PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Swing a Pendulum in PowerPoint

Tuesday, February 14, 2006, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 9:00 am

Creating a pendulum swing animation is possible using PowerPoint 2002 or later, and involves creating a hidden pivot point. A pendulum (the real type) swings back and forth on a pivot point at the top of the weight’s string, so we will need to create a shape that appears to swing at the end of a string and repeats back and forth from this pivot point.

Bill Dilworth shows you the steps.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Animation, Bill Dilworth

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Sleepy During An “Uninteresting” Presentation?

Tuesday, February 7, 2006, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 4:44 pm

In a recent online poll of 382 business managers, some 71 percent of respondents said that they have fallen asleep or been sleepy during an “uninteresting” presentation, according to a survey by Infommersion Inc.

Video for Cross-Platform Video

Saturday, February 4, 2006, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 4:04 pm

Diganta Saha is an Indezine reader that I have been corresponding with. He’s provided valuable information on video formats for cross-platform videos. Diganta uses PowerPoint 2004 on the Mac, and he uses QuickTime Professional on the Mac to convert his QuickTime videos to file formats compatible that are compatible with PowerPoint for Windows (and Mac). Over to Diganta…

This is for any of you or your users trying to get PowerPoint (PPT) with movie files to have the maximum compatibility with all platforms. I’ve gone through a large range of formats that Quicktime Pro can output and have concluded that PowerPoint will work with Windows and Mac on these movie formats below.

Using Quicktime Pro

AVI : Compression None
AVI : Compression Cinepak
Quicktime : Compression Cinepak (works most of the time)

Using ffMpegX

To creat MPEG-1 (select VCD mpeg2enc ), also a free alternative to Quicktime Pro

MPEG-1 (VCD)

Download ffMpegX here.

One caveat is that when using Office 2004 on the Mac to create PowerPoint presentations with video files with any of the working formats mentioned above, the preview of the first frame does not show on Windows. Double-clicking on the blank space where the movie would be in the PowerPoint file on Windows will start the movie. I experimented with Quicktime movie with Photo-JPEG compression which showed the first frame of the movie on a Windows computer, however, it did not play the movie at all.

This can be fixed on a Windows computer by unlinking and relinking any of the movie files formats mentioned above and saving the file. Saving it on Windows makes any of the movie files formats recommended above, preview the first frame of the movie correctly on both the Mac and Windows computers. This seems to be a serious bug with Office 2004 Powerpoint in terms of interoperability when it comes to movie files. I remember that Microsoft used to have an easy feedback webpage, but now its far more convoluted to send any bug reports. Does anyone know of Scott Erickson’s or Roz Ho’s contact info?

Thank you, Diganta.

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: Thoughts
Tagged as: Mac OS, Office for Mac, Video

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Instant Effects Announces Theme Suite 4

Friday, January 20, 2006, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 8:56 am

Instant Effects announced the availability of Theme Suite 4. This set of FXThemes has subtle motion backgrounds and flexible Content and Title variations. Some of these FXThemes can be used in either the 4:3 or 16:9 presentation formats. All FXThemes run as part of the OfficeFX product that brings moving backgrounds and 3D effects to Microsoft PowerPoint.

Check out more at the Instant Effects site.

Filed Under: Add-ins
Tagged as: Add-in

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SlideManager wins Award

Thursday, January 19, 2006, posted by Geetesh Bajaj at 2:55 pm

SlideManager for PowerPoint has received a first-place Standing Ovation Award in the category of Digital Asset Management. Standing Ovations for the best software, display, and digital imaging products are awarded annually by Presentations magazine, the leading publication for presentation professionals. Winners are chosen by a panel of editors, columnists, and independent consultants.