We've had a number of reports recently of users with Windows 8 being unable to run OpenLP. Unfortunately from our side we have not had any problems with our tests on Windows 8. If you have Windows 8 please contact us to let us know your experiences, both good and bad. Even if everything is working perfectly fine, we want to know that.

We also need a few technically-inclined people who are experiencing these issues to help us figure out what is going wrong. You should be comfortable with the command line as there are a number of technical bits and pieces that you will need to do, such as installing Python and some of OpenLP's dependencies.

Secondly, we have found two regressions in version 2.0, which have been fixed but are waiting for a release. The first is an issue with transparent themes which are no longer transparent, and the second is a bug in the export function.

Interestingly, we never realised how much the export feature was used until it was broken. We've had quite a number of folks reporting the issue.

If you are experiencing either of these issues on Windows or Mac OS X then we recommend downgrading to version 1.9.12, which can still be found on SourceForge. Users on Linux can either patch their version of OpenLP with help from us, or sit tight until we make a bugfix release.

We're hoping to make a release sometime in December.

Videos are a great way to enhance the worship experience. Sermon illustrations, home grown videos for announcements before or after a service, showing videos to help set a “mood” of worship before a service starts or through a multitude of other creative ways, videos can be effective tools for worship. OpenLP has the ability to play videos as part of the service using the Media tab. You simply add your video, or audio to OpenLP then use it as you do a song or Bible verses in your service. Easy.

If this works for you, don’t read any further, but what if you set up OpenLP and videos do not perform correctly? Actually, if videos work for you keep on reading anyway you might still need this someday. We are going to walk through a sure fire way of getting videos working in OpenLP without a lot of work.

First, lets look at how OpenLP plays videos. OpenLP uses resources already installed on your computer to play videos. That is enough detail, if you want to do an in-depth look at audio and video codecs by all means please do but just understand in theory if your computer will play a file, OpenLP “should” play this file also. Theories are great, but as with many this theory fails many times in practice. In the past the solution was to install codec packs and do a variety of other rather hackish things with hopes that videos would work. This is no longer the case, thanks to another open source project VLC paired with OpenLP 2.0.

If you have not heard of VLC lets just put it this way it is the premier media player, regardless of operating system. If VLC won’t play your file, stop, nothing will play your file. That may not be entirely the case, but chances are if VLC won’t play it nothing will. So what does this have to do with OpenLP you ask? Remember OpenLP uses resources on your computer to play videos and with VLC installed OpenLP can use this most awesome media player to take care of all of your media problems.

The first step is to download VLC from HERE. If you are running a Linux distro it should be available using your distro’s package manager. You will need version 2.0.3 or above to work correctly. Once you have VLC installed we are just about finished.

Now we need to tell OpenLP to use VLC to play all media. Don’t worry you won’t regret this and if you do you can always change this setting back. Go to Settings, then click on Configure OpenLP. You should now be greeted by a window that looks similar to this:

Click on Media on the left hand panel to enter the media settings. You should see a list of available media players. Click on the check box to enable VLC. In the player order box, click on VLC and use the up arrow to promote it to the top of the list. You can also disable all the other media players if you wish. If you check the “Allow media player to be overridden” check box you can change the player on the fly from the Media tab in the Media Manager. This is a good option for some users, but really if you are using VLC you shouldn’t need to do this.

That is it, you should now be able to play about any video you will ever get your hands on.

Note: If you install VLC while OpenLP is running you will need to restart OpenLP after installing VLC.

O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.

Psalms 96:1-2

We are ecstatic to announce the first stable release of the 2.0 series of OpenLP! We've been developing this new version of OpenLP for four years now, and this long awaited mature release contains numerous improvements over OpenLP 1.2.

It seems that we made a bit of a miscalculation, as some of us thought that the 1st of December was a Sunday. Only once we were getting closer to the release date did we realise that it was a Saturday!

So, we're still releasing OpenLP 2.0 this weekend, just on Sunday the 2nd of December, rather than Saturday the 1st. Are you ready for version 2.0?

In semi-related news, we'll be running some maintenance on the web site this weekend just before the release. So don't panic if see a "website under maintenance" page, the web site will be ready for the release on Sunday!

Update: Instructions on how to test your translation out have been added to the bottom of this blog post.

This is the final call for all translators. If you wish to have OpenLP in your langauge you need to have completed the translation of OpenLP on the Transifex site *by midnight UTC (GMT) on Friday the 23rd of November 2012*.

