ShowScreens

During a live show, it is important to be able to communicate with the audience. Traditionally, this has meant that a good KJ would spend a lot of time on the microphone, making announcements, lining up the rotation, etc.. While it is still important for a KJ to build rapport with the audience over the microphone, kJams allows you to do much more to get your announcements across. Most obvious is the Rotation screen that you can opt to display between songs, or any time by using the Video/Toggle Rotation command. Now, with Video/ShowScreens there are many more options to display a message to your audience (even if they're out of earshot, on a back smoking patio, or sitting at the bar ignoring you).

Scrolling A Message Across Video Screen While Song Is Playing:

One option is to simply scroll some text along the bottom of the Video screen. To do this, select Video from the menu bar, option Messenger Message. Type your text in the dialog box, click OK, and watch what you just typed scroll across the bottom of your Video screen. You can use this to announce Last Call, drink specials, or anything else you'd like - without interrupting the singer or the flow of your show. A specialized form of this type of messaging is scrolling the current Rotation along the bottom of the screen. To do this, select Video from the menu bar, option Messenger Rotation. This will scroll the next three singers/songs across the bottom of your Video screen. Note: For any of these messages to work, the option "Show Messages in Video Window" must be enabled in your Preferences.

Messages Using ShowScreens:

The next option to show a visual message is to use Video/ShowScreens. You may already be familiar with the Rotation screen, and the Toggle Rotation command. However, another option is to make use of the built-in Message ShowScreen. You can view the template by selecting it from the Video menu. However, to get a message to display on it, you have two options.

Screen Message

Under the Video menu, you can select Screen Message*. Type your message in the dialog box, click OK, and watch your message appear in the Message ShowScreen template. It will stay on the screen until you clear it, either by showing another ShowScreen, toggling the Rotation, starting a song, or selecting Hide Screen from the Video menu. The message is not saved, so each time you want to display a message, you will need to re-type it in the dialog box. * The message may not appear if another ShowScreen is currently displayed. To ensure your message displays properly, select Hide Screen from the Video menu before selecting Screen Message.

Enter Custom Screen Message

Similar to Screen Message, you can opt to enter a Custom Screen Message. After entering your message in the pop-up dialog, nothing happens until you select the Message ShowScreen from the Video Menu. Then the Message ShowScreen and your custom message will appear. The message is saved, so if you wanted to announce a drink special between the next three songs, all you would do is type in your message, wait for the song to end, and select the Message ShowScreen. Then, after the next song plays and ends, you would just need to re-select the Message ShowScreen for your message to re-appear. As this system works separately from the Screen Message option, even entering a Screen Message will not change your saved Custom Screen Message.

Advanced - Custom ShowScreens For Messaging:

Once you master using Producer/Tutorials to create custom Video#ShowScreens, creating your own Custom Screen Message ShowScreens is easy - just use the [msg] meta tag to insert the contents of your Custom Screen Message into any Producer template you would like. You could easily have a different Custom Message screen for each Venue you host, complete with the Venue's logo. You could add enough meta data to the ShowScreen to also include the Next Singer along with your Custom Message. The Producer plug-in is free to be used in this way, so go ahead and try it out! (tip: make a duplicate of a song and rename it to something memorable (like 'template sample'), then use this duplicated song to practice making ShowScreens with - Producer requires a song to act on, although you are only creating ShowScreen templates, not timed and animated lyric files.)