Using PowerPoint for subtitles?

kok2022

New Member
Hey y'all,

Is there a way to use Powerpoint song lyrics to add as a subtitle to OBS without creating them individually in OBS? I want to have the live streaming going ie. church; and then as I use Powerpoint to display our worship slides on our church projector. I also want to use OBS to add the Powerpoint worship slides as a subtitle to our live streaming. Is this possible or do I have to create those subtitles individually in OBS which I use to do and is a lot of work?
So the issue here is trying to manage both at the same time unless there was a way to use OBS on one computer and Powerpoint on another computer and linking them somehow? That way I can just focus on OBS and another person can manage our Powerpoint slides.

I would appreciate your opinion or a solution to this issue.

Thanks in advance
 
Yes you could, BUT ... there are some dedicated plugins which may be easier to use, and less subject to operator error
I use PPTx for our Service Bulletin as part of livestreamed HoW services, and have been for almost 2 years. For me, I have PPTx taking up about 1/3 of the left side of the screen, occasionally dropping to be about 1/6 [I don't change PPTX slide, I just use only the left 1/2 of slide, and then have video use more of the canvas] The key issue is that you are most likely going to want to use PowerPoint in a windowed (vs fullscreen) mode, which itself is fine, the challenge is making sure the sizing of that window is consistent each livestream. There is a plugin which will force PPTx to open in a window in a fixed size/orientation that may help.
What I suspect, is that you are already projecting lyrics in Sanctuary, right? and thinking of using the same content? If yes, my thought is that a full screen wall display (projected, TV, whatever) vs livestream are likely to have different formats (ie height and width, font size, etc). Are you going for a lower 1/3 style look? For lower 1/3 style overlay, there are lots of options, and you could easily bring PPTx content over to something else, with no more effort that reformatting the PPTx for lower 1/3. [transparency, etc]
A HoW focused tool is https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/bible-plugin-for-obs-studio.1379/
However, if content is more pop music vs hymnal, other plugins may be more appropriate. But I'd focus on lower 1/3 and/or overlay plugins
so maybe https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-openlp-lyrics-interface.987/

Hopefully others will comment. And to clarify, are you only looking for the words, or do you have the music (notes) also [ie graphic content vs just text based]?
 
Thanks heaps friend. That Bible plugin is going to be very useful. I just found out the subtitle plugin/script for the song worship too. I will to need restructure our live streaming. At the moment, we have two monitors, one TV, and a projector set up using the one PC. We have another computer only for the soundboard software and nothing else. So the other computer has all the devices, and software connected to it.

So OBS and Powerpoint running. Powerpoint for the worship and bible scriptures/sermon points slides and OBS for live streaming using a sony camera. No problems streaming through Youtube so far so good.

I guess its going from OBS to powerpoint on the one PC? For example when powerpoint is on and then I switch to OBS for a transition, the powerpoint is inactive until I click to resume on powerpoint? It is challenging and manageable those few extra seconds slows it down though but I have to be quick to keep it flowing consistently with our service and live streaming at the same time if you know what I mean. I wonder if this is what it's like to work in a office lol?

I think I will try the Bible plugin and Subtitle plugin/script which will take time to input all our praise and worship lyrics by copy and paste.
I will see. Maybe I can add Powerpoint to the other computer with the soundboard could that work if I connect that to the projector that way I can get someone else to look after Powerpoint??

I now know what I want it to look like for our Live Streaming. Will let you know which way I go.

GOD Bless!
 
I also support a church worship service, we had a small choir sing the hymns as mp3 files but people at home wanted to see the lyrics as well so they could sing along at home.

What we ended up doing was creating subtitle files for each hymn (using Aegisub) and then displayed those in OBS. The advantage of this approach is that the timing of the lyrics is based entirely on the pre-recorded music and only needs to be defined once. The operator doesn't have to create timings in the powerpoint slide deck nor does he/she manually have to move between different slides.

I actually created a blog post about how to set this up at https://makingisfun.home.blog/2022/01/28/how-to-create-a-music-scene-with-subtitles-in-obs/
 
I guess its going from OBS to powerpoint on the one PC? For example when powerpoint is on and then I switch to OBS for a transition, the powerpoint is inactive until I click to resume on powerpoint? It is challenging and manageable those few extra seconds slows it down though but I have to be quick to keep it flowing consistently with our service and live streaming at the same time if you know what I mean. I wonder if this is what it's like to work in a office lol?

Not sure really what is meant by the above regarding powerpoint, and what is going on??
Side note: if you use OBS websockets, someone wrote a guide [something] on how to use Macros in PowerPoint to send commands to OBS. So, if changing from slide X to X+1 means always doing Y in OBS, you could program PPT to send the command to do just that to OBS. the discussion was on this site.

I have static PPTx slides (in the keep it simple, mindset) ... so for me, I don't run videos, music, etc in PPT (which would not look as good in OBS vs running such videos directly in OBS, which is what I did when we switched back and forth from pre-recorded music, readings, announcements, etc and live when no in-person services were allowed).
As for PPT becoming inactive when you change active window (at Operating System level). that's odd. Sounds like an OS (not OBS) or PPT setting (or under-powered system running out of RAM and swapping?).
Also beware anything that 'listens' and auto-updates visible lyrics. That is fine if you have the CPU power for such, but otherwise beware of overloading your OBS PC. Real-time video encoding is computationally demanding all its own.
 
Thanks guys we tried it a different way. We decided to keep the Powerpoint slide to the projector and have it Displayed on the Live streaming as it is which means we have song lyrics on a black background then Filter: Color Key making it transparent. That seems to work better then before.

I appreciate your input. GOD Bless you all!
 
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