Presentations

The Presentations tab is for sermon slides and other decks you write yourself. Each slide can carry speaker notes that appear only on a stage monitor, so the preacher can see their notes and what's coming next while the congregation sees the slides.

Creating a presentation

  1. Open the Presentations tab and click +.
  2. Give it a name, for example the sermon title, and click Create.
  3. The editor opens with one blank slide. Fill it in (see below) and add more slides.
  4. Click Save.

The presentation editor

Open it for an existing deck by right-clicking the deck and choosing Edit Presentation.

At the top:

  • Title. The deck's name. It can't be empty.
  • Theme. Which presentation theme the deck uses. Leave it on Default presentation theme to follow the default.

On the left, the slide list. Each row shows the slide's title and a dot if it has speaker notes. The buttons above the list add, duplicate, move up, move down and delete slides. A new slide copies the design of the one you're on.

On the right, the selected slide's fields. Which fields appear depends on the slide's design:

Field Shown on
Slide title The heading on the slide
Subtitle A series name, date or Bible reference
Picture A picture chosen from your Media library
Slide body The main text
Left column / Right column Two-column designs
Speaker notes The stage monitor only. The congregation never sees these.

Click Save to keep your changes. If the deck is already live, the screen updates the next time you send it live.

Slide designs

Each slide can use a different design from the deck's theme. Pick one from the row of thumbnails under Design in the editor. The built-in presentation themes include:

  • Title slide for the opening slide
  • Section divider between the points of a sermon
  • Title + content (the default)
  • Two columns for comparisons
  • Quote for a verse or quotation
  • Picture for a full image
  • Blank

If you switch to a theme that doesn't have a slide's design, that slide falls back to the theme's default design until you pick another.

Showing a presentation

Action Result
Click a deck Loads it into Preview, one slide per card
Double-click, or Enter Sends it live
Right-click > Push to Live Sends it live
Right-click > Add to Schedule, or Ctrl + T Adds it to the schedule

Step through the slides in the Live panel as usual. Speaker notes for the current slide show on any output set to Stage mode, along with the next slide and a clock.

Managing decks

Right-click a deck (or use the gear menu) to Edit Presentation, Duplicate it, or Delete it. The gear menu also sorts decks by Most Recent or by Name.

To edit a deck that's already in your schedule, edit it from the Presentations tab.

Presentation themes

Crater comes with three presentation themes: Stage Bold, Clean Light and Midnight Focus. To make your own, or change which designs a theme offers, see Designing Themes.

The theme a slide uses is chosen in this order:

  1. The theme picked in the presentation editor.
  2. The presentation theme set for that screen (see Themes).
  3. The default presentation theme.