OT: Best s/w for a high school info board

riredale wrote on 4/11/2006, 9:48 AM
There is a related thread here about using video in Powerpoint presentations, and it jogged my memory on an issue at my daughter's school--they have just set up a couple of large-screen plasma displays and are hoping to use them as information boards to the student body during class breaks. The boards are driven by a standard PC running the usual MS office products, including Powerpoint (I think it's Office 2000).

What would be the best way to throw messages and video up on those displays? They have tried building a DVD (in fact, I authored it for them) that contained general informational announcements, such as, "ATTENTION: The last day for dropping spring classes is next Tuesday", and also the occasional video clip of some exciting game action or community function. The DVD was shown using WinDVD, and it worked, but going this route is labor intensive and slow.

Are there flexible, cheap, and popular programs that can be used to assemble slides and video for these displays?

The MS Producer software mentioned on the other thread sounds a little cumbersome, and is for Powerpoint 2002 and 2003, not 2000. Any ideas?

Comments

craftech wrote on 4/11/2006, 10:19 AM
A PC networked with an OmniHppd web server using PHP , Internet Explorer, speakers, screen, and a combination DVD/VCR. PHP is a good way to collect and display all the data, events, etc to be presented. Serial connection to the Plasma from the PC and a PC -Infrared Device for the DVD/VCR.

Alternatively, you could use a video card with a composite video out from the PC to feed it the power point presentation.

John
riredale wrote on 4/11/2006, 10:46 AM
John, the alternate you mention is what they currently have--they just drive the displays with a video feed from their video card, so what they see on their PC screen is what they see on their displays.

Is Powerpoint the universal tool in these cases? From what I can tell, you can show video with Powerpoint, but I need to buy one of those "Powerpoint for Dummies" books to learn how to do it.
logiquem wrote on 4/11/2006, 12:09 PM
Sure, you can do this with PowerPoint.

I would naturally use Director myself to make this sort of thing with a small script that link every medias with 'the current day' folder (good luck!), but you could also make a PowerPoint with external linked files (test, images, video) that PowerPoint will refresh on each opening.