How To Use Proclaim In A Double- Or Triple-Wide Environment

Many churches would like to make use of double- or triple-wide display outputs to create stunning and immersive environments. To accomplish this, you normally need to use multiple projectors and edge-blending to ensure that there are no gaps between the projected images and no bright spot for where the images overlap. 

Proclaim does now support these wide aspect ratios natively in Display>Settings and Virtual Screens.  Then, you would click on the gear for a display to see the double-wide and triple-wide options.

If you wanted to, you could also work with other software to accomplish this as an alternative.

In the example below, we used:

Hardware:

• Macbook Pro
• Matrox DualHead2Go or a TripleHead2Go
• 2 monitors to simulate two projectors
• 1 monitor for Proclaim to output to
• 1+ monitors to control Proclaim, Syphoner, and Millumin

Software:

• Faithlife Proclaim
• Syphoner (Free)
• Millumin v2

Overview

We will capture Proclaim’s output with Syphoner and send it to Millumin. Millumin will handle sending the feed to the two Projectors, including handling the edge blending and overlap.

Step 1: Link Syphoner and Proclaim

In order to get Proclaim’s output to the two projectors, we will first need to capture Proclaim’s output with Syphoner. This will create a Syphon source that we can use inside Millumin.

Note: Syphon is an open source framework for macOS that allows apps to send and receive video content from each other in a performant manor.

We will need to send Proclaim’s output to a monitor whose only purpose is to be captured by Syphon. If you are using a Macbook Pro, you will not want to use your laptop’s Retina display because the pixel count is so large the frame rate will suffer dramatically.

For this monitor, we used a regular Dell monitor plugged into our laptop’s HDMI port.

After you go On Air in Proclaim, open Syphoner. You will see many windows listed. Look for one from Faithlife Proclaim that seems to match the resolution of the monitor. In our case, it was the one that was 1920x1080

After selecting the right one, hit the lock mode switch in the toolbar so that the preview won't negatively affect your frame rate.

Now we've created a Syphon source that we can use in Millumin. In the top of Syphoner, it will say “Please open a Syphon client”. That's what we'll do in the next step.

Step 2: Configure Millumin

Millumin is a very powerful piece of software. It is expensive, but it can accomplish a whole lot of video and lighting effects and can be controlled via MIDI. In this tutorial, we'll focus on the multiscreen options and the edge-blending.

In Millumin, create a new project. Then expand the tray on the left, expand Inputs, and drag the Proclaim Syphon input created in the previous step down to the first layer.

After adding the Syphon input to your layer, open Output settings in the toolbar. Here, change the number of outputs to the number of projectors you have. In our case, we have two.

Change the aspect ratio to the aspect ratio of each projector and select each projector in the monitors presented below. Additionally, you can adjust how much overlap there is to perform the edge blending (soft edge).

When you're happy with your settings, click OK in the bottom right to return to the main screen.

The last thing is to make the syphon output from Proclaim fills the whole screen. To do that, make sure you have the move-tool selected and click on the layer. After clicking you should see some movement handles appear. Adjust the handles such that Proclaim fills the entire window space. You may have to zoom the canvas out to see the whole thing (using the scroll wheel on your mouse). You can also expand the Layer settings on the right to get access to more fine-grained controls.

The last thing to do is hit the lock on your layer to prevent accidental movements, and now you are done! If you don't see your output from Millumin, hit CMD+F on your keyboard.

That's it!

You can now use Proclaim in a double or triple wide environment. You can do many more cool things as well with Millumin. For example, you can apply effects to layers such as a blur effect.

In the example below, I have two layers: the bottom layer is Proclaim’s output set to fill the screen with a blur applied. The top layer is Proclaim’s 16:9 output fit to the screen with its edges feathered. This fills the entire screen space without having to crop Proclaim’s output. Which is great for content not made for double- or triple-wide.

MIDI and more

Not covered in this tutorial is Millumin’s MIDI support. You can set up different columns in Millumin to fire with different MIDI commands, that way you can control Millumin straight from Proclaim.

Check out this article for how to setup Proclaim’s MIDI, or read more about MIDI in Millumin.