is anyone pleased with media shout 6?

For the record, my experience of MS6 is very good, it far outstrips previous versions.

The trick in learning about MS6 when coming from previous versions, I found, was to completely forget how you did things in previous versions and come to MS6 with no baggage from previous versions, it's easier to pick up that way. I did take some time to realise this, but once I did, it all made sense.

Best wishes.

Stephen, I can concur with you that MS 6 is quite the different animal. We finally upgraded from MS 2.5 in October 2017. It has taken five months for me to get a good feel for how to make things work pretty smoothly. I'm still learning new tricks each time I work with it, and know you will too, given the chance/patience. One last thing: I would take Ryan's offer and sit with him or another support person for a bit. They are SO helpful and willing to help. Good luck!

Hi Stephen, I too have found MediaShout 6 a real pain. We upgraded from the last release of MediaShout 5.

Version 6 killed off several things that we regularly used, and provided no meaningful alternatives.

For example, our song-leaders sometimes go with either of two possible following pages in a cue - the following page, or some other (e.g. continuing on to the bridge, or going back to the verse). In preparation for this, we would select (click on) the alternative - in the example, the verse. Then, if the singer started into the bridge, we would hit the space bar; if they jumped back to the verse, we would hit the Enter key. There is no equivalent in MediaShout 6 that I have found - you have to use the mouse to display the alternative (which is not necessarily in view).

Another feature I regularly used and loved was typing the cue number (or sub-number, or both) - e.g. "24" to jump to cue 24, or ".5" to jump to the fifth page of the current cue, or "22.3" to jump directly to the third page of cue 22. Now, queues don't even have numbers. Again, I haven't found any practical alternative.

In summary, I think the total elimination of keyboard shortcuts (apart from Space) is a desparately bad move.

The other thing I *hate* is the lack of retention of view context. Consider when I have two scripts open in separate tabs, with the current selected and displayed cue being multiple page heights of cues down the list on the current tab. I then switch to the other tab - perhaps to edit something that will be displayed later. Then, I switch back to the first tab - the view is now right at the top of the list. The selected item is still the same, but I have to scroll down the list to return to my previous viewing position. Personally, I can't see that as any form of improvement or "more intuitive".

I have also encountered terrible behaviour in the "in-place" cue editors. If I click into the text in a cue and then delete something, or press Enter to insert a line-break, sometimes (it seems to have some pattern, but I have not yet fully understood it), the insert point (the cursor) jumps to the top of the page. Therefore, clicking into the cue, pressing enter and then typing something sometimes puts the new text where you clicked, and sometimes at the top of the page!

Again, following some kind of pattern that I have still not been able to fathom, if I click into a text queue, perform some editing (most commonly, pasting some text) then highlight some text in the page and attempt to apply an alignment (such as "centred"), sometimes the alignment is applied to the first line of the page instead of the selected text. I have found that, by performing a few meaningless clicks and selects between the paste and the selection of the actual text I want to align, the alignment is reliably performed on the correct text. I don't find this particularly intuitive or "easier to use".

A similar issue to the issue described above with view context occurs when a page in a cue is deleted or pasted - the view jumps to the top of the list of pages, although the selection is still at the location of the change made. Further, when a page is deleted, the content of the cue editor often doesn't reload - the content of the deleted page is still displayed. Taken together with the view context issue, this can mislead you into thinking that you did not actually hit delete (as in, the "Delete" key on the keyboard), which has several times led to the operator hitting delete again, and so deleting a page that was not intended to be deleted.

While MediaShout 5 had some horror issues with its editor, that was the only regularly encountered problem with that version. Now, I just hate using MediaShout, unless I can simply compose a script by dragging in some existing cues - no editing required. If I need to create a new cue, for example, for a new song that we are about to start using, I shudder in anticipation of the frustration that lies ahead.

So Ryan, if you are interested in giving some advice on these issues, I would be happy to receive it.

Like everybody else I basically had to forget what I learned with previous versions, but once I got over the hump I have loved it. I can build presentations so much faster and editing on the fly is so much easier. We have a pastor that regularly goes off script so being able to adapt is a necessity. The only complaint I have about 6 is the announcement loops. While it is easier to have multiple loops, managing them and throwing a cue in at the last moment is a bit of a pain. This was where 5 shined. Managing announcements in 5 was a breeze.

Hi Ryan,

We already use the Workspaces feature, but find that switching between workspaces takes too many clicks when we are busy - we often need to edit a script (so needing the editor), but also frequently need to handle scripts having multiple pages. We tend to use a Workspace we created called "Minimal Edit", that gives us a small editor, but dedicates most of the screen to the pages of the script.

This is all exacerbated by the fact that we are currently in temporary accommodation, and therefore obliged to use a notebook computer. As the screen is not full HD, our working area is painfully small, making v6 even more problemmatic for us...

I would love to use the 'sections' option to put all of our sermon cues in a group. Is there any progress in making that work? Currently if we use a section MediaShout crashes every time you advance cues in that section.

