How to combine PowerPoint and video for the Web
By Scott G. Silk
The best solution we know of for combining PowerPoint presentations with video, to easily play on your Web site, is to use WildPresenter. This product, which was released in February 2006, is the synthesis of all of the technology developed by Wildform Software, a group of artists who came together in 1999 to make technology easy for creative people so they could share their work with the widest audience. They focused on people who were not techies and created products they would like to have themselves.
WildPresenter is designed to let anyone rapidly create original and compelling multimedia projects in a way where they are free to focus on producing great content without getting bogged down in technological issues. Among its many capabilities, WildPresenter converts PowerPoint to flash, generates LMS compliant quizzes and surveys, authors demos and tutorials and creates professional interactive Flash projects. WildPresenter gives you several major programs in one.
Since its debut, WildPresenter has been a powerful PowerPoint to Flash converter, generating accurate conversions and small file sizes. You can see an example of a PowerPoint presentation converted to Flash by WildPresenter at the Computer Times' Motivation Articles page at http://computertimes.com/getthemost.htm .
It's worth noting that it's the only software we know of that converts PowerPoint files into an editable Flash format with full support for animations and transitions. This editable PowerPoint import has many benefits including greatly reducing the file size, maintaining the highest quality, and enabling users to make changes to their projects even after conversion.
It was not long before users wanted to go a step further and combine their PowerPoint files with video. For example, show a video of a speaker or instructor either immediately after or within their PowerPoint presentation. Up to now, the solutions for doing this have been hard to use and unsatisfying to most people - and they also did not yield an output that is ready for the Internet. Instead the files could be very large, difficult to synchronize, and challenging to handle.
WildPresenter has always provided a powerful way to combine PowerPoint files with video. Up to now, the only problem with it is that it took a lot of steps and involved importing your PowerPoint, exporting it to convert it to Flash, then re-importing it, then importing the video file and syncing them up. In all there were too many choices and steps for the non-technical user.
So the geniuses at Wildform Software thought about it and came up with a way to reduce the 20+ steps that someone would take to combine the PowerPoint with video down to 3 really easy ones: select a PowerPoint, select a video, and click "next." The wizard then effortlessly does the rest. If you want to customize your project, the wizard has more steps available. And even after the wizard is done, if changes are desired you can open up your project, change any element of it, and re-export.
When you're done, the entire combined PowerPoint and video is exported as a Flash file - a format that seamlessly combines images, text, video, audio, animations, and almost every other type of media, into a user-friendly file. Exporting in Flash is the perfect way to share your multimedia presentations with others, because everyone already has the Flash player installed on their computer.
If you are planning to show the files on the Internet, the Flash files are interactive, small in file size, play in all browsers, on all platforms, and even stream through firewalls. WildPresenter's output is also great for offline presentations, CDs, printed handouts, and even mobile devices - something which saves clients a lot of time in repurposing their content for multiple distribution outlets.
So in a nutshell how do you combine PowerPoint and video? Use WildPresenter and let the wizard guide you through the process with 3 effortless steps.
[Editor's note: To see a full Editor's Choice review of this product, click on the link below:
WildPresenter Pro Editor's Choice review
For more information about Wildform Software, go to: http://www.wildform.com
To view a video (made in WildPresenter) that shows how to combine PowerPoint and video in 3 steps, go to:
http://www.wildform.com/support/tutorials/online_training/PPTvideoin3clicks.php