What Does Vies Actually Do?

Vies sits on your church’s projection computer and listens to the sermon through a microphone. As the minister speaks, it transcribes the audio in real time and watches for Bible verse references. When it detects one, it can send that verse straight to your projection software, an NDI stream, or a floating overlay on screen.

No one has to sit at the projection desk frantically searching for verses. The software handles it.

Downloading and Installing

Head to the Vies download page and grab the latest Windows installer. Run it, accept the defaults, and you are done in under a minute.

Vies is a Windows-only desktop app. It runs on Windows 10 and 11. There is no macOS or Linux version at this time.

First-Run Setup

On first launch, Vies will download the AI models it needs to transcribe sermons. You will see a download dialog showing progress. The models range from 466 MB to 1.5 GB depending on which quality tier you choose later. This is a one-time download — after this, everything runs offline.

If you have a slow connection, the app downloads the most important model first so you can start using it while the rest finish in the background.

First Launch

When you open Vies for the first time, the AI model download will start automatically. Once that completes, you will land on the home screen with access to:

  • Scripture Listener — the real-time transcription engine that detects verses
  • NDI Scripture — the canvas editor for designing how verses appear on your NDI output

Start with the Scripture Listener. That is where the core experience lives.

Setting Up Your Microphone

Vies uses whatever microphone your system has set as the default input device. If you are running a USB audio interface from your sound desk, make sure Windows has it selected as the default recording device in Sound Settings before you launch Vies.

For best results, use a direct feed from your mixing console rather than a room mic. The cleaner the audio, the more accurate the transcription.

Transcription

Vies runs a local Whisper speech engine directly on your machine. Choose from three quality tiers in settings:

  • Best — highest accuracy, requires a dedicated GPU (NVIDIA recommended), 1.5 GB model
  • Standard — great accuracy with less memory, 834 MB model
  • Lite — works on any computer without a GPU, 466 MB model

There is also an optional Cloud AI enhancement that combines the local speech engine with Gemini AI for improved verse matching. This requires an internet connection and your own Gemini API key. No audio leaves your machine — only transcript text is sent to Gemini.

All processing happens on-device by default with complete privacy and zero internet dependency. No audio is sent anywhere and no account is required.

Running Your First Sermon

Here is the practical walkthrough:

  1. Open Vies and navigate to Scripture Listener
  2. Check that your microphone is picking up audio (you should see the transcript area updating as you speak)
  3. Choose your output method — EasyWorship, FreeShow, OpenLP, the floating overlay, or NDI output. Select your presentation target in the Scripture Listener settings.
  4. Hit the Start Listening button
  5. Start talking. Say something like “Let us turn to Romans chapter eight verse twenty-eight” and watch the verse appear

The verse detection works through two parallel systems. An intelligent text-matching system scores transcript fragments against the full Bible text. At the same time, a spoken reference parser listens for patterns like “chapter five verse twelve” and resolves them directly. Between these two approaches, Vies catches references whether the minister quotes the text verbatim or just names the location.

Adjusting Sensitivity

In the Scripture Listener settings, you will find confidence thresholds and cooldown timers. The defaults work well for most preachers, but if you are getting false positives (random verses popping up that were not referenced), raise the minimum confidence score. If the app is missing references your minister actually spoke, lower it.

There is also a cooldown timer that prevents the same verse from firing repeatedly within a few seconds. This handles the common case where a preacher says a reference, reads the verse, then comments on it using some of the same words.

Where to Go Next

Once you have the basics working, you will probably want to connect Vies to your actual projection setup. Here are guides for the most common configurations:

And if you want to understand the verse detection process in more detail, read How AI Scripture Detection Works in Vies.