PowerPoint Slide Makeover #63: Presenting organizational charts

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. It is common in corporate settings to present an organization chart to show the different roles in a department. Instead of overwhelming your audience with an unreadable chart, use the lessons in this makeover to create a clear set of slides.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Creating a video of your presentation from your slides and an audio recording

Today’s tip comes from some work I’ve been doing coaching a couple of professional speaking colleagues on how to create a movie of a presentation for use by their client on the web for ongoing training. It is also one of the topics I’ll be covering in my Presentation Summit session today.

To create a movie from your slides, you can go the high-end route and use software like Camtasia to record the slides and audio from the presentation as it is going on and create the movie. But this is software that you may not have and you may not be allowed to purchase and install it on your computer.

Instead, I’ve been showing them how to create a movie from an audio track and the images of their slides. It starts with recording the audio for the movie. The easiest way to record audio is using Audacity, a terrific free audio editor available here. Save your audio file as an MP3 file using the Export function in Audacity.

Next, you need to create images of your slides. This is simple enough in PowerPoint as you can use the Save As feature to save the slides as PNG images. Select to save all slides and it will create a folder of sequentially numbered slide images. The one potential issue with this method is that animation builds get removed, as the image saved is the state that you see when editing the slides. If you have used animation, you have two options. First, you can create sequentially numbered images using a screen capture utility like Lightscreen. Or, you can create your own series of slides for each animated slide. If you do this, first remove all animation from the slide, then copy and paste the slide the required number of times. Finally, remove elements as needed to create a series of slides that, when shown in sequence, appear as the original animated slide. Now when you Save As PNG images, you will get a series of images that appears as if it was animated.

The final step is to create the movie in movie editing software. If you have Windows Movie Maker already installed on your computer, you can use it. You can also download the latest version from Microsoft’s web site. I find the latest version hard to use for this purpose because they removed the timeline view. If you don’t want to install software, you can use one of the free online video editing sites, like the one I use called Jaycut.com. You add the audio track to the timeline, then place each slide on the timeline and adjust the length of time the slide is shown based on the audio track. Output the finished video to a movie file and you are ready to distribute it or post it to your web site.

Creating a video of your presentation allows you to distribute it in new ways and it will run on web sites, local computers, and even mobile devices. Use the steps above to create your first presentation video.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #62: Designing slides for use in signage situations

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. If you use PowerPoint to design slides that will be shown on an electronic sign or on an internal TV information channel, use the ideas from this slide makeover to keep the slides clear and easy for the audience to understand.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: An alternative to using video in a web presentation

Earlier this year a professional speaking colleague called on me to help her with an upcoming webinar. It was her first significant webinar for clients and she obviously wanted it to go well. One of the elements she wanted to include in her presentation was a video clip that illustrated some of the ideas she wanted to communicate. Today I want to share with you the approach I recommended that will allow you to get the benefit of a video clip without actually showing it during a webinar.

Why not just embed the video on a slide and show it like you do in a live presentation? On all the webinar platforms I’ve used video seems to be a big problem. In my experience, video over the web does not work well when embedded on a PowerPoint slide. It works better when played in a media player outside PowerPoint, but it still suffers from stutters due to the limitations of the bandwidth on a live transmission. The reason watching videos like my YouTube or Brainshark slide makeover videos works well is that your local computer downloads a portion of the video first so that it plays smoothly from your local computer. Live video in a webinar can’t do this.

So how can you get the benefits of using an illustrative video clip in a webinar? You use a series of screen captures from the video to make your points. Let’s start with the planning first. When you are showing any video clip, you are using it to illustrate specific points. You may be showing a demonstration of a technique or process or you may be using a video testimonial to reinforce a claim you have made. There are specific images or words you want to emphasize. Make a list of those specific spots in the video.

Play the video at the highest quality possible and pause it when you reach one of the spots you’ve made note of in the planning stage. Take a screen capture of that image using Alt+PrintScreen and paste the image on a PowerPoint slide. Make the image as large as you can without distorting it too much and crop out the controls of the video player so you are just left with the image. Once you have the image on the slide, add a callout so the audience knows what they are supposed to look for in this image. It may be an arrow and text to point out something in the image or it could be a specific quote that a person is saying that is reinforced with the expression on their face.

Keep capturing images from the video and creating slides until you have all the spots on your planned list in your presentation. When you are presenting the slides during the webinar, you can introduce the section by saying that you want to show a series of images from a video clip that illustrate the point you were discussing. You can go through the images fairly rapidly, as quickly as one every 8-10 seconds if necessary. Remember that there is a lag between when you show the next slide and when the audience sees it, so you can’t advance through the images as rapidly as you could in a live presentation.

By using a series of screen capture images instead of a video during a web presentation, you increase the quality of the experience for your audience and still use the video to illustrate the points you want to make. If you are new to web based presentations, you may want to get a copy of my one-hour video program on using web presentations effectively, which contains other ideas based on my years of using web technology to present for clients. All the details are here.