I'm shooting a lecture/power point presentation with the EX1 next week. The final destination for this is DVD and web.
I've never been real happy with the video reproduction of slides in a live shoot and was planning to just insert the powerpoint assets directly into the edit as stills. But, that's a lot of extra work.
If anyone has any tips for getting acceptable results shooting live, I would appreciate hearing them.
Thanks

Living most of my life in PowerPoint and video.... I'm with you, slides in a live shoot stinks.

I've found it easier to just insert the PPT gfx (output to tif, bmp whatever your flavor of choice is) onto your time-line. The last presentation I did, I had a second smaller camera just shooting a wide shot so I could match PPT to VID.

I produced another shoot recently of Bruce Mau, and we kept the PPT screen in the shot, but it wasn't good enough for the client, and we had to go back and lay in the actual slides.

The fun* part was recreating the PPT in a 16x9 format to match the EX1's frame. Good times, good times.

I never bother to shoot the PP screen. I shoot the Presenter/Speaker, than convert the powerpoint slides into jpegs or photoshop stills and edit them into the timeline at the appropriate place.

kj

I never bother to shoot the PP screen. I shoot the Presenter/Speaker, than convert the powerpoint slides into jpegs or photoshop stills and edit them into the timeline at the appropriate place.

kj
Yeah. That was my plan. I was hoping for an easy way out, but I guess not.
Thanks to all

But if you aren't catching some of the screen, then you are having to listen to the presso... which, to me, seems painfully slow in the edit suite. Especially if its an all day meeting.

To each his own, I suppose.

I usually end up recreating the ppts as no one ever thinks of font size or tv safe area when they make them. The wide angle safety shot saves sooooo much time later.

I would strongly suggest using a program such as Cyberlink's PowerDirector to create the slide show from the original photos / images. This will render the photos into high quality video in the format of your choice. There are many other options available, including motion (the "Ken Burns" effect), transitions, audio, etc.

Tom

My thought was to just drop the PP slides into Photoshop, render out at the desired rez and title safe size, then bring into the project as stills.
As far as placement, I was planning to use a small cam to video the projected slides, then in post I can fast forward thru this reference tape and get the time code cue for the inserts on the timeline. Once the stills are on the timeline I can fine tune placement, duration, etc.
That's my theory anyway.

My thought was to just drop the PP slides into Photoshop, render out at the desired rez and title safe size, then bring into the project as stills.
As far as placement, I was planning to use a small cam to video the projected slides, then in post I can fast forward thru this reference tape and get the time code cue for the inserts on the timeline. Once the stills are on the timeline I can fine tune placement, duration, etc.
That's my theory anyway.

Considering that PowerPoint absolutely blows at converting to raster files... you'll need an interim file between PowerPoint and Photoshop, I would recommend PDF. PDF retains font information, so you can rasterize it at any resolution you want. Big enough for an HD timeline.

You'll definitely need to fine tune, as presenters never seem to advance their slides when they really want to.

The other option to rasterize, if you are on a pc, and can locate a copy, would be SuperPrint. It does a bang up job ripping files to images.

I was researching for an upcoming job to so similar. I thought my best option would be to use Camtasia. Has anyone used it to record the whole session to AVI?

Saving each slide as a PNG can work, but can have unexpected results when complex builds are used.

Pumping out presenter + slide work is 'sausage factory' work for me, so as a Mac based editor in a PC PPT world, I keep sane and profitable by

1) Shooting a wide shot to know when slides (and other things) happen

2) Doing screen grabs of the PPT in full screen mode at appropriate parts of the build

Things can go wrong, so Bootcamp/Win XP helps. Even so, screen capture is the way to go for me.

I work on a matched locked off wide and manned close-up cam side by side - I can vary the wide from time to time, great for Q&A too. Sometimes I use multicam, mostly I just put the two cameras in sync, place the slides, then cut out the wide and shuffle the PPT as I see fit. Delivers a high quality result.

Having got the quality, I used to try to do PiP, animated 3D moves and so on, but nobody noticed, nobody cared and nobody would pay for it. What people want, and pay for, is good, stable, compatible and cost effective web delivery of the finished result.

BTW, I've been shooting on a couple of Z1s for years, but now thanks to the gurus who inhabit DVinfo, we have the Kensington 7-1 and SanDisk Ultra III solutions (thank you to all on that thread!), I'm looking forward to switching to EX1s - and saving heaps of ingest time!

Watching a few TED.com presentations will give you some ideas. They do it very well.

... you'll need an interim file between PowerPoint and Photoshop, I would recommend PDF. .

Andrew
THis is my first attempt at stripping assets from PP. How do I get from, for example, a jpeg photo with PP applied graphics nested in the PP project to a PDF file of same. Does PP have an export function for this?? Is it done with Acrobat??
I very much appreciate your experience with this.

