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The PowerPoint Ezine - 45
by Geetesh Bajaj, June
26th, 2004
Get this ezine in your mailbox...
Before we start, here's something that's been requested by
so many subscribers that I have lost count! Finally, free PowerPoint
templates from Indezine:
Download
here...
There's more! 123Ppt.com is giving away free PowerPoint
templates to all Indezine subscribers - in fact, these are exclusive
designs only for all of you.
Download
here...
New Prizes
By being subscribed to this ezine,
you are eligible to win!
I've still not finished distributing prizes announced in the last
ezine - so you might receive a mail from me congratulating you
on receiving the prize. For those of you who use a spam protector,
can I request that you add me to your friends' list - my mail ID
would be geetesh (@) geetesh (.) com.
Jim Roach of StreamPresentations.com is
giving away three copies of his PowerPoint streaming video solution
- thank you, Jim. Jim is also providing the entire PowerPoint streaming
solution for just US$24 - that's a 75% discount off the list price
of US$99. The discount coupon code is: indezine and the
discount will be applied LAST during the checkout process after
you enter the coupon code (indezine).
Joanna Biggs of Above & Beyond is giving away
three copies of their cool Ten
Ways to Avoid Death by PowerPoint product. Thank you, Joanna.
Here's a link to the Indezine review
of the product...
Vladimir Zecevic of Ars Media is giving away three
copies of their amazing Photoshop
to PowerPoint add-in. Here's a link to the Indezine
review of the product...
Back
Focus on Style Workshop
Everyone wants their PowerPoint presentations to look different.
And so do you - but where do you start? With a template? That's
part of the answer - but you also need color coordinated buttons,
icons and bullets - and nice visuals that match the look and feel
of your presentation. That's where Style Workshop comes into the
picture.
Colin Adams from Indigo Rose sent me a copy of Style Workshop,
a set of CDs that contain individual style
elements like buttons, panels, backgrounds, arrows, photos, icons,
bullets and bars. It's a nice collection although it is important
that you remember that you cannot just open Style Workshop and
get it working within PowerPoint - you'll need to choose the style
elements you need and then get them into PowerPoint or any other
application. That in itself is a good thing since you have the
freedom of choosing and mixing your own style elements and creating
a design that entirely individual.
For more info, read my Style
Workshop review...
PowerPoint and SmartDraw
In any presentation, visuals play an important role. Well designed
visuals can make information easy-to-grasp and understand. Lately,
I've been exploring how SmartDraw, a drawing application works
with PowerPoint to help create quick and effective infographics
for presentations.
 
Read more here...
Download
a free trial of SmartDraw here...
Animation Carbon
Shyam Pillai has created another amazing PowerPoint add-in.
With the launch of PowerPoint 2002 (and 2003), animation metamorphosed
from a simple single click attribute to something much more enriched,
and complicated. Designers spent hours mastering the new motion
paths - and fine-tuned the timings on multiple animations. After
the jaws finished dropping and the wows were over, designers were
expected to create a similar animation effect for another presentation
element!
You get the pattern - hours upon hours were being spent on recreating
the same effects. It was often felt that it would be great if PowerPoint
had a library feature where all such animation procedures could
be stored - and then imparted to objects with a single click. Shyam's
new product - Animation Carbon fills that void. You
can download a 15 day trial version of Animation Carbon here...
Back
PowerPoint and Video Part IV
Before I get started with the third part of this series, I must
tell you how much fun it is to use muvee. muvee, or rather muvee
autoProducer is an amazing program that automatically creates
movie collages from your video clips. Try
downloading their trial version here...
Read the full PowerPoint and Video article
here...
Insert Video Objects (Video with Play Controller)
PowerPoint also allows you to insert video objects within a slide
- the advantage in inserting such video objects is that you'll
get a video controller along with the video itself while PowerPoint
is in slide show mode. Thus you can stop, pause and play the video
right within PowerPoint.