Because we believe strongly in quality over quantity at OpenLP, we will not be including any translations that are incomplete into the final build. This means that if you want your language to be part of the final release of version 2.0, you need to make sure it is 100% done by the end of Friday the 23rd. This deadline also gives you just over a week to complete any outstanding translations.

Currently, the following translations are more than 85% complete, but still need some work (ordered from most complete to least complete). My estimate is that none of these should take longer than an hour to complete.

1. Afrikaans

2. Dutch

3. German

4. Hungarian

5. Japanese

6. Polish

7. Spanish

8. Greek

9. French

10. Danish

The following translations are between 20% and 65% complete. Unless these are worked on this week, they probably won't make it into the final release of OpenLP.

1. Russian

2. Finnish

3. Slovak

4. Bulgarian

5. Italian

6. Chinese (Taiwan)

Lastly, the following translations are less than 10% complete. If any of these translations makes it into the final release, I will be very surprised. These translations seem to have been abandoned by their translators.

1. Korean

2. Latvian

3. Romanian

4. Albanian

5. Chinese (China)

6. Korean (Korea)

7. Spanish (Chile)

Just a quick note to say that the media kit has been updated, the release date of OpenLP 2.0 in the media kit needed to be changed in light of the recent decision to postpone the release. Additionally, we've added another wallpaper.

You can download the media kit either as a zip file, or a tarball.

Update: We've just updated the media kit again, this time adding a set of example blog posts for those folks who want to blog about OpenLP but are unsure of what to say.

As many of our users know, we've been aiming to make the final release of OpenLP 2.0 this coming weekend. After much thought and consideration, we have decided to postpone the release till the end of November.

When releasing software there comes a point where you need to decide whether or not it is good enough to be released. With OpenLP we had a look at the number of major, minor and trivial bugs outstanding and made the decision that it is not quite good enough for a final release. We would rather release OpenLP when we are happy with the quality of the software than with a bunch of glaring bugs we could have fixed if we waited just a little bit longer.

Don't forget that this gives everyone an extra couple of weeks to translate OpenLP, find more bugs, or just promote it in your Church circles.

See you at the end of November!

Update: After some discussion the development team has decided to release OpenLP 2.0 on the 1^st of December 2012.

Our non-English users would have noticed that some of them can use OpenLP in their own language. Now, I am an English speaker, so I don't have any issues using OpenLP as-is, but I can imagine that it would be way better to be able to use OpenLP in English if it were only available in another language.

The good news for our non-English users is that we already have a number of languages which are 100% (or close to 100%) translated. Unfortunately, the bad news is that not all the translations are complete, so there are still English words creeping through in a few translations. Additionally, in order to produce a top-quality final version of OpenLP, we'll be dropping any incomplete translations from OpenLP when we release it in 2 weeks time.

Here's the break down of the different translations we currently have:

Helping out with these translations is easy! Just go to Transifex and register, then go to the OpenLP project page, and then request to join a language team. Once you've been added to that team you will receive an e-mail notification, and all you need to do is login and start translating! It couldn't be simpler!

Translations need to be completed by midnight Tuesday, 23rd October UTC.

As promised (though more than a few days), I've created a basic media or press kit. I'll add more to the media kit as time goes by, but I wanted to get something out there now so that folks can start promoting OpenLP on their own sites and blogs.

In the initial version of the media kit, you'll find the following:

• An OpenLP branded wallpaper in the follwing display ratios: 16:10, 16:9, 4:3 and 5:4.

• The OpenLP icon in the following sizes: 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256 and 420x420.

• An 80x15 badge for your website.

• A project summary document for a quick blurb on websites.

• Sample interview questions and answers for anyone who wants to interview the team (or wants an interview but doesn't want to actually interview us!).

As I gather more items, I'll add them to the media kit, so be on the look out for more updates, including more wallpapers and website badges.

For Windows uers, and those who like zip files, you can download OpenLP-MediaKit.zip, and those who prefer tarballs can download OpenLP-MediaKit.tar.gz.

Now go forth and multiply!

Those who hang around here regularly will know that we plan to release the final version of OpenLP 2.0 at the end of October. As one can imagine, with such a momentous release we'd like to make a big noise about it. Because OpenLP is open source, it is primarily driven by its users, whether they are developers, or just folks that hang out in the forums and want to help out in whatever way they can. With the upcoming release of version 2.0, we are going to need lots of help from YOU. Here's how you can help: