The pre-service window is where a lot of churches leave atmosphere on the table: a static logo, a frozen slide, or nothing at all while the band sound-checks. A well-built pre-service playlist runs without an operator touching it, transitions cleanly into the countdown, and hands off to the first song on time. Here's how to set one up in ProPresenter 7.
The Structure
A pre-service playlist usually has three phases:
- Ambient loop with announcements (doors open to 5 minutes before)
- Countdown (final 3–5 minutes)
- Handoff to the first worship song
Phase 1: Ambient Loop and Rotating Announcements
Pick a loop that suits the mood you want people walking into — calmer for a reflective service, brighter for a family or youth gathering. Trigger it as a Background so it sits under everything else.
For announcements, create a presentation with one slide per announcement, transparent backgrounds so the loop shows through, and set it to auto-advance every 8–12 seconds with Loop to beginning turned on. Go to the presentation's properties (right-click in the playlist) and set the timer there. Keep each slide to a headline and one line of detail — people are chatting, not reading.
Tip: Use a 30–60 second loop for this phase. Shorter loops repeat noticeably over a 20-minute window.
Phase 2: The Countdown
A countdown video is a fixed-length file, not a loop. Add it as its own cue and set its playback behaviour to Stop, not Loop — otherwise it'll restart at zero. Trigger it by hand at exactly the moment it should start (a 5-minute countdown at 5 minutes to go), or use a Timer cue to fire it automatically.
If you'd rather keep the ambient loop running and overlay a timer, ProPresenter's built-in Countdown Timer object on a slide or Message layer does that without a video file.
Phase 3: The Handoff
The last frame of the countdown should not be followed by a gap. Make the first worship song's cue the very next item in the playlist, and set the countdown cue's Go to next action to advance automatically when it ends. If the band starts with an intro, put the first song's background loop on the cue after the countdown and the lyric video on the cue after that.
Automating the Whole Thing
ProPresenter's Timers and Actions let you chain all of this: a timer that fires the countdown at a set clock time, an action on the countdown cue that advances to the first song when it finishes. Once it's built, the operator's job on Sunday is to start the playlist and press Go when the band is ready.
Doing the Same in EasyWorship
The structure is the same. Put the loop in the Schedule with Loop enabled, add announcement slides with Auto Advance set in the presentation properties, then add the countdown as a media item with loop off. EasyWorship's Schedule plays items in order, so the handoff to the first song happens when you click it.
Checklist
- Loop is set to Loop, countdown is set to Stop
- Announcements auto-advance and loop back to the start
- Countdown length matches the time you actually start (5 minutes is standard)
- First song is the next cue after the countdown
- Walk-in music is running from the sound desk, not competing with countdown audio
Talesoft Digital has both ambient loops and countdowns built for exactly this. Browse the visuals collection →