Is it possible to update an active Keynote slideshow?
December 8, 2024 9:13 PM   Subscribe

I'm hoping to do a team quiz night thing next month, reusing a bunch of Keynote slideshows I've made in the past, in various ways. In the past, I've made a separate slideshow that I've put on another computer, to use as the scoreboard to show between rounds (basically switching out MacBooks from the projector cable), but ideally I'd love some way to embed that inline in the active main question slideshow. Is there any way to modify a currently-playing Keynote slideshow at all, without having to close the slideshow or unplug the computer?
posted by DoctorFedora to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)
 
As far as I know, this isn't possible. Best you can do is remain in edit mode and hide all the various toolbars and then enter full screen mode, which should look pretty similar to presentation mode if you just have static slides, but not so much if you have any fancy effects or transitions.

Another option: you can apparently embed live video from your webcam or iphone camera in your keynote slides—could be cute to have a camera pointed at a physical flipboard or something?
posted by btfreek at 10:10 PM on December 8, 2024


Response by poster: hmmmmmmmmm, embedding a live video feed of a virtual camera showing the scoreboard could be interesting, if incredibly overambitious
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:09 AM on December 9, 2024


If you have access to both computers at the same time and have a bit of patience, I would investigate using one computer as your "display" and the other as your "slideshow".

Slideshow computer would run your trivia Keynote decks. It would also be sharing its screen to the other computer. You operate the slideshow using traditional keystrokes, clicker, mouse, etc. on that Slideshow MacBook.

Display computer would connect to Slideshow computer via a remote desktop software such as NoMachine, Zoom, or TeamViewer, etc. Any screen sharing that lets you run the screen in a window and doesn't take up the whole visual frame on your computer.
Display computer would be connected to the room's projector as an extended display; not mirrored.
The screen share frame would be moved onto the extended display.

The screen sharing window is often resizable, doesn't need to run fullscreen. You can resize it to leave space for a "sidebar" where you have a scoresheet of some kind. You could also just "override" the screen sharing window with the Display MacBook running its own Keynote. You would make changes to the score on the Macbook's built-in display. When you enter presenter mode this should override the Zoom screen share. You would close the presenter mode to return to Trivia via remote connect.

Items could be manipulated on the Display MacBook's built-in screen and "dragged over to the projector" if needed. Timers, youtube videos...

Caveats: everyone would see you manipulating things on the Projector if you are moving the cursor, adjusting windows, dragging stuff over, typing, etc. on the extended desktop.

In the A/V world there are video switchers that can do Picture-in-picture or rudimentary split-screen but they start at $1K and up. If you need to go to that next level I can recommend the Roland V-series HD switchers, they are really quite nice for their small form factor and I have used them extensively on projects that require this exact kind of swapping between multiple sources.
posted by Khazk at 12:16 AM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]


There are actually budget video switchers - we've used this BlackMagic ATEM mini several times for basic "switch between 2 or 3 computers' video output to 1 projector" purposes, and it's easy as pie. MSRP is US $300-ish, and as per my link B&H is currently selling them for under $200. If you don't anticipate using it that often you could look into renting one for the day from whatever A/V companies that may exist local to you.

Basically it doesn't have its own video screen function where you can preview what's about to come up on the main display, and it has a bunch of features for live-streaming and video blogging that will probably be irrelevant to you, but if you just have two computers next to it hooked up via HDMI then button 1 is your Keynote trivia slideshow laptop and button 2 is your scorecard slideshow laptop and you just push the appropriate button for whichever laptop you want to show on the projector, and you can do whatever you want on the laptop that's not projecting on the screen.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:43 AM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]


Yes, it's possible with Applescript. It's a little hacky, but I've done this before. References here, for example. You could ask ChatGPT to help you create a python program that switches between slideshows. Can you share your exact use-case?
posted by many more sunsets at 7:17 AM on December 9, 2024


Response by poster: So basically I'll have a Macbook hooked up to a projector showing questions on slides and then, at the end of each round (after collecting answer sheets and while we check everyone's scores), auto-playing answers to all the questions. Then, before the next round begins, I'd like to be able to show a scoreboard slide, and IDEALLY (we're talking wave-my-magic-wand and-I'd-like-a-pony territory here, for not-using-a-separate-computer-with-a-separate-slideshow) the scoreboard would be able to show the existing scores from the last round, followed by a magic move transition to reorganize the teams into their new order by new score.

The scoreboard with transitions is doable (and in fact I've done it in the past, just using a separate computer that gets plugged in as a video cable swap-out) but I'd love to be able to have it inline. My suspicion though is that the entire slideshow gets rendered and read into memory when you hit "Play," so something as ambitious as an embedded thing with a slide transition might be a bit too much.
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:06 PM on December 9, 2024


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