Luminous

projection software for your church

User Guide

Basic Operations

Adding a Song

When you first start Luminous, you won't be able to do much because there are no songs available. The following steps show you how to add a song to the database.

click on the "add song to database" button at the bottom left
enter the title, author and copyright details

enter the lyrics, use {label name} at the start of each song section to label it, like so:

{Verse 1}
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

{Verse 2}
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

{Verse 3}
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

{Verse 4}
When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.

click on the "OK" button
you should now see the song appear on the Song Database list

Adding Songs to the Schedule

In Luminous, a schedule is a list of presentation items. The following shows you how to build up a list of song items for a service.

on the Song Database list, click on a song you want to add to the Schedule
you should now see the song appearing on the Schedule list (on top left), you should also see thumbnails of the song slides on the right panel
repeat adding the required songs for the service
when you're done with the list of songs, click File->Save to save to .lum file
to start your presentation, see the "Presenting Items" section below

Loading a Previously Saved Schedule

click File->Open and choose a previously saved .lum file
you should see your all presentation items loaded
to start your presentation, see the "Presenting Items" section below
tip: you can also load a .lum file by dragging it from Windows Explorer and dropping it on Luminous

Presenting Items

Every thumbnail on the right panel represents a presentation item, or slide.

click on a thumbnail to project that item
click on another thumbnail to project that item, and so on
you can also use your keyboard to control the presentation - use the arrow keys to move the cursor to select another item, when you're ready to present the selected item, press the enter key
to stop the presentation, press the Esc key
other useful keys:
- Page Up: present the item after the current one
- Page Down: present the item before the current one
- ~: present current background

Adding and Presenting Video/Flash Files

look for the video or Flash file using Windows Explorer
drag the file from your Windows Explorer and drop it on Luminous
you should now see that on the right panel, you have some buttons
click on the "Play" button to play
video/Flash items can be paused during playback by clicking the "Pause" button
stop the video/Flash item by clicking the "Stop" button
note: .swf Flash files require Flash player to be installed on your computer
note: .mov files require QuickTime player to be installed on your computer
note: supported video files have extensions .mpg, .avi, .wmv, .vob and .mov, other extensions won't work, you can try changing the extension to one that's supported for files that aren't working
note: when saving a schedule containing a video or Flash item, Luminous only saves the link to that file and not its entire content. What this means is that when you open the .lum file, these video/Flash files need to be in the exact path as when the .lum file was saved - this normally won't pose a problem if you save and open the .lum file on the same computer, but most likely will when you save and open on different computers. The easiest way around this is to open the .lum file in a text editor (such as Notepad) and modify the file paths.

Adding and Presenting PowerPoint Files

To add a PowerPoint file to the schedule, you must have PowerPoint installed on your computer. This feature has only been tested on a system with PowerPoint XP installed, it is uncertain if it works with other PowerPoint versions.

look for the PowerPoint file using Windows Explorer
drag the file from your Windows Explorer and drop it on Luminous
you should now see thumbnails of all the PowerPoint slides on the right panel
click on a thumbnail to show that slide
click on the same thumbnail to trigger next animation if the slide contains effects
note: when saving a schedule containing a PowerPoint item, Luminous only saves the link to that file and not its entire content. Please see similar note under the "Adding and Presenting Video/Flash Files" section above.

Adding and Image Files

look for the image files using Windows Explorer
drag the selected files from your Windows Explorer and drop them on Luminous
you should now see thumbnails of all the image files on the right panel
click on a thumbnail to show that image
note: supported image files have extensions .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .png and .pcx
note: when saving a schedule containing an image item, Luminous only saves the links to the image files and not their entire content. What this means is that when you open the .lum file, these image files need to be in the exact path as when the .lum file was saved - this normally won't pose a problem if you save and open the .lum file on the same computer, but most likely will when you save and open on different computers. The easiest way around this is to open the .lum file in a text editor (such as Notepad) and modify the file paths.

Advanced Operations

Below are guides on how to utilise the advanced features of Luminous. Most of these features require editing text files, you will need to restart Luminous for these new configurations to take effect.

