Wondershare DVD Presenter
Reviewed: Geetesh Bajaj
Date Created: July 26th 2007
Last Updated: February 25th 2009
Introduction
About DVD Presenter
Download and Installation
Using DVD Presenter
Pricing and Support
Conclusion
Introduction
Creating a DVD presentation from PowerPoint is something many PowerPoint users want to do -- and it is also one of the areas that is taken care of third-party add-in providers rather than Microsoft.
In this review, we look at one such PowerPoint add-in product called Wondershare DVD Presenter.
Back
About DVD Presenter
DVD Presenter is from Wondershare, a company based in China. You can learn more about their products from their site...
DVD Presenter enables you to convert Microsoft PowerPoint presentations to video formats, and burn them on a DVD/miniDVD or save it to DVD/VCD quality video formats (MPEG 2 and MPEG 1). This process retains all the animations, transitions, sound and movies embedded, all in sync with the presentation.
My contact at Wondershare for this review was Mark Brown - thank you, Mark.
Download and Installation
Download the installer, run the setup routine and follow the instructions.
You'll end up with an Wondershare DVD Presenter program group in your
Windows Start menu (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1: Wondershare DVD Presenter
Using DVD Presenter
Follow these steps to use DVD Presenter:
- Go to your Windows Start menu and choose All Programs | Wondershare
| DVD Presenter | Wondershare DVD Presenter (see Figure 1 above).
- This launches the DVD Presenter interface as show in Figure
2,
Figure 2: Adding Files
Click on the Browse button which opens a dialog box from where you can select any PowerPoint presentation for conversion, in this window you can even select the output destination folder. Click Next to proceed
- The next screen is for Output Properties, as shown
in Figure 3. Here you can choose the output file format,
video standard and layout, and advanced settings. When done, click the
Next button.
Figure 3: Output Properties
- The third tab of the interface is DVD Menu (see Figure
4). This provides options for customizing the menu style
of the DVD and playback options. Make your choices, and click Next
to proceed.
Figure 4: DVD Menu
- The next tab is the Preview tab, as shown in Figure
5. Here you can see a preview of the converted presentation
before burning it on a DVD.
Figure 5: Preview
- Burn Disk is the last and the final tab of the interface
(see Figure 6). Here you can choose the burn settings.
Once the selections are made, click the Next button to start the burning
process.
Figure 6: Burn Disk
Note: Make sure that you have a blank DVD inserted in your DVD writer
- This will start the burning process as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Burning process
Pricing and Support
The download version of DVD Presenter costs $99.95, the CD version is priced at $109.95, for a single user license.
Support options include e-mail response, an online FAQ and tutorials.
Conclusion
We had no problems with installing and using the program -- but the DVDs created don't seem to work on all computer systems or DVD players. So I'll suggest you first play with a trial version of the product to see if it suits your requirements.
Overall, it's a capable product that reproduces most of the animations and transitions in PowerPoint slides. Often overlooked, this is also a capable PowerPoint to movie converter.
A lot is at stake -- power, money, reputation, future plans, justice. You need to win this case. Your presentation materials surely will play an important role in helping the judge and jury experience the sights, sounds, and details of the case ... or not. The choice is up to you, says one tech-savvy attorney.
The choice is up to you, says one tech-savvy attorney. It all depends upon whether you are willing to push PowerPoint beyond its normal boundaries to maximize its interactive and persuasive potential. This article by Robert Lane and
Bruce A. Olson
provides a better idea of using PowerPoint in court. 