- Navigate to the slide where you want your video inserted in
a new or existing presentation.
- Choose Insert | Object.
- In the Insert Object dialog box, make sure that the 'Create
new' radio button is selected and choose the Media Clip option.
- PowerPoint's menus will metamorphose to Media Player's menu
options - choose Insert Clip provides several options including
Video for Windows (for AVI videos) and DirectShow (for MPG, WMV
and ASF movies) - the other options are to insert sound objects.
- Choose Edit | Options and place a check next to the Auto Rewind
option. You can also choose whether you want a control bar should
be visible while the video plays. By default, this option is
selected. Click OK.
- Click anywhere outside the video object - you can reposition
and resize your video.
Normally, video objects play when clicked - if you want the video
to play immediately with the slide:
- Select the video and choose Slide Show | Custom Animation.
This will activate the Custom Animation taskpane.
- With the video object still selected, choose Add Effect |
Object Actions | Play.
- Change the default Start value from On Click to After Previous.
Links and Link Problems
Whenever you insert a movie (or a movie as an object) within PowerPoint,
it is invariably linked to the presentation. In fact PowerPoint
cannot embed any movies within the presentation - that's probably
sound reasoning in the first place because embedded movies would
balloon up PowerPoint file sizes like nothing else!
Now for the bad part - PowerPoint is not too good at remembering
link locations. As far as the presentation and the video files
are on the same system, you will not face any problems. However,
if you decide to move or copy the presentation to another system
you'll discover that PowerPoint cannot locate the video files -
it won't even offer to find the links for you. The solution is
quite simple - assemble all your video files in the same folder
as your presentation even before you insert them into PowerPoint.
And yes, only insert the videos into a presentation that has been
saved at least once.
Video Playlists
You can create a playlist of your videos in Windows Media Player
and get PowerPoint to play the entire sequence of videos - an invaluable
idea if you want to play a series of videos within a presentation
seamlessly and you don't have the time to get the videos rendered
together in a video editing package.
- In Windows Media Player, create a playlist consisting of the
sequence of videos that you want to play. In fact, you can also
create a sequence that contains both videos and sound. Save the
playlist to a Windows Media Playlist file (*.WPL)
- In PowerPoint, create or open an existing presentation and
go to the slide where you want to begin playing the sounds and
choose Insert | Movies and Sounds | Movie from File...
- Navigate to folder contain the playlist (*.WPL) file (you
might need to change the "files of type" option to "All
files (*.*)"
- Select desired *.WPL playlist and click OK. PowerPoint will
prompt you if you want the sound to start "Automatically" -
accept this option.
- Right-click the shape that PowerPoint places on the slide
and choose the Custom Animation option. In the Custom Animation
task pane click on the item and choose "Effect Options" from
the drop-down menu.
- Specify in the "Stop playing" group how many slides
you want the playlist to continue playing through. If you want
all the videos to play on a single slide choose the Stop playing
after current slide option.
Since a playlist can include either audio or video, the playlist
object will appear and behave like a Movie object in PowerPoint
for video. For sounds, it will appear as a black rectangle on the
slide (where Windows Media visualizations will appear for audio).
The next part of the PowerPoint and Video article will be included
in the next ezine issue.
News & Content
Read the
PowerPoint Blog here... The PowerPoint Blog now includes
the Atom syndication service so that you can use a Atom compatible
newsreader to read all postings.
Back
Events & Seminars
PowerPoint Live
October 10 to 13, 2004, San Diego, California, USA
Rick Altman, R Altman Digital Consulting
http://www.pptlive.com/
Back
Credits
During the preparation of this issue of the PowerPoint Ezine,
I received assistance, content or feedback from Betsy Weber, Carolyn
Dennis, Colin Adams, Jason Hardy, Jim Roach, Joanna Biggs, Kathy
Jacobs, Michael Peterson, Scott Harvey, Tania Chew and Vladimir
Zecevic (all in alphabetical order). I would like to use this platform
to thank them for their help.
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