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Thoughts and impressions of happenings in the world of PowerPoint and presentations, continuously updated since 2003.
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Colby Devitt is the president and co-founder of Wildform, a multimedia software company based out of Los Angeles, USA. In this conversation, Colby discusses the advantages of converting from PowerPoint to Flash, and how Wildform’s Flair performs the conversion in a more efficient way.
Geetesh: What are the ways in which converting a PowerPoint presentation to Flash can complement its message, distribution, and impact?
Colby: The Flash format provides many advantages for distributing multimedia presentations. To view PowerPoint files you either need the full PowerPoint authoring tool or the PowerPoint viewer installed. Neither of these comes standard on any computer. They are also Windows-based products. When you convert your PowerPoint to Flash it becomes viewable by anyone with an Internet connection. The Flash player works on all browsers used on Windows, Mac, and Linux and Flash files even play on some popular mobile platforms like Android. So when you put your presentation into the Flash format you dramatically increase the size of your potential audience.
The converted Flash files are also almost always substantially smaller than the PowerPoint source file which makes them much friendlier to display on the Web or to email. You also gain access to the many features of Flash such as the ability to add links, ActionScript, SCORM tracking for e-learning, etc.
Geetesh: Wildform products don’t do a one-click PowerPoint to Flash conversion with respect to the distinct features and capabilities of both the PowerPoint and Flash file formats — how does this result in a more faithful and cleaner output.
Colby: There are two basic ways to convert PowerPoint to Flash.
One is to record a movie of the PowerPoint playing. This can yield a very faithful result. However, the file size is usually very large. It is also impossible to change any element of the file after you have made your conversion. This means that to make any change you have to go back to your source file and then convert it all over again. Flair allows you to convert the PowerPoint into an editable Flash file. This allows you to make changes even after the conversion process to adjust elements, add new elements, enhance your presentation with Flash only features, and so on. In addition, all the elements that can be turned into vectors, such as shapes, callouts, background, etc. are transformed this way which greatly reduces file sizes.
See Also: The Benefits of Converting PowerPoint to Flash by Colby Devitt
Filed Under:
Interviews
Tagged as: Colby Devitt, Interviews, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Flash, Wildform
In PowerPoint 2010 there are six types of Shape Effects that you can use — and more than one of these effects can be applied to a selected shape. It goes without saying that some combinations of these effects look better than others — the restraint to not go overboard is always a good thing. On the other hand, trying out all the effect combinations may take a lot of time — fortunately, the Presets option comes to your rescue.
Learn how to apply Preset effects to shapes in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Effects, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials
PowerPoint provides four line drawing tools: line, curve, freeform, and scribble. You have already explored the Line and Curve tools, and in this tutorial you will learn how you can use the Freeform tool to create lines that can be drawn with more creative freedom — in fact the Freeform tool lets you draw anything almost like drawing with a pencil on a piece of paper. In addition, you can create straight lines as well.
Learn how to draw with the Freeform line tool in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.
Filed Under:
PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Lines, PowerPoint 2010, Shapes, Tutorials
Joe Gustafson is the CEO and founder of Brainshark, Inc., whose cloud-based software enables users to create, share and track online and mobile video presentations. Under his leadership, Brainshark has helped thousands of companies improve the reach and results of their business communications, while dramatically reducing communications costs.
In this conversation, Joe discusses Brainshark’s newly announced partnership with Brightcove.
Geetesh: Who is Brightcove, and what does the Brainshark partnership with Brightcove mean to your users?
Joe: We’re very excited to be announcing this partnership with Brightcove, a leading online video platform used by media companies, businesses and organizations worldwide to publish and distribute video on the Web.
Through this partnership, our customers can now publish their Brainshark content to Brightcove’s platform. This lets them take advantage of Brightcove’s vast reach to achieve a broader distribution of their video assets and drive more website traffic. Brightcove also provides additional opportunities for content syndication and social sharing.
As you know, we’re strong believers that every businessperson should be able to communicate through online video without cost or technical barriers. Because Brainshark lets you add voice to PowerPoint decks to create online videos within minutes, Brightcove customers can also leverage our platform to easily create new video assets and use video more frequently for any timely business communications.
Geetesh: How easy will it be for Brainshark users to publish their presentations as video on Brightcove?
Joe: It’s very easy. The first step is for companies to input Brightcove credentials into their Brainshark administrative settings, so their users can access the “publish to Brightcove” functionality. Then – as you’ll see in the video presentation below – we enable one-click publishing of video content from Brainshark to Brightcove.
After users have created a Brainshark presentation, they simply click the “publish to Brightcove” link to send the video directly to Brightcove for processing. A link to the Brightcove video will appear, and the video will also be accessible from their Brightcove account and available for viewing from Brightcove’s player. It’s as easy as that!
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: Brainshark, Interviews, Online Presentations, PowerPoint
Symbols for PowerPoint are ready to use clip-art style icons that you can use within your presentation slides. Although the icons you download from this page are yellow and grey in color, they can be recolored using PowerPoint’s native options for fills, lines, and effects. These symbols are contained within a sample presentation you can download. Just copy the icon you like and paste into another PowerPoint slide, or even a Word document or Excel worksheet. Choose symbol icons from themes such as business, travel, music, etc. All these symbol icons are vector shapes, so you can easily edit them within your Microsoft Office program.
Download, view, and use the symbols in this presentation.
Filed Under:
Clip Media
Tagged as: Clip Media, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples
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