only have two layouts. We have the Current and Next layout and this one that's called Blank. So I'm going to rename this by up here on the right and call this Multi View so that it's really clear what it is. You can also right-click and rename that way. I'm gonna go back to the show, click on screens, and then I want multi-view, the multi-view output to be the multi-view stage display. And now when I change that, you can see I have my main screens, my lower thirds, my stage display, and my camera input. And here you can drag these windows to make this as big or as small as you want it to be. So now as I advance through the text, through the lyrics, I can see exactly what's showing up on lower thirds, exactly what's showing up on the stage display, and exactly what's showing up on the camera input.

Obviously you can set up your stage display in any configuration using that same system. You can get really creative with colors and backgrounds and formatting, or you can keep it simple by just showing the preview windows and showing exactly what's being displayed on each output. Now, before you go, let me show you one more thing that is crucial because I've run across this problem multiple times, and that's when the multiview gets messed up.

So let me show you what's, what's going on and how you can prevent it. So sometimes someone will add an action and let's say add action, and I want to change the stage action. And I'm going to change this multiview to current and next. So when I click on this slide, it changes the multiview, and now I don't have my multiview display because this action is telling the stage display for the multiview to change to this layout. So I'm gonna go back to the action and, uh, edit the action stage, and I'm gonna change that to no change for now. So if I change it back from multiview to here, but how can we make sure that the multiview always stays multiview? Well, there's a couple of things you can do that can't fully prevent it, but it can at least help. I'm going to click on Screens and go to Configure Screens. And this multiview here, I'm going to rename this Do Not Change. So it's gonna rename the multiview. So now if I were to right-click on this slide and go to Add Action, Stage, and I click See Multiview and it says do not change, that is an indication to the operator, hey, I'm not supposed to touch that. Now I can change my back screen all I want, but I'm not gonna change the multiview.

And that little tip will help your volunteers or help anybody who's programming to know we're not gonna change the multi-view display. Now that you've set up your multi-view, you can have complete clarity over every single output and input inside of ProPresenter. No more wondering what's showing up where or switching between different previews or accidentally sending the wrong content to the wrong screen. This was hack number 4 in our series, 5 Hacks Every ProPresenter Volunteer Needs to Know. If this solved a problem you've been dealing with, will you hit that like button? It really helps other church tech volunteers just like you find solutions like this one. And definitely subscribe if you haven't already. And as always, if you have any questions, drop a comment below and let me know. What other ProPresenter problems are driving you crazy, or what would you like in a future video? I read every comment and I'll do my best to respond quickly. Hey, if you want to watch the other videos in this series, you can find them right here. Thanks again for watching, everybody. Let's get better together for His glory.