When our church started a new campus, we needed a ProPresenter 7 computer that could run an audience screen, a stage screen and lighting without a big budget. We built it around an M1 MacBook Air and four pieces of gear, and the add-ons came to $631 on top of the laptop.
I looked around at a few different options before we bought anything, and I don't think you can put this together any cheaper.
The new M1 Macs, either the Mac mini or the MacBook Air, run ProPresenter 7 without any problems, along with a lot of other programs. The laptop cost $1,000.
When we set this up, the one thing the M1 Macs couldn't do was Dante. Audinate hadn't released an update for the M1 chip yet, so if your church runs Dante through the ProPresenter computer, check that before you buy.
The biggest limitation of the M1 MacBook Air is that it only supports two displays total. On a laptop, one of those is the built-in screen, which leaves you one external display.
We needed three:
The workaround is the Blackmagic UltraStudio Monitor 3G. It plugs into the laptop and gives you an SDI output that ProPresenter can send to. It has to be a Thunderbolt 3 cable. A USB-C cable won't work with it, even though the plugs look the same.
The UltraStudio Monitor takes up one of the two ports on the MacBook Air, which leaves you short on connections. The CalDigit Thunderbolt dock fixes that. It plugs into the computer and also powers and charges it.
From the dock you get USB, USB-C, a Cat5 Ethernet port, an SD card slot and a headphone jack. Anything else we need to plug into the ProPresenter computer goes through the dock.
The last piece is a Blackmagic SDI splitter. We went with that instead of a DeckLink Duo or a PCIe box with multiple outputs because we only needed one audience screen in ProPresenter. That one feed goes to two TVs, and a splitter was the cheapest way to send it to both.
If we ever want to run to another display with the same picture, the splitter has room for that. We didn't need separate control of multiple audience screens in ProPresenter, so we went with the cheapest option.
We also connected a small lighting interface box to this computer and run LightKey from it. We thought we might get away with the free version because we only have a couple of lights, but it turned out we had to pay for LightKey.
So this one MacBook Air runs ProPresenter, both screen outputs and the lights. The cables behind it were a bit of a mess on setup day, and we planned to tidy them up later.
For the stage screen I used a layout with the chords, the lyrics and the song sections labeled. I lead worship on guitar, so I can see all of that on the back screen while I play and lead.
I made a few different stage display presets and switch between them with actions on the slides:
Here's what we paid for each piece, not counting the $1,000 laptop:
That's $631 total.
To get the same functionality the PCIe way, with USB ports, a Cat5 Ethernet port and SDI video out, these were the prices at the time:
That's $1,175, close to double. And the PCIe setup doesn't give you an SD card slot or an extra headphone jack, so the dock route gives you a few more options.
The PCIe route has real benefits. It's a more professional setup with fewer cables. One cable connects the chassis to the computer, and that covers power and every output going to ProPresenter.
If you have more than $2,000 to put into a ProPresenter 7 setup, go for it. If you're on a tight budget, I don't think it's worth double the price. The setup above does the same job for a lot less money, and that's why I put it together this way.
Yes. ProPresenter 7 ran without problems on our M1 MacBook Air. The catch is that it only supports two displays, including the laptop screen, so you need extra gear like the UltraStudio Monitor 3G for a third output.
We used the laptop's one external display output plus a Blackmagic UltraStudio Monitor 3G connected with a Thunderbolt 3 cable. A CalDigit Thunderbolt dock replaces the port the UltraStudio takes up and charges the laptop.
Not if both TVs show the same thing. We only needed one audience screen in ProPresenter, so we split it to two TVs with a Blackmagic SDI splitter, which was the cheapest way to do it.
It's cleaner, with one cable for power and all outputs, but it cost close to double our setup: $1,175 against $631. On a tight budget, I'd go with the dock and UltraStudio route.
Getting a new church started on ProPresenter 7? The ProPresenter 7 Quickstart Guide covers setup from the ground up.
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