Lower Third Slides

River Oaks Church - Updated April 2025

Each Sunday, the Broadcast Graphics role (or Broadcast Producer if there is no graphics volunteer) is responsible for creating and operating the "Lower Third" graphics for the live stream.

What are lower thirds?

Lower Thirds are graphics specifically designed for the live stream. They appear in the "lower third" section of the screen (see below).

Why?

The idea behind the lower third graphics is that they will create a more engaging experience for our online viewers, and make it easier to read the scripture (compared to when we use the supersource graphics)

THe lower thirds take more effort each week to create, but they look great, and make the online experience better.

How do I make them?

Each and every week, the Pastor that is preaching will share the message slides (as a Keynote file) to productionmedia@riveroaks.org. (The password for that account is on Bitwarden.).

For every new sermon series, I create custom Keynote templates that has everything you need.

Downloading the Slides

As somewhat mentioned before, you need to login to the productionmedia account to download the keynote file. Download the file, and open it in Keynote.

Creating the Slides

Next, you need to duplicate the lower thirds template (or copy last week's L3 keynote file) so that you have a spot to put the new slides.

From there, it's a matter of copying all text and images to the new theme. You can have both presentations open side-by-side to make it easier.

Bonus Tip

You can click the "Add Slide" button in Keynote to see all available slide types. Some slides will have short text on them (that's not scripture), and you can use a look that has larger text on it.

Exporting

Finally, once you are happy with the slides, you will need to export them from Keynote, and import them into ProPresenter.

Exporting is the easy part. On Keynote, go to File > Export To > Images. Make sure your settings include "PNG" as the output type, or else the black background will cover up the live stream.

Save the images to the iMac's desktop, and go to ProPresenter.

Next, delete the images from last week in ProPresenter. You can do this by highlighting all but the first slide and clicking backspace on the keyboard.

Open up the folder of images you created from Keynote, and starting on Slide 2 (since the first slide is blank), select all at once and drag them into the ProPresenter "presentation".

Controlling

The broadcast producer stream decks have built in buttons for controlling the L3 slides. At the beginning of the message, you'll need to manually click the first slide in the sermon slide presentation, so that you can then increment slides one by one via the stream deck. Use the clear button inbetween slides.

If you aren't controlling the slides as a producer, ProPresenter functions just like normal for any slide operator. They can click on any slide at any time during the message.

Technical Information

ProPresenter feeds a Key/Fill video feed into the UltraStudio 4k device behind the broadcast-gfx Mac. From there, it's fed via SDI up to the auditorium and into the video switcher.

On the video switcher, Downstream Key #1 on M/E 1 is what makes the graphics "go live".

For ease of use, it's recommended that DSK #1 ALWAYS stays live. You can always clear the graphics inside of ProPresenter :).