Comments

Tom Pauncz wrote on 12/15/2010, 8:13 AM
Not sure if there's a direct import, but you have some options.

There are free products there that convert the PPT presentation into video files which can be imported.

You can also export each slide as a 'picture' - JPEG, BMP etc, which will import into Vegas.

HTH,
Tom
Sue Gessel wrote on 12/15/2010, 8:22 AM
Thanks for your reply, Tom.
I should also mention that the quality, the resolution is very important. This will be a video to be shown on a large screen. What would give us the highest quality? We are also considering rescanning the photos to import directly into Vegas and re-creating the project - but if there is a way to import the Powerpoint into Vegaswithout any loss of quality of the photos - it would sure be a timesaver.
Tom Pauncz wrote on 12/15/2010, 8:30 AM
Sue,

Before you spend a lot of energy scanning pictures, download a trial version of Moyea PPT to Video Converter.

There a lot of output options to produce HQ videos.

Tom
Jay Gladwell wrote on 12/15/2010, 8:49 AM

This has been discussed a number of times here. I'm sure if you do a forum search for "powerpoint" you'll find what you're looking for.


musicvid10 wrote on 12/15/2010, 8:54 AM
Download and try the trial version of this:
http://www.wondershare.com/pro/ppt2video-pro.html

It occasionally shows up on GAOTD.

Works better than Moyea, for me anyway.
OdieInAz wrote on 12/15/2010, 8:45 PM
Maybe get the source provider to output the slide in high resolution avi from PowerPoint 2010.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/turn-your-presentation-into-a-video-HA010336763.aspx?CTT=1
PeterDuke wrote on 12/16/2010, 12:43 AM
I picked up Wondershare PPT2video at GAOTD. It worked well for my one and only test. Lots of output formats to choose from. They remind you (rather than nag) that it is a giveaway at the start and at the end of a conversion process.

"I should also mention that the quality, the resolution is very important. This will be a video to be shown on a large screen. What would give us the highest quality?"

You will probably be limited to 1920x1080, the best from HD television, which is only about 2 Megapixels. Most cameras these days are at least 5 Mpixels and more likely 10 Mpixels, although I think for low-end point and shoot cameras it is more about marketing than performance.
John_Cline wrote on 12/16/2010, 1:47 AM
Almost every PowerPoint presentation that I have been given to incorporate into a video has been basically unusable without a lot of tweaking. Most of the people creating these presentations have never heard of "safe title area" and the text typically goes all the way to the edge of the screen. They will also tend to put too much text on the screen using small fonts. Whenever I hear about the possibility of PowerPoint, I ask to talk to the person responsible and try to explain what I need. Sometimes this actually works, however, most of the time I have to get into PowerPoint and fix it myself (and charge them for it.)
logiquem wrote on 12/16/2010, 8:11 AM
If quality and resolution are so important, then forget importing PowerPoint. IMHO, PowerPoint stretch everything in a rather uncontrolable manner...

John_Cline wrote on 12/16/2010, 7:28 PM
" IMHO, PowerPoint stretch everything in a rather uncontrolable manner... "

Exactly what do you mean by this?
Byron K wrote on 12/17/2010, 10:22 PM
Another cheap solution is to try AVI Screen Classic and screen capture the power point to avi file. The only thing is the file can get quite large.
ushere wrote on 12/17/2010, 10:58 PM
Almost every PowerPoint presentation that I have been given to incorporate into a video has been basically unusable without a lot of tweaking. Most of the people creating these presentations have never heard of "safe title area" and the text typically goes all the way to the edge of the screen. They will also tend to put too much text on the screen using small fonts. Whenever I hear about the possibility of PowerPoint, I ask to talk to the person responsible and try to explain what I need. Sometimes this actually works, however, most of the time I have to get into PowerPoint and fix it myself (and charge them for it.)

never have truer words ever been spoken. it's been a while since i converted one since i generally refuse to do them (for all the above reasons jc gives), but when i did, i always reworked them from scratch.....
farss wrote on 12/18/2010, 3:11 AM
Like everyone here had my share of horrors with Powerpoint.
After my last one a thought did enter my head. Client says they want a "DVD" but to them a DVD may well be any shiny disk they can play in their corporate PCs.
So alternate solution that avoids the fundamental problem. Put the video in a Powerpoint presentation. This way the vector text and graphics will be perfect, same goes for the safe area problem. There's some restrictions on what can go into a PPT and how it'll all look but I suspect it'll be more than adequate for what the client wants.

