Walkthrough: Using a streamdeck and midi-relay to control faithlife proclaim

If you’ve not heard of Proclaim, it is a presentation software similar in concept to ProPresenter. I’m not a user, but I have had several people write in and ask about how they could control it with a streamdeck, so I though I would share a quick post on how to do this with Companion and the midi-relay software.

This walkthrough will be on the Mac platform.

First, on the Proclaim computer, open the application, “Audio MIDI Setup”.

Now, in the Audio MIDI Setup application, go to Window > Show MIDI Studio.

Double click on the IAC driver.

Make sure the checkbox “Device is online”, and click Apply.

Now that the IAC driver is enabled, you need to download midi-relay on the Proclaim computer. You can get it here: https://github.com/josephdadams/midi-relay It is up to you if you want to run it directly from within Node or use a compiled binary. The results are the same.

Once midi-relay is running, you’ll see the terminal output window showing the available MIDI ports.

Now open Companion. It can be running on the same Proclaim computer, or another computer on the same network. In the Web GUI, create a new instance of the midi-relay module.

In the configuration tab, type in the IP address of the computer running midi-relay. If the same computer is running Companion as Proclaim (and midi-relay), you can type in 127.0.0.1.

Now create a new button with a midi-relay action. Choose “IAC Driver Bus 1” for the MIDI Port, and the other MIDI values as you like. Proclaim will detect them in the next step, so the channel, note, and velocity are not too important as long as the note is unique for each action you want to take (previous slide, next slide, etc.)

Now in Proclaim, go to Settings, and click the MIDI Input tab. Click “Add Command”.

Select the command you want to be able to control from Companion. Here, I’ve chosen “Previous Slide”.

Once you select a command, Proclaim will start listening for the MIDI message.

Now go back to the Companion GUI and click “Test Actions” on your button.

Proclaim will detect the MIDI message and apply it to the command.

Repeat this for all the commands you want to control from your streamdeck with Companion and midi-relay.

That’s it! I hope that is helpful! As always, if you need some help along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. If this post or others have helped you, take a minute and learn more about me.