PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Instant Effects Presenter v4: Conversation with Don Brittain

Don Brittain is CEO and a founder of Instant Effects, a California company that develops software to visually enhance presentations, communications, and collaboration. In this conversation, Don discusses the new v4 release of Instant Effects Presenter.

Geetesh: Tell us more about the new Presenter v4.

Don: With this new release of Presenter, we’re offering even greater control of the key elements needed to produce fantastic speaker support and event graphics.

We’ve continued to build on our hallmark capability of providing modern broadcast looks, complete with custom branding through dynamic logos, branded transitions, and full motion backgrounds.

With version 4, we also offer the ability to include dual low-latency live video feeds, use multiple projectors to produce high-resolution output at reasonable cost, and we allow your presentations to be rendered in stunning stereoscopic 3D, just like the new feature films being released today.

By tightly integrating functions that are normally handled by expensive Audio/Visual equipment, we both lower the cost of producing an event while simultaneously increasing the creative options. This leads to a better visual result, while keeping tight reins on your production budget.

Presenter remains an open and extensible system. In a world where almost all presentations look the same, Presenter offers almost unlimited creative freedom to help your presentations get noticed, stand out, and be remembered. Frankly, it’s quite thrilling to see what others have done with Presenter when it comes to high-class, exciting output.

Geetesh: What are S3D Presenter, Event Presenter, and Master Presenter – are these extras or are they part of the Presenter v4 product?

Don: Presenter has always been based on a real-time 3D rendering system, similar to those used in advanced computer games or for movie special effects. With Release 4, Presenter now consists of a family of four software products, all built on the same core foundation.

With OfficeFX Presenter, we use the core functionality to provide fresh ways to render your PowerPoint content. This allows your presentations to benefit from the visual expressiveness common in broadcast television graphics while still offering the benefits that come from using PowerPoint to enter and edit your content and control your presentation flow.

Event Presenter extends the feature set of OfficeFX Presenter. It uses the power of our real-time rendering system to add support for dual HD video streams, including support for live, low-latency video input in HDMI, HD-SDI, or component form. It also adds the ability to “edge blend” sub-images so that multiple lower resolution projectors can be used to produce very high-resolution displays.

S3D Presenter builds on OfficeFX Presenter in a different direction. It includes support for rendering separate left and right views to produce high-resolution, full-color stereoscopic 3D output for display on a broad range of S3D projectors and monitors. Since we still support the use of 2D assets (images, text, video), S3D Presenter provides an interesting way to give new life to current content. And by including animating 3D models along with stereo 3D images and video, you can produce state-of-the-art results while still employing PowerPoint workflow – complete with the ability to make changes right up to the last minute.

Master Presenter combines the features of OfficeFX Presenter, Event Presenter, and S3D Presenter in a single, comprehensive package. Because different users have different needs, the products are sold separately, but you can easily upgrade with no need to alter any of your existing presentations.

See Also: Instant Effects Presenter v3.5: Conversation with Don Brittain

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Add-in, Interviews, OfficeFX, PowerPoint

PresentationPro Motion Templates Volume 1: The Indezine Review

PowerPoint has been around for nearly two and a half decades now, and quite possibly many viewers are tired of seeing the same PowerPoint designs. Styles come and go with unfailing regularity, and there’s always the human urge to experiment and play with something different. This human urge extends to PowerPoint as well — and PowerPoint designers are always on the look out for something more contemporary. Enter Motion Templates from PresentationPro, a set of designs that include animated elements that attract attention while still being subtle enough to not make the presentations loud. How can these be used, and what is our opinion — read more to learn.

Read the review here.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: PowerPoint, Review, Templates

TechSmith SnagIt 9: The Indezine Review

Like many others, I end up with many programs on my computer. I find that most programs fall into several categories. I need to use some of them everyday, and some of them at least a few times each month. Also, there are programs that I had to buy because I had to use them once or twice — and maybe I’ll need them again once or twice a year. Finally, there are programs I use all the time because they do the work of a dozen programs for me! I’m sure SnagIt from TechSmith comprises the last category.

Read the review here.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Review, Snagit, Techsmith

PPTProTools: The Indezine Review

While PowerPoint is equipped with more options that what any person can use in their lifetime, there’s always some features that are missing — or are available in some deep dungeon within PowerPoint that’s not visible to mere mortals. I recently came across this cool add-in for PowerPoint called OfficeOne ProTools that creates some new options within PowerPoint. Let’s see how it fares.

Read the review here.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Add-in, PowerPoint, Review

Canto Cumulus 8: Conversation with Steffen Setzer

Steffen Setzer is Director of Marketing at Canto. Canto is a leading supplier ofdigital asset management solutions and has been dedicated to helpingcustomers fully utilize their digital assets since 1990. In this interview, Steffen discusses the new Canto Cumulus 8, a cross-platform solution that enables companies to easily organize, find, share, and track their ever-increasing numbers of photos, illustrations, presentations, videos, audio, layouts, and more.

Geetesh: Tell us more about Canto Cumulus 8 and the new improvements.

Steffen: Cumulus 8 was the most significant architecture update ever for the product line. Just on the subject of performance alone, users are seeing exponential increases. The user interface was overhauled to provide a more efficient, friendly experience for users, and we also added user commenting on assets, statistics, and much more. Among the new add-on products is a module that enables users to catalog new assets via email, which is a real benefit for those who work remotely, or even those who use smart phones to capture photos, like Realtors or insurance adjusters. Overall, I’d say Cumulus 8 has been an extremely popular release for customers.

Geetesh: There’s no new feature for PowerPoint users in Cumulus 8 — but I’m sure they can benefit from the overall improvements to the program. Tell us more.

Steffen: Actually, because catalog performance in Cumulus 8 is far faster than ever, those who catalog PowerPoint presentations that are divided into individual asset records per slide, can see fantastic speed gains. In addition, we have a new built-in Image Editor that enables users to convert previews into brand new assets. So, users can use this utility to create web-ready JPGs or other images from their PowerPoint slides. Or, they can even have Cumulus create watermarked variants of their presentations, saved as images or PDFs, even over the Web.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Digital Asset Management, Interviews, PowerPoint, Steffen Setzer