Bob.
Sue Gessel wrote on 12/18/2010, 6:27 PM
Maybe I can add a little more information -
a group of people created a powerpoint consisted of scanned photos and a little bit of text. They took it around with a person to narrate it as the slides were displayed. They would like it turned into a DVD that would be able to be played by individuals in their homes. So our job includes recording a narration,add some music, and somehow (in the best way) copying each slide. We would then import it all into Vegas, time each slide to match the narration, put in tranistions - and they would have their completed DVD. Hope that helps - I was able to make a copy of each slide from the Powerpoint program - but not sure that it gives the best resolution of the photo or text.
ushere wrote on 12/18/2010, 6:44 PM
try exporting the pp as jpg's and work from there.....

better still, see if you can source the original pics.

either way it 'should' be a relatively easy process inside vegas....
PeterDuke wrote on 12/18/2010, 7:18 PM
"but not sure that it gives the best resolution of the photo or text."

A DVD is limited to 720x640 NTSC or 720x576 PAL so there is nothing you can do about that unless you go to Blu-ray.

Make sure that the text font size and type is suitable to cope with that limited resolution.

farss wrote on 12/19/2010, 3:20 AM
I would redo the text in Vegas.
Every PPT export method I've tried does a horrid job on text. PPT itself does not do any antialiasing of text as one needs to do for video. Probably not too noticeable if the text takes up enough pixels but for fine lined fonts a disaster when viewed on a CRT TV.

Sorry if this is obvious. When you get to recording the commentary put an audio slate at the start of each recording e.g. "Slide number 876"

Bob.
BobMoyer wrote on 12/19/2010, 8:17 AM
FWIW - PowerPoint 2010 has an option to save as a .wmv file and an option to 'Send and Save' as a video on a DVD. I just laoaded this new version and I haven't tried it yet, but it may be of some use.

Bob
rs170a wrote on 12/19/2010, 8:52 AM
Give them the best of both worlds.
Do the DVD the way you're planning to but make a PPT presentation of it too and add this file to the root of the DVD in a folder called PPT.
It won't bother a DVD player (standalone or computer) and, if they really want the PPT presentation, they can play it from their computer or copy it and use it elsewhere.

Mike
logiquem wrote on 12/20/2010, 5:29 AM
You can't simply avoid images stretching in PowerPoint. In projector mode, Powerpoint strech them to adapt to actual p.c. display.

I'm a long time multimedia developper, and beleive me, i vastly prefer something like Director do make prestige visual presentations when it is possible, cause i can make a precise pixel display. You can have clean vectoriel fonts in PowerPoint (when it is created inside PowerPoint) because it redraw them in relation with display size, but bitmap images are always softened due to live size enlargement or reduction.
mgustavo wrote on 1/8/2011, 6:08 AM
Good evening

I've had a similar issue with PowerPoint presentations running on Vegas.

I'd like to ask why my Vegas text results 'blurry' on comparison with the PPT text converted to video (WMV).
Maybe I was not setting the text properties right, because those PPT converted text are much better, more linear, than Vegas text.
The problem is that is not practical to correct or update the text to PPT, then convert to video and import on Vegas.

I also would like to ask if there's a good program to write HQ text, because I've seen great HQ text on Youtube, but I couldn't find out how to make that.

PS: I've been uploading videos on Youtube, and for some reasons, including my 15" monitor, I'm rendering them to 1024x768 on WVM format.

Thanks