My Favorite Pro7 Mac Setup under $1000

this is my favorite budget-friendly Mac based propresenter 7 Operating setup before we dive into all the details here it is this setup consists of a Mac Mini M2 with 512 GB of memory and 8 GB of RAM a Blackmagic design Ultra studio monitor that is a Thunderbolt to HDMI or SDI output that's going to run you $125 an apple USBC Thunderbolt to a HDMI output that's going to be another $65 you'll need a thunderbolt cable for that which are crazy expensive $40 more and for many of you that's going to be all you need so for about $930 you'll have a good system now that's assuming that you have other uh monitors and a mouse available that you can use a keyboard uh for peripherals to be able to operate the machine if you're like me you have a monitor farm with old monitors and leftover you know Apple Mouse systems that you replace with Magic Mouse around the church but if you don't have those you can always just get something of your choice for probably under $100 if you want to go really cheap you could go with some of the Mac Ally stuff on Amazon we've got some of it it's very cheap um I'll link to the all of those things and this exact setup in the description below those will be affiliate links and I appreciate you using those if you found this video helpful now I know some of you are probably out there screaming at this video you can do this for so much cheaper with PC well I have not been on a PC in over 14 years so I I know that you probably can if you have a great setup that's even cheaper that you would recommend PC wise you can uh put that in the comments of this video that would be helpful I'm sure to those of you who are in the PC realm so recently we remodeled our youth worship space and I wanted to put a new system in there but it needed to be budget friendly so I started down this Rabbit Trail well the new M1 M2 you know M3 even now chips are great for Mac but the problem was that there weren't enough display outputs unless you went up to the pro model so the M2 Pro now is going to run you about $1,300 versus the M2 uh of the same specs at about $860 so we can even go cheaper though we don't necessarily need the full 16 GB of RAM with these new Chips but how do you solve the problem of needing an audience projector a confidence monitor with a different output and an operator display well that is where the Blackmagic Ultra studio monitor 3G it's a really long name I'll link it in the description comes in and saves the day because propresenter can use these Blackmagic devices natively if you have like a decklink Duo it's similar to that but it's just giving you one output so for us since this was a youth room and I knew that other people were going to be coming in and wanting to maybe plug into our system or we have gaming nights sometimes is where they'll put Mario Kart up on the projector uh the problem with the Blackmagic device as your maybe projector output is that it has to use software-based things that can read those black mag magic devices like propresenter or Da Vinci or other programs but you can't just drag a a window over onto that Blackmagic device it's not an extra screen display that you can extend your desktop onto so we opted to use the HDMI port out of the Mac for for our monitor if you don't have a monitor I'd recommend on the budget but still good range a Asus uh Pro art display 27 in we have that in our main worship center with our Mac Studio and it's great but we opted to use the HDMI for that and then a USBC Thunderbolt to HDMI for our projector display and then we used the black magic device for our confidence monitor on the back wall now if you have a little bit more budget to stretch something that we've really liked having is an atim mini between the projector send and so we can input different things into that atim mini and just switch to that switch and it will go to the projector and that way the projector always reads from the atim mini it's always on and ready to go and nobody's unplugging our computer and plugging in other things if you're in shared spaces in a church you know how frustrating that can be and then displays get forgotten in propresenter and it's just really really annoying so $295 for that a mini has been really really helpful at times being able to just plug a Nintendo switch into that or an Xbox or somebody else's computer that's coming in to present so I think it's worth it one other thing we did which has worked good for us uh is splitting that signal out of the USBC to HDMI from the Mac Mini before hitting the ATM so there's an Ori 1X two HDMI splitter that way we can have a bigger confidence monitor uh not confidence monitor operator uh you know preview there sitting there for our operators to be able to see what's going onto the projector I've had you know some of those work good some of them work bad as far as the HDMI Splitters so if you have a good HDMI splitter like a Kramer or kex that you recommend that's great those just start adding a lot more expense these Oris look identical but they're like 20 bucks so um you could try that if that's something that you really need one other tip I'll give you is that if you need extra stage displays you can always utilize an iPad or a phone or even better yet if you have an Apple TV laying around that has ethernet you can put put that on the same network open up the Apple TV stage display app and then run that to another TV somewhere else and it's typ it's technically Wireless that way I mean I would you can do it over the wireless network I prefer hardwire iring anything that I can even with your mouse and keyboard um circling back to that I would go wired don't do wireless cuz batteries are not your friend in the production world but that's just a tip I would give if you need extra stage displays so you're out of outputs from your Mac Mini M2 at this point how do you get lyrics onto your live stream well depending on how you are encoding your live stream you could always do an ndi output uh out of proper Center into that software and get it out of the computer that way and that doesn't count against a hardware output so over the years we've had lots of different propresenter setups and usually in our main Worship Center I soup that up because I want it to last a long time so we have a Mac Studio that has I think we're running seven or eight outputs out of it now including the deck link duo with multiple stage displays and different things and it's been a Workhorse that's why I love the Mac system we had an iMac for years that ran and it did great on the old Intel system and and now it's being repurposed into our multirack recording system uh we've had other just smaller Mac Pros that have ran in our kids ministry um but I I think that sometimes you don't need all that power you just need a simple setup that can get you a you know a stage and a stage display audience and Stage display and this is the cheapest way that I found to do it so if you have other Solutions tips you'd give throw those in the comment section below and if you found this video helpful go ahead and like And subscribe to the channel we're going to have a lot more videos just like this for the Do-it all worship and media arts directors out there and remember guys we can do a lot of great things let's do it all for God's glory we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Ryland Russell

Views: 7,399

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Id: iQnduIQcem4

Length: 7min 45sec (465 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024