PowerPoint:mac
Snapz Pro X movie capture from PowerPoint
by Geetesh Bajaj, February
5th 2005 - discuss
this page...
Snapz Pro X for PowerPoint?
First Impressions
About Ambrosia Software
PowerPoint Capture Guidelines
Doing the Capture
More Ideas
Snapz Pro X for PowerPoint?
I work cross-platform on PowerPoint for Windows and Mac. Most
PowerPoint users on Windows believe that the best feature on PowerPoint
for Mac is the ability to export an entire movie to a QuickTime
file. A few PowerPoint designers actually create their presentations
on Windows but move them to the Mac so that they can produce a
movie.
So is PowerPoint's QuickTime output good enough? For simple presentations,
it is adequate. Add some complicated animations or include a voice-over
or background music score and PowerPoint's movie output options
get stretched to their limits.
At times, I've output movies from PowerPoint:mac 2004 only to
find that the entire narration for a slide plays before the first
animation sequence even starts moving. That's clearly not acceptable.
Someone suggested Snapz
Pro X as an alternative. Read more...
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First Impressions
I downloaded and installed a trial version of Snapz Pro X. The
trial version works identical to the full version for 15 days. Snapz
Pro X loads with Mac OS X by default and you need to press the z+Shift+3
keys to activate it. We'll explore the capture options later in
this review.
To cut a long story short, let me tell you that my first movie
capture of a PowerPoint presentation with Snapz Pro X exceeded
my expectations. I even played it on Windows using the QuickTime
Player and it was smoother than any other presentation capture
that I had done on that platform.
My first movie capture with Snapz Pro X
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About Ambrosia Software
SnapzProX is from Ambrosia
Software, a company based in Rochester, New York, United
States. Apart from SnapzProX, Ambrosia also makes SnapzPro, a
similar product for those who still use OS 9 or other Mac OS
classic versions. Ambrosia also creates several other Mac programs.
My contact at Ambrosia for this review was Andrew Welch, the developer
of Snapz ProX, and the president of Ambrosia Software. Thank you,
Andrew.
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PowerPoint Capture Guidelines
For this tutorial, I'm using a presentation that contains over
a thousand gradient swatches. To make sure that I take Snapz Pro
X to its limits I recorded a narration on each slide using PowerPoint:mac
2004 and a Plantronics DSP300 headset.
To ensure a perfect video capture, make sure you follow these
guidelines:
Color and Resolution: To make the finished movie
smaller in size, change the resolution and color depth and set
it to 800 x 600 pixels at 256 colors. That's not too many colors
- and your display make look patchy. Fortunately, it looks much
better after a reboot so if you are lowering your resolution and
color depth, do make sure that you reboot before doing an actual
capture.
Start and end with blank slides: So that the
narration on your first slide does not begin even before you can
begin the capture, include a blank black or white slide before
the presentation. Set the transition of this slide to occur on
mouse-click. Create a similar last slide in the presentation.
Moving between slides: While the video capture
is being done, make sure that you use the spacebar to move to the
next slide rather than the mouse since the capture could pick up
the mouse click sound.
Close applications: Make sure that you are not
connected to an instant messenger application like MSN Messenger
while doing the capture - you don't want a window popping up inside
the capture to announce that a friend has just come online!
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Doing the Capture
Follow these steps to do a typical PowerPoint to video capture
using Snapz Pro X:
- Launch PowerPoint and open your presentation. You can record
the narration using PowerPoint's narration feature (Slide Show
| Record Narration. Alternatively, you might want to record using
the microphone along with the video capture.
- Include a blank slide before the presentation (see guidelines
above). Play the presentation so that you are on the first slide.
Press the z+Shift+3 shortcut key
(or any other shortcut key if you changed the defaults). This
will initiate Snapz Pro X and bring forth a dialog box (see screenshot).
- Select the Movie option and Snapz Pro X brings another dialog
box (see screenshot).
- Change the Selection style to
"Fixed size". Set the size to the resolution of your
screen.
- If you want to record voice using the microphone along with
the capture, make sure that you check the option that says "Microphone
track".
If you want to record voice that is part of the PowerPoint presentation,
make sure that you check the option that says "Mac audio
track".
To begin recording, double-click outside the dialog box.
- Play the presentation as required - be aware that everything
is being recorded to a movie. You can record a narration along
with the presentation. When you want to stop the movie capture,
just press the hotkeys (by default, z+Shift+3)
again.
- As soon as you press the hotkey, Snapz Pro X springs to life
(see screenshot).
- Click on the audio track settings and choose the Qualcomm PureVoice
option - this setting keeps the file size low.
- Snapz Pro X now saves the entire recorded presentation to
a movie.
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More Ideas
Movies recorded through Snapz Pro X are saved to the QuickTime MOV
format. You can take this further:
- Play the movie on Mac and Windows computers.
- Stream the movie off the web.
- Convert to AVI using QuickTime Professional.
- Creating a DVD on a Mac is simple - just drag the movie to
iDVD to create a DVD that can be played on a regular DVD player.
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