I would try to bring good out of a bad situation. I would hate having TVs installed in a church, but if they are there, might as well use them to promote sacred music.

I don't recall reading nor seeing in my own testing of Source and Summit's new product that it is formatted for large screen projection. It's a platform for creating printable or digital scripts of Masses with text and music. If you attempted to project those as-is onto a large screen instead of displaying on a personal device, they would be extremely difficult or impossible to read. You cannot simply project a pdf or jpeg of a hymn from a publisher's file or a lengthy script; it won't display well on screen for group viewing from a distance even though it might display well on a phone or tablet screen for individual use. There's no getting around the labor-intensive work of creating your own slides for projection, and making slides with music on them instead of just lyrics is ten times more time consuming to create and requires skill with a music notation application, which is why 99/100 parishes only project lyrics. It will take a bit of experimentation to figure out how to size all the content on slides so that it is easily readable from everywhere in the church and how to format and sequence it so that transitions between slides are smooth.

OCP posted an article with VERY basic considerations to keep in mind when designing your own slides:
https://www.ocp.org/en-us/blog/entry/creating-a-lyric-projection-template

The information in OCP's article is for absolute beginners, and it won't help you do anything more than create lyric slides.

In this sample from the Heritage Mass Glory to God, the slide displays no more than two musical phrases and ends on a long, sustained note to make it easier to transition to the next slide:



If musical phrases extend over to the next slide or if you end the slide on a quarter or eighth note, people in the congregation will find it frustrating to follow the music no matter how skillfully the operator advances the slides.

It might be worthwhile to talk a little about making up graphics for display screens.

The conventional wisdom about computer displays is that, unlike on paper, sans-serif fonts are more readable than serif fonts, so that could be a good starting point for choosing TV display fonts.

Applying that to the example above with "Adoro Te", the slide might work better if the lyric were in sans-serif, while the title and the translation could be in the attractive serif font. Italics are usually less readable than roman type, so I'd avoid them.

Chonak, I use your Gregorio engraving website to create my projection slides that have neumes. If I recall correctly, I don't believe any of your font options are sans-serif.

When I have slides with text only, I use a sans-serif font.

Slides with music, as above, I have used serif fonts mostly due to lack of options. Nobody has complained about unreadability.

I will fold and lay out worship aids until Kingdom come if it means no screens...

Something about worship aids still strikes me as more dignified than screens. Perhaps it's because they are essentially mini versions of the other forms of "worship aids" (missals & hymnals) that are already well-entrenched. I also take great pains to make my worship aids look really nice with calligraphic headers and careful typsetting; you can't get the same effect on a TV. And, worship aids are certainly good for music, even if they aren't necessary for readings and the ordinary.

I agree though: it's amazing how simple it is to memorize the Mass when it's the same thing over and over again. I utterly fail to understand why people put up such a fuss. Same goes for Latin too. I have a hard time believing people are incapable of memorizing the Pater Noster. but can sing "On Eagle's Wings" by wrote including all the alternate rhythms for each verse.

In fact, our parish is bilingual, and I think it would be a great benefit and would harmonize our liturgies if we used a latin ordinary at both masses; this would encourage more cross-pollination between the two camps. As it is now, any combined liturgy (Easter Vigil, for instance) requires awkward back-and-forth between English and Spanish. It's painful. Let's just do latin! (and I do not say that as a pithy quip. I mean it—and so does most of my choir.)

Donr, I certainly don't disagree that you should make lemonade. I hope I didn't imply otherwise. There was mention of this happening at our church at the beginning of covidtide, however the crisis was averted for now. If I was forced to prep projector/tv screens, I would do so. (At least until I broke... not sure how long that would be.)

What happened when prayed about the question?

I do believe Mark is correct in that it is not currently formatted for screens. The confusion perhaps stems from the licensing model which is very straightforward:
If you subscribe to their service, you have printing, broadcasting, projecting, & posting rights. It's very flexible, as I understand it. You can generate a worship aid and share a link that people can view from home or on any device, or you can print them, or you can export graphics for arranging in another program of your choice, etc. Credits are generated automatically for you.

You could, ultimately, generate a worship aid, pull it up on a computer connected to a TV or projector and have someone scroll through it. It wouldn't be specifically formatted (although eventually they will implement options to export at specific sizes, but it would be too much for them to try and format everything for a non-existent projector/tv standard that will invariably suit some and not others).

1) Source and Summit is made for projection, IIRC. We project onto the back wall while our hymnals are being stored during COVID, and I asked this specific question with someone from SandS

2) You are serving the people. I think that pleases God. Ask him for humility and direction. I am going through similar frustrated feelings. I really quite dislike participating in things I don't believe in. I felt very frustrated. It was a non catholic of all people that helped me reframe it as serving the people and perspective re-orients me.

3) I have been doing projections since our diocese reopened (such an odd thing to say) on Pentecost. Would you like me to attach the power point slide I made for this weekend to give you an example of how to work with this tool? I do my best to make the slides simple without bells and whistles so people can see and sing.

Agree. There's an aesthetic difference too: projecting onto a blank wall means TVs aren't a permanent, obtrusive fixture in the space.

Rood screens? Sounds good to me.

I also learned, the hard way, that the person managing the projection MUST be a musician. Normally people think that you just advance the screen when you've read/sung all the words, but that's not how it works. You have to advance just a bit faster, but not too fast, so that people can read ahead.

You also have to understand how to interrupt the verses at any time so you can go back to an antiphon or final verse.

Also be wary of anything that introduces lag or uncertainty into the situation. We had a setup once where the controlling computer was attached via wifi to another display computer, and it wasn't uncommon for it to just .................. hang. Then the person would frantically hit the "next slide" button a few more times, at which point the wifi would catch up and you'd have to go backwards until you found the right screen. It's an absolute disaster.

And leave the screen BLANK when you're not singing. No pretty artwork or "theme of the day." That kind of distraction should be OUTSIDE Mass.

Our parish was built in a neocolonial style (read: it looks very old-world methodist with no stained glass, precious little statuary, white corinthian columns, etc.) and we actually had a visitor innocently ask one time, "so what was this before it was a catholic church?"

Your honor, I rest my case. (At least our church actually looks like a church, even if it looks like the wrong kind of church...)

I feel the exact same way as Karu27 whenever I visit the historic parish two towns over. It's a neogothic wonder that has retained most of its frescoes, its statuary, high altar and altar rail, elevated pulpit... the whole bit. It too, is like entering into heaven when you visit. It makes my heart sing whenever I'm there and makes me weep every time I drive away. I feel absolutely robbed of my own heritage.