Conversion: ppt to mpg.

July 23, 2006 6:19 AM

ppt -> mpg ??

I have a bunch of military briefings in PowerPoint. These are all the boring ones that nobody wants to be stuck briefing, but that still need to be done annually. My Commander has asked me if it is viable to put them all on a DVD so that we can have them in one place.

Except...

He wants the briefings to be "performed." This means he doesn't want a .ppt file, but an mpeg-2 file that can be burned to a DVD playable on a TV. The slides need to transition automatically in the movie, and have full audio recorded to accompany the video. This is essentially an effort to create a one-stop shop so that once a year we can pop in the dvd and just sit back for a few hours as the briefings do themselves.

How the hell do I do it?

posted by ハッカー to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Have you seen this question about PPT to DVD?
posted by teleskiving at 6:58 AM on July 23, 2006

There's software that'll do it for you. There's a program called PowerVideoMaker that sounds like exactly what you need. I've not tried it, but it has a free trial, so you could give it a shot.

A Google search turns up a bunch of links to similar software.
posted by cerebus19 at 6:59 AM on July 23, 2006

I'm going to assume you're using a PC.

Realistically, you ought to have editing software (something free could be Avid Free) and some DVD burning software (like Sonic's DVDit).

What you'd do is:

1) Record the narration.

Powerpoint:
2) Export the slides as TGAs or JPGs

Editing Software
3) Import the slides to your editing software.
4) Import your audio.
5) Arrange the length of your slides to change based on the audio
6) Output a quicktime file

DVD Authoring
7) Import the Quicktime file.
8) Burn the DVD.


Now, there's software like PPT-to-DVD as well. Sorta a one stop shop.

Either way you do this, you're going to have a design headache.

Bad slide design will interfere with video. (I'm simplifying quite a bit...but you'll get the idea)

a) Bright Reds and yellows don't work terribly well in video. Heavy chromanance causes a 'buzz' as you're at the display limits for broadcast.

b) small fonts (say, under 24 point on a 640x480 slide, or 30 point on a 800x600 slide or 38 point on a 1024x768 slide) will be difficult to read.
DVDs are 720x480 (with rectangular pixels, like bricks, rather than square pixels like the computer.) When you take a larger 1024 x 768 slide and you size it down...small text, particularly serifs (the curly parts of text like Times), don't 'hit' a scanline of video... and this causes a bit of a flicker, making it very, very, unreadable.

c) Video Safe is 90% of the screen. Of the 720x480 screen size, we lose 10% that never is visible on "regular" TVs. We take an additional 10% (for a total of 20%) of where we like text's maximum area to guarantee the visiblitlity of the text. TV screens (tubes) warp a bit at the edges. So text needs to be placed even narrower.

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So, technically, here's how I'd do it (Luckily the editing I've done over the years, I've only had to do this once or twice)

I realize that the people who "use" powerpoint, do so poorly...I have to hand check every slide for sizing, color, design, and talk to the presenter on how I'd break up slides that are too dense with information.

I'd use the 640x480 setting in PPT, and not permit anything to be less than 24pt. I'd design with "Title Safe" guidelines in PPT (These don't exist - I have to create them temporarily as part of the Master Slide)...Simple background, nothing noisy. Readability is key.

Depending on my video software (some software, like avid, will automatically compensate), I may have to resize in photoshop to nonsquare pixels, and change the image size to 720x480.

I'd record using my recording method of choice (something digital).

Import the audio and slides into editing software. Put markers down at each slide change. Put my slides down to the markers.

Export the quicktime and take over to my DVD software. Author my DVD.

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Just to cut steps out, I know that DVDStudio Pro (mac) and I think that Encore DVD (PC) both have the ability to handle slide shows. I think that they both permit some level of additing audio. So by using either of these products you might be able to cut out the "editing" step, by editing in the DVD Software.
posted by filmgeek at 7:13 AM on July 23, 2006 [1 favorite]

Use either Macromedia Captivate, Camtasia Studio, or the free program called Wink. Any of these will let you run a series of powerpoint slides and record audio over them. The first two output to pretty much any format (though I can't verify whether MPG is one of them right now) including SWF and AVI, which should play on any machine, and Wink will do SWF or create standalone .EXE files that should work fine as well.

Unless he's picky about MPG specifically, you should be all set.
posted by Hildago at 2:38 PM on July 23, 2006