Windows Power Point

Mandk wrote on 11/5/2004, 7:15 PM
Just beating a dead horse.

I have tried a number of approaches to transferring a power point presentation to video and am not happy with any of them. Each slide show in the presentation consists of four parts (1) a baby picture (2) a little kid Picture (3) the high school senior picture and (4) text identifying the individual, college plans, and a "funniest moment quote"

The slide show looks good when it runs. I have tried the power point producer option (seems to suck a lot of ram and not great quality when rendered for web viewing), camera on screen resulting quality not anything I would admit to, a trial camtasia program Okay quality but not too good after render to web stats.

After a long intro. Has anyone really been happy with their transfers? Just to keep quality and produce a product I am happy with, I am thinking I take the long way and import each element into vegas and do it as it should have been done in the first place.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

This is a freebie for my local high school. I am a volunteer dad responsible for video and a web site. I do not get paid but I want to give the band, parents, school, and prospective band parents the best quality.

Sorry about the ramble.

Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 11/5/2004, 7:20 PM
I'm just finishing one. Open the file in PowerPoint and then save it (all the slides) as .png files. Then, drop those into the timeline in Vegas. Add any audio and render it to .avi.

Jay
Grazie wrote on 11/5/2004, 11:52 PM
Yup, Jay, you plumped down on that solution eh? Seems like the Audio wasn't an issue in the end - yeah? PNGs are great! So you didn't go the Camstudio route or any realtime screen capturing device or S/W? Interesting to know your reasoning behind this.

Grazie
johnmeyer wrote on 11/6/2004, 12:37 AM
We just finished a long thread on this just a few days ago:

HELP! PowerPoint to .AVI - Possible?
Grazie wrote on 11/6/2004, 1:11 AM
. . Is that for me JM?
Jay Gladwell wrote on 11/6/2004, 4:07 AM
Grazie--

It originated as a PowerPoint presentation/interactive webcast. Making it available as a web video was an after thought. I went the .png route because the client needed the slides to be sharp as possible, the reason being it was all text... and lot's of it. I felt this approach ensured the the best possible image, under the circumstances. (Besides, I didn't want to have to buy another app for this one job). It then had to be encoded for web broadcast at 320 x 240. The sound was a bugger! Sounded like it was recorded from a telephone.

With the .png files in the video track and the discussion in the audio track, I had to stretch each slide to match the corresponding audio. This getting the timing correct was the most time consuming part of the job! And the timing sheet I was given was not all that accurate to boot! Oh, and I forgot to mention, they changed the slides from the original broadcast to the "streaming version" I was doing. On top of that, there were two of these to be done--each was approximately 120 minutes. It almost goes without saying, if I never see another PowerPoint presentation, it'll be too soon.

Jay
Chienworks wrote on 11/6/2004, 5:08 AM
Jay, the one problem with this method is that it doesn't capture any of the movement or transitions. In fact, if you have a slide that is built up in pieces as time goes on, the .png image you get will only be the final image. This makes it difficult to reproduce the effectiveness of dynamic slides.

Of course, in those instances, you could slice & dice the image and use Vegas to move parts in and animate as appropriate. But, if you're going to do that, you might as well just create the whole show in Vegas to begin with.
Mandk wrote on 11/6/2004, 7:25 AM
THat is exactly my issue. The trasitions and the fades are an important part of the presentation. They just do not translate well.

After considering overnight I am going to go the nonvideo route - replace the existing slides with 2 versions each and put on the web using the powerpoint export to web html option. Will not look as good but will take a whole lot less time.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions and I agree that if I never see anothher powerpoint presentation it will be too soon. My daughter is a senior next year and the senior video will be prepared appropriately (ie Video not power point) the first time.
Grazie wrote on 11/6/2004, 9:02 AM
Ah Jay! - You needed the SlideShowToMArkers Script. It would place a graphic on every Marker . . You could have tappped out the markers and then allowed the script to place the PNGs to the Markers . . It was only NOW when I read your post that you identified the "audio" synch issue .. hey ho . .

Oh yes Kelly, I was woindering when somebody was gonna bring up the PP mvong stuff ISSUE wuith all this - "YAH CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT!"

Grazie
Jay Gladwell wrote on 11/6/2004, 10:28 AM
Kelly, there were no transitions. They were all straight cuts. Nor were there any slides that had added text as the "show" progressed. Real exciting stuff!

Grazie, stretching the images were no problem, once the length was decided. Determining which slide went where--that was the problem, along with the timing issue. They were talking "live" as the presentation progressed. This was pre-produced with audio. So they would start talking about a new topic before they realized they needed to ask for the new slide. Not thought out well at all.

Jay
johnmeyer wrote on 11/6/2004, 2:24 PM
. . Is that for me JM?

Huh?
Grazie wrote on 11/6/2004, 3:23 PM
"We just finished a long thread on this just a few days ago:" . . was that for me? Very thoughtful of you .. G