Same here. I learned ver 4 first. Loved it except the text editing in cue. Had so much hope for ver 5. Ver 5 was such a fiasco so I will not even talk about it. So ver 6 was such an improvement over ver 5 so I liked it. AT first impression. Ver 6 had a lot of bugs and issues. It came a long way to the way it is so it is Ok for me for now. Still have some bugs that shoudn't even been there. Still needs ergonomic improvement and more of control of work spaces. But I have hope it will evolve into something really intuitive, easy to use and stable, fast acting.

Mine started to work so slow it feels like Windows 95 on 286 PC. And I have i7-7700 CPU, 32GB ram, SSD, 2 dedicated graphic cards. Any updates to optimize performance any time soon?

Hi Ryan,
The reason I use 2 GPUs is that we have 2 projectors (stage and backstage) and we use VGA ports on both of them (to rewire them to HDMI will be very difficult dur to the fact of how wire are hidden in the structure), the other 2 control monitors use DVI ports. That's why we have what we have. There were no problems with performance so far, I built PC a year ago and it only runs MediaShout on Sundays, antivirus software is up to date and other software have no performance issues. No malware present in system or parasite software as well.
I think I will try to reinstall MediaShout to see if that will fix it. I only wander about one thing. When we were upgrading form Ver 4 to ver 5 and ver 6 in order to save time I carried over the song database with all formatting. And I also notice that it was taking too much time to insert lyrics because it was taking too long just to open dialog window due to 3,000 songs in library. After I cleaned it from songs we did not not use in last 3 years that problem went away.

So far, I am not pleased with MS6. Besides being very slow, it is buggy with lots of program failures resulting in restarts.

If it worked pretty well, I'd invest in learning the differences. But I can't get it to work long enough and quickly enough to get through the simplest task of building a presentation.

Hi Ryan,

Yes our system has much higher specs than the requirement.

I did download and install the update Saturday night. Not sure if that impacted the performance or not. We did get through services on Sunday with only 1 embarrassing glitch, and that was human error, seemingly.

Still evaluating. Lots of changes.

Do you know where I could find passcodes for 6 as I grew fond of it and 5 support is no longer available. Do they still sell pass codes for 6?

I have been very pleased with V6 but VERY disappointed with V7. Why do you no longer support V6 when it isn't even a year old yet?

We went from MS4 to MS6 at my church and I have not been happy with the extra steps I have to do when inserting my song library. When we went from 2 to 4 all I had to do was import the library and they imported in stanza order all I had to do was add the blanks, adjust the font size and spacing. MS6 didn't do that. So now I have to go threw each song and arrange the stanzas. In MS6 for some reason the font size 28 is missing so I have to manually type in 28 hit the delete button once because it tries to put 288 instead and press enter before I hit apply to que. As far as double spacing I have to click on each individual stanza in order to complete this action. On MS4 I only had to do this once and it changed the whole que. As far as the box size I have not found anything that lets you set the size on all songs at once. I have to do each song individually and it is very time consuming. I do love the appearance of MS6 and ease of creating a que. I have also watched all the how to videos hoping not to have to many problems. One thing I will add is we did go from using a PC to a MAC or I should say the powers that be made that change without my knowledge. I'm still using the MS4 on my PC till I get everything straight on MS6 it's just been a slow process.

Ryan for some reason it doesn't adjust for all stanzas. When I click on the first staza and hit the drop box and select double space then hit apply to cue it only changes the stanza I'm working on. I then have to click on each stanza (one at a time) hit the drop box select double space then hit apply to cue. Now when I change the font size it will change it for the entire cue but for some reason it will not do that for changing the spacing. Yes when I do adjust the text box on one stanza it does adjust it on all of them but I have to do this adjustment on each individual song. I just wish there was somewhere in the lyric settings that would allow me to adjust the box for all songs.

I have found MediaShout 6 to be a great improvement on previous versions. It soes take a bit of getting used to, and for advanced scripts it is certainly tricky even for advanced users. Once you understand how it all fits together you will find it a powerful tool for presentations. All those who are having performance issues should look at their hardware (i.e. the computer) first and optimize all its operations. Usually problems in memory on a PC lead to "lagging" response by MediaShout. Also operations running in the background (e.g. backup, virus checks, defragging etc.) are hidden from the operator.
Unless you require a connection to the Internet during services (always risky) it is best to disconnect from any Internet connection, since programs sometimes auto-update behind the scenes. The only annoying thing I sometimes find is Windows Notifications appearing sometimes on the main cosole (not an overhead), usually remains from the last Internet connection/update of windows.
All in all, though, V6 is a great improvement and out Church is delighted to have upgraded.

I have had so many problems with MediaShout 6, we now don't even bother with it. We have to use version 5. Here's the laundry list:

1. It won't load unless you turn it on and off and on and off and on and off.....
2. When it does load, I can't load lyrics since Feb 29! So much for lyric reporting now to CCLI.
3. Every time I ask for help I'm told, "I don't know why this happens...." Neither do I! This is why I'm asking.....
4. I have updated the graphics card every week for 2 years....I have reinstalled the Codec's all the time....It works for a minute then, then it doesn't
5. Never did figure out announcements....was told by Mediashout support that I shouldn't use this feature!

I certainly do not want to spend anymore money...no one want's to use it at our church...I would love it if just once, someone out there could give me an answer that fixes any of the above problems. I'm afraid to reinstall let me know if it's possible without making more problems for ourselves.