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I work for a software company that offers Video Coaches to our clients. We are offering Coaches in foreign languages and the current Teleprompter software we are using does not support anything but English. We have been able to work around Spanish by replacing accented and special characters with standard English ones, however, this makes it harder for the talent as some words change meaning without the accent.

Beyond that, we are going to be filming Chinese Coaches soon and we will need Simplified Chinese to be supported by the software (we have been unable to think of a workaround).

I have the trial version of PromptDog but have not been happy with the 'Talent Window'. I don't like that it cannot be expanded to full screen and the text can only be flipped horizontally (we need to flip vertically with our current setup). It is also difficult to set up the Talent Window as I cannot see the talent monitor from the computer. Ideally, the second monitor would be filled to full screen automatically. It would also be convenient if the software could easily import .doc files (PromptDog does not).

I apologize ahead of time if this question is not appropriate for this forum. I participate in the Music Practice and Performance page and software questions are generally closed.

UPDATE: Budget is up to 500 USD but preferably under 300 USD

UPDATE2: Though I have awarded the bounty, I did not receive a specific recommendation that fulfilled my specifications. It did point me in a good direction and provided resources to find other software options but I would like to award the official answer to one that provides a specific software that meets my needs.

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  • Can you provide any more details about your needs. Also, is there a reason a more traditional sequencing software wouldn't work for your needs? – AJ Henderson♦ Feb 24 '14 at 18:23
  • @AJHenderson - I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say 'more traditional sequencing software'. In general, I am looking for a teleprompter software that allows a second monitor to display the prompting text and is able to support foreign languages, such as Simplified Chinese and Spanish. I'm not sure what other details I could provide but if you can point me in a direction I will add further details to the question. – Basstickler Feb 24 '14 at 19:16
  • I use software called MediaShout which is a general purpose media sequencing and presentation software package. It can be run full screen on another system and display text on each slide that can be automatically filled in from a text file. That particular software is targeted at churches, but similar software exists for more general cases as well. – AJ Henderson♦ Feb 24 '14 at 19:33
  • @AJHenderson - So that would be comparable to PowerPoint, right? I'm looking more for a teleprompter with scrolling text. The scrolling feature helps keep the talent's eyes in a similar place, compared to slides where the eyes will have to go from top to bottom while reading. – Basstickler Feb 24 '14 at 20:39
  • What platform's do you have available? – AJ Henderson♦ Feb 25 '14 at 4:50
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If you have a Mac, Presentation Prompter had a few good reviews I found when doing some research. I don't have a Mac to try it, but it appears to have mirror modes and is listed as having RTF support.

It is also worth pointing out you may be able to setup the necessary mirroring on a particular output desktop rather than having the prompting software have to support it. This could possibly make the software that didn't have the needed mirroring option work for you.

If that doesn't work, MirrorScript appears to have a free teleprompting software that works with PC and international characters. They also offer an entire list of alternative prompting software that might be worth looking in to if they don't meet your needs for other reasons.

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  • Thanks, I will be looking into MirrorScript today and checking out the other suggestions on that page. – Basstickler Feb 25 '14 at 13:12

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