Setting the Inactive Slide

The inactive slide is displayed when Luminous is not displaying a presentation item, this occurs when Luminous starts up and when the user ends a display (e.g. user hits the Esc key). By default, the inactive slide has the Luminous logo and the words "projected by Luminous". To change this slide:

open the file resources\app\app.luai in a text editor such as Notepad
look for the line that says InactiveSlide=Image("...")
edit what's inside Image("...") such that it points to the image file of your choice, supported image files are .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .png, tif and .pcx
if you just want a coloured slide, use InactiveSlide=Fill(r,g,b) and replace r, g and b with the red, green and blue values respectively, values are valid in the range 0 to 255. For example, InactiveSlide=Fill(0,0,0) will give you a black inactive slide
note: it is recommended that you use an image file that has the same dimension (same width and height) as the projection area, it will still work if the image file is of a different dimension but because the method used to resize is a bit crude, you might notice some degradation in image quality. This will be addressed in the future.

Setting the Background for Song Slides

Song slides can have a background image, to set this:

open the file resources\song\song.luei in a text editor
look for the line that says Background=Image("...")
edit what's inside Image("...") such that it points to the image file of your choice
if you just want a coloured background, use InactiveSlide=Fill(r,g,b)
note: all songs use the same background, there is currently no way to choose different images for different songs
note: when using an image background, please see the image note under the "Setting the Inactive Slide" section above

Setting up Song Copyright Notice

Luminous can be configured to display song copyright notice compliant with CCLI's requirement.

open the file resources\song\song.luei in a text editor
set CCLINumber (under SongSlide/CopyrightNotice) to your CCLI number
Set Content (under SongSlide/CopyrightNotice) to format your copyright notice, special tags are:
- %c - the song's copyright label
- %n - CCLI number as defined in the file resources\song\song.luei
- %t - the song's title
- %a - the song's author
- \n - new line
for example, "Content=%c\nCCLI #%n" (without the quotes) will display the song's copyright text following "CCLI #1234" on the next line, where 12345 is the number you set for CCLINumber

Formatting Song Slides

You have extensive control on how your song lyrics get projected on the screen. To adjust how lyrics are formatted, open the file resources\song\song.luei in a text editor, and edit all the options under [SongSlide/Lyrics]:

Setting Name	Allowed Values	Notes
FontName	installed font name (e.g. Arial)	defaults to Arial is the font name specified here is not an installed font
FontSize	height of the font as a percentage of display area's height (e.g. 8%h), or height of the font as a percentage of display area's width (e.g. 5%w), or just an integer number as the font size (e.g. 24)	relative value (e.g. percentage of height or width) is recommended to allow for portability across different display area sizes
FontStyle	any combination of bold, italic and underlined separated by commas (e.g. "bold", "bold,italic", or "italic,underlined")	leave blank for normal style
FontColour	red, green and blue values separated by commas, values are integer numbers between 0 and 255 (e.g. "255,255,255" for white, "255,255,0" for yellow)
ShadowSize	integer number in number of pixels larger (in both width and height) than the foreground texts (e.g. 0 means shadow texts are of the same size as the foreground texts, 1 means that shadow texts are 1 pixel larger than the foreground texts)	negative values are not valid, they'll have the same effect as 0
ShadowOffset	x and y offsets separated by commas, values are integer numbers (e.g. "3,3" or "-1,-1")	text outlines can be achieved by setting ShadowSize=2 and ShadowOffset=-1,-1
ShadowColour	red, green and blue values separated by commas, values are integer numbers between 0 and 255 (e.g. "255,255,255" for white, "255,255,0" for yellow)
BorderLeft	width of the area left of the text block, it can be expressed as a percentage of the display area's width (e.g. 10%w), or as a percentage of the display area's height (e.g. 10%h), or an absolute integer value in number of pixels (e.g. 20)	relative value (e.g. percentage of height or width) is recommended to allow for portability across different display area sizes
BorderRight	width of the area right of the text block, allowed values for this setting is same as BorderLeft's
BorderTop	height of the area above the text block, allowed values for this setting is same as BorderLeft's
BorderBottom	height of the area below the text block, allowed values for this setting is same as BorderLeft's
HorizontalAlignment	horizontal alignment for the texts, allowed value is one of the following words: left, centre, right
VerticalAlignment	vertical alignment for the texts, allowed value is one of the following words: top, centre, bottom
PaddingBetweenLines	the height between lines within the same paragraph, allowed values for this setting is same as BorderLeft's	Each line in a verse is a paragraph, e.g. the song Amazing Grace has 4 paragraphs in all its verses.
PaddingBetweenParagraphs	the height between paragraphs, allowed values for this setting is same as BorderLeft's
AvoidParagraphBreak	set this to avoid spanning a paragraph across 2 slides, allowed value is 0 or 1	similar to MS Word's "Keep Lines Together" feature
MaxLines	set this to limit the number of lines allowed on a slide, allowed value is a positive integer number	set this to 0 to not limit the number of lines
TailLineMinSize	set this to avoid a short last line in a paragraph, allowed value is a positive integer number. As an example, to avoid the following: Was blind, but now I see set this to 5 to give: Was blind, but now I see
BalanceContent	set this to balance content across slides, allowed value is 0 or 1. As an example, to avoid the following across 2 slides: ---------------------------------------------------- Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; ---------------------------------------------------- Was blind, but now I see. ---------------------------------------------------- set this to 1 to give: ---------------------------------------------------- Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me! ---------------------------------------------------- I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see. ----------------------------------------------------

Setting up Transitions

Luminous offers cross fade (also known as dissolve) transitions between static slides. Transitions are not switched on by default, turning on transitions involves setting the transition duration values in the configuration files, these values are in milli-seconds and refer to the time it takes to transit into the slide

in resources/app/app.luai, there are InactiveSlideTransitionDuration, CurrentBackgroundSlideTransitionDuration, and SystemSlidexxxTransitionDuration settings which you can set individually
in resources/image/image.luei and resource/song/song.luei files, there is TransitionDuration setting
if any of the settings mentioned above is set to -1, then it will take on the value of the global transition duration. The global transition duration setting, GlobalTransitionDuration, is found in resources/app/app.luai

Playing DVD

If your Windows Media Player can play DVDs, then Luminous will be able to play them too. This is essentially just playing a video file, follow the instructions under the "Adding and Presenting Video/Flash Files" section. The file you'll need to look for is on your DVD drive, under the VIDEO_TS folder, and it's called VIDEO_TS.VOB. Of course you can choose other .VOB files if you know which file you're after.

Auto-Save

Luminous can automatically save changes made to the schedule, this feature is also known as "once saved always saved" (sorry, no theological debate allowed here). To turn the auto-save feature on, follow the steps below:

open the file resources\app\app.luai in a text editor
set the value of AutoSave to 1
on next Luminous startup, save that schedule to a file once and Luminous will automatically save all changes after that

Running a Luminous Display Client

Luminous has a built-in server whose job is to broadcast to its clients what is being projected. A client can be connecting from any computer in the network (even the same computer as the one Luminous is running on) and display the content. Follow the following steps to get this feature running:

first of all, you need to run the server since it doesn't run by default, open the file resources\app\app.luai in a text editor
change RunOnStartup=0 to RunOnStartup=1
now start up Luminous. If you already had Luminous running, you will need to shut it down and start it again
download the client program (version 0.5.1) here (515KB). For those who want to run the client on Windows 9x/ME or even on Linux under wine, you need to download a special non-unicode build here (504KB), just be aware that this build does not support multi-byte characters such as those used in Eastern Asian and Eastern Eupopean languages.
unzip the file to a folder, then open the file conf.ini in a text editor
set ServerHost to the name of the computer where Luminous is running, if Luminous is running on the same computer as where you will be running this client, then leave it as localhost
now run the client program LuminousDisplayClient.exe
on Luminous, present a song slide, and you should see the lyrics being relayed to the client
note: make sure you run the latest client against the latest Luminous, gremlins are known to attack your computer if you fail to obey this rule
note: this feature currently only works with text content
note: if you have a firewall running, you'll need to allow these two programs to talk to each other

Tweaking Luminous

Luminous currently does not provide a graphical interface for changing configurations, all configurations can be edited using a text editor. Configuration files are resources\app\app.luai, and all .luei files under the resources folder.

Disclaimer: This software is provided "as is" with no guarantee that it can miraculously meet all your church media needs. You are aware and agree that use of the software is at your sole risk, the developer shall not be held responsible for damages, sudden burst of unwholesome words, or even excommunication that result from the use or inability to use the software.