• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Getting Client’s PowerPoint into FCP

  Posted by Greg Ball on August 19, 2009 at 9:25 pm

  I’m just trying to give a client instruction for creating video safe powerpoint slides so we can edit them into their video presentation. The client has said he’s creating the slides in 3 to 1 ratio. What the heck is that?! I’m cutting the show as a standard 4:3 video. Any other pointers I should give them to insure the slides are screen and title safe?

  Please don’t respond with not using PowerPoint. That’s not going to help. Thanks.

  T. Payton replied 17 years ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Alexandre Brandt

  August 19, 2009 at 9:47 pm

  I never used power point but their is somthing that may help you avoid some problem.

  Tell you client to have his images in RGB color model and not an other model because FCP won’t be able to display the images if they are not in RGB.
• 

  T. Payton

  August 19, 2009 at 11:34 pm

  3:1 ratio. Humm. That is interesting.

  PowerPoint is weird in that you can’t specify a pixel size for a slide. In the versions I have you can tell it a size in inches, so in “Page Setup” 16 in. x 9 in. should work fine (or 8 in. x 6 in. if you are doing this in SD). Compute a safe area and let them know they will need a margin around the slides.

  From there ask the client to “Save As…” the slides as PNGs (or TIFFs). You’ll have more than enough resolution to work with.

  However, if you have Apple’s Keynote you can probably do all of this yourself, and the quality of the output will be far superior than the PowerPoint Exports. This is what we do:

  No Transitions – We have opened the PowerPoint files in Keynote and made any slight adjustments to the size to fit your video. We also go through and add some drop shadows to text. Then export out a sequence of stills (whatever format you prefer) and then import into FCP.

  Transitions – Again size the file in Keynote as needed, adding shadows, etc., then export a QT movie as full resolution ProRez. It will look very good.

  Once in FCP, you’ll need to apply some flicker fixing and vertically blur if you are going to broadcast, especially in SD. If this is for web, you’ll probably be fine without any blur. Also make sure you apply the broadcast safe filter because the colors will definitely be illegal.

  I hope this helps,

  – T. Payton
  OneCreative, Albuquerque

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