I may be totally wasting your time with the following suggestion - I am basically a computer literate U. S. tax attorney who uses video for lectures and web presentations - but really knows little about the video aspects of things - however, take a look at Adobe Acrobat 9 - the highest level product version - as it includes new capabilities involving video, powerpoint, flash, adobe presenter (which is included with the Acrobat Extended software) and pdf files. See:

Adobe - Adobe Acrobat Pro Extended: Features (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatproextended/features/?chapter=0&subchapter=2)

and

Adobe - Adobe Presenter (http://www.adobe.com/products/presenter/)



I suspect that you will get more out of the information that adobe has provided than I did - but for me, it seems that it will make web and dvd presentations much easier - and very interactive if I so desire. (I believe that there are many ways to distribute pdf on the web and many ways to convert flv files to other general video formats useable on dvds.)

If the information is not helpful - forgive me for wasting your time. If it does prove to be useful - I would appreciate any insights you may have.

Eli
It does look like Acrobat/Presenter v. 9.0 will import Power Point projects and convert them to PDF for "cross platform sharing".
Thanks for the link
Actually, playing around with this a bit, it looks easier than I thought. If I right click on a PP Project, I get the option to convert to PDF in the drop down. Acrobat ( I have v. 7.1 Standard) will convert each slide to a PDF page. These pages will import into Photoshop CS3 wherein they can be resized, rerezzed, etc. and saved in whatever format I like for import into the video editor.
Looks pretty slick.

Another good tool is Moyea Powerpoint to video convertor (great for animations embedded videos etc)
If possible we always re-make the Powerpoint to suit video output better ie make video safe, convert to widescreen, change fonts and font size to make more readable, change colours etc.

You can use cutepdf To get pdf fromm Powerpoint

Martin

Andrew
THis is my first attempt at stripping assets from PP. How do I get from, for example, a jpeg photo with PP applied graphics nested in the PP project to a PDF file of same. Does PP have an export function for this?? Is it done with Acrobat??
I very much appreciate your experience with this.

I'll assume you are on a PC... As Mac has PDF output in the print dialog of (I think) every app, definitely in PowerPoint and Keynote.

So, if you are in PPT 2007 (the latest version) you can download an add-on to save-as PDF. This little Microsoft plugin, creates PDF files sooooo much faster than Acrobat it's not even funny. From here, you can import the PDF into Photoshop at your resolution of choice.

If you have PowerPoint 2003 you'll fInd Acrobat the best way to get a PDF out.

Also, from Acrobat Pro, you can output raster files (avoiding Photoshop all together)

If you get in a jam, send me the PPT and I'll convert it for you.

Andrew- thanks for the offer
I did just upgrade to Acrobat Pro 9. When you convert PP to PDF with v. 9 it creates a "video" PDF that preserves and plays the PP animations. Within Acrobat I can then Export appropriate frames as TIFFs that are plenty HQ & Hi Rez for an HD 1920 production. In fact, they need to be scaled down to 60% or so to fit the title safe frame. Animations can be recreated with cross fades. Viewing the output from the timeline on HD monitor the graphics look great and type faces are crisp.
Looks like Acrobat Pro v. 9 is a good solution- it eliminates the Photoshop step, preserves animations, and the final output quality is impressive.

I not sure if I am to late for this one but here is goes. If the PP has a lot of animations in it. You could always import the PP in to Keynote and Export QT file with what ever codec you are using. It has worked for me a couple of times. Just a thought. You just go file export and it will take the PP and make a Video with Audio out of it. Very cool tool.

Sorry I missed the last part of your solution about Acrobat 9 very cool that it preserves the animations.

Glad to hear the Acrobat worked out for you.

As for the resize, it sounds like you are outputting to 300dpi. Remember that PowerPoint slides measure 10" x 7.5" -- so 300 dpi would give you 3000 x 2250.

It may save you some resize time by getting into Acrobats settings and going with 200dpi then you'll have 2000 x 1500 images.

But it's that 10 x 7.5" thats really important, from here you can pick whatever resolution output by multiplying by DPI.

Camtasia works like a champ to import PowerPoint presentations, complete with transitions, and integrate it with live video. You essentially have window-in-window options and can move back and forth to full screen in sync with your audio. When you're finished, just output to DVD, and you're done. Even the learning curve is not too bad.

It may save you some resize time by getting into Acrobats settings and going with 200dpi then you'll have 2000 x 1500 images.

But it's that 10 x 7.5" thats really important, from here you can pick whatever resolution output by multiplying by DPI.

Good tip. This would eliminate yet another step in the process