If you are talking about manually pressing a button:



With very little electronic skill something like this could fire a tiny buzzer or inject audio directly into your camera mic input.

Thansk Kevin, but I need the mic audio for syncing up with the external audio.

/Ulf

"could fire a tiny buzzer"

Not really sure if you were envisioning a remote control type device. The remote relay could power a small buzzer or tone generator that plays a beep through a cheap ear phone placed next to the camera mic (so the audience doesn't hear it). It's a bit kludgey, for sure.

I always ask the presenter(s) for a copy of their PowerPoint presentations.
Take it back to the office, save each slide out as a still image (obviously any special transitions won't work but you can usually get around this without too much work in Vegas).
If you don't have a copy of PowerPoint on your computer, I've found that Open Office (it's free) is very good at opening up most versions.

Mike

Microsoft offers a free viewer for PowerPoint presentations:

Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2007

And, of course, there is a service pack update:

PowerPoint Viewer 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

There are free viewers for all of Microsoft's Office programs (Access/Excel/Outlook/PowerPoint/Project/Visio/Word):
Office Online File Converters and Viewers

Kevin, do any of the free viewers allow you to save/export slides as images?
I know that Open Office has this capability.

Mike

It would appear not. I just installed it and it allows you to view a presentation or print it. One would have to do screen captures or print to PDF or other for export. OpenOffice is probably a better solution if you don't have Office.

Search the Forum on this topic and I think you'll find a John Meyer script that separates PowerPoint presentations into the slide components; provides .png files as I recall.

Jack

Jack, it was called Powerpoint Image Exporter (it's a PowerPoint file), was originally posted by Liam Kennedy (aka Liam Vegas) and is no longer on the Image Beam web site :-(

Mike

perhaps this one...

Converter

Looks interesting to me... (grin)

Until that time... Earl J.

Bob,
are you loading directly to Sony as it is recorded?
If it is running in the timeline, can't you hit the Marker (M) and stick a marker in at each slide change point? Just a thought ... not real sure what your workflow is on this sort of project.

If you need a visual or audio cue, isn't there a macro a person might build to create a sound or simulated flash on the tap of a single key?
Of course, one would have to concentrate on the presentation to identify each change of the slide and tap the key ... not always easy to do with other things going on ... (grin)
* * *
If you just need to get close, why not run a clock on the recording and write down the time of each change? ... then again, not easy to do with other things going on... (wink)
* * *

Until that time... Earl J.

are you loading directly to Sony as it is recorded?"

No, in the past I was recording to tape, now with EX1 to cards.

I have no problem really syncing the slides to the presentation, fairly trivial task, That was my point. Presto requires another camera on the shoot pointed at the screen. I don't see it as useful at all!

The only problem I've had is getting the slides themselves looking good. All the advice above is actually pretty bad. Best I've managed is to export as PDF out of PPT and then handle them in PS or Ppro. Simply extracting PNG or JPG provides no antialiasing and fine text and lines ends up as a mess.

Bob.

HiYa Bob

That is interesting in what you say regarding getting the PPT slides into Vegas. I do this often and all I do is save out the whole PPT slides to jpeg in the save as drop down menu and then add them to the Vegas time line. They have perfect (text) clarity even when I angle them with the trackmotion and set to 3d compositing.

Cheers from
Downunder

Try an 8 point fine font!
I did a job for the legals of a large insurance company. The slides were all "fine print". What a mess. Not sorry I lost the client over that at the end of the day.

Bob.

Always nice when someone takes the time to write a detailed reply. Kudos to Singular.

It's not a mandatory requirement that you use a separate camera to record the slides off the screen. So long as the screen fills 50% of the frame their software can detect the slide change. It can place markers into the T/L at every slide change.

Also if you do record the screen using a separate camera it only need to capture say 1 fps.


Bob.

I got the Moyea PPT to Video Converter last time it was on GAOTD.
Does a reasonably good job although the render options are limited.
Only had occasion to use it on the job a couple of times.

Bruce is very concerned about their image with customers and covering as many bases as possible. When Pluraleyes was in beta he sent me a hard drive to dump my "problem" project and media (couple of hundred multicam clips) on and fixed it in the next pre-release.

Yes, you can use other tools to accomplish the same result, but can you do it as fast as Presto will do it?

Hi Bob,

Check this :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827745/en-us

This is official microsoft advice how to increase resolutions of pictures exported from Power Point up to 3000 x 2250.

I have implemented this solution on my Power Point 2003 and it works correctly. Slides are excellent, even there are really small fonts.

I also prefere just one camera to record presentations and it's focused on lector (not on screen : acctually to avoid of problems during post I'm doing everything to NOT shot the screen). Screen will be filled in postproduction with exported slides. To achieve good and fast positioning on screen I usually use NewBlue Image Mapper (usually preset Tilted Plane or modification). To synchro slides with lector I use markers. All tasks take max 5 minute.

IMHO Presto as a product is valuable for corporate people which are not very familiar with editing techniques.

From other side I appreciate idea (and I'm waiting with hope) for Dual Eyes from Singular Software. Synchro of video with audio from external source is always problematic (even small slide of tempo causes chorus or phaser effects). Especially there are some problem when audience is big and presentation is interactive (question from audience). In case like this You have audio of lector (from personal mic and for example boss recorder) and video and audio from camera (where you are shooting audience and and mostly You have to record questions from last row (there is a place usually occupied by contestators)). It is difficult to synchro that and to copy with level of signals.

I suppose mix of Dual Eyes with Levelator will be product for me.

Best regards,

"This is official microsoft advice how to increase resolutions of pictures exported from Power Point up to 3000 x 2250."

Oh been down that path, doesn't help, even wrote some VB to batch the slides out.
The problem is the AntiAliasing or lack thereof. Scale a bitmap image using precise bicubic and it does an excellent job, Vegas uses the best there is and that's fine for images but bad for text.

The trick that I'm yet to fully explore is to use something like PS to handle the rasterising and select the correct level of AA when it's doing it. I oonly realised this by accident a few days ago using PS. I was doing small fonts and PS was making them look like mush because I had the AA set too high. Wound it right off and presto, perfect text. It looks jagged because it's only using single pixels and it would be a real mess if scaled.

Bob.