FCP and Power Point

[Bryce Whiteside]

You should be able to export the slides a series of .TIFF’s (lossless), .JPG’s (lossey), .PNG (lossless RLE encoded), et al.

If you have iWork’06 ($79) you can import the .PPT presentation into Keynote and export it as a QuickTime file (process breaks some animation transitions).

Do a search in this forum and you will have more information than you can possibly use–search terms:
PowerPoint export

HTH,
Bryce Whiteside

Don’t worry Mr. B. I have a cunning plan…

PowerBook 1.67 Ghz ATI 9700 128 MB 2 GB
Mac OS X 10.4.5 QuickTime Pro 7.0.4
Final Cut Pro HD
DVD Studio Pro 3
Motion
After Effects 6.5

[Debe]

The first thing you need to determine is whether or not these PPT slides were designed within television specs, you might find that re-creating the files will be far better.

If they used fonts smaller than 24, but preferably no LESS than 32 pt, and lines that are thinner than 3-4 pt, and did not leave 20% of the border of nothing around the edge of the slide except blank background to accommodate for title safe, you’ll likely have a heck of a time making this thing legible on tv.

Take a look at it first and determine how it looks on an external video monitor through Final Cut. Just looking at it on the Canvas won’t show you how really bad it may be. You can probably use a TIFF exported from PPT of the most complicated-looking slide to test this out first.

debe

[Carey Harrison]

I’ve had great luck exporting (and then importing) a pict for each slide. You will have to verify that all text fits in title-safe. Easy process but it may be slower (on some slides) than recreating. Good Luck

[Accountneedsrealnameupdate]

How about going the other way?
I need to give a client some footage for a presentation, what is the best format for Powerpoint on a pc?
First time I have been asked this.
Many thanks

[Debe]

Depends on the PC.

There are plenty of variables, but if they have a recent PC & the most up to date version of Office, WMV file is probably the easiest to deal with.

If it’s an older PC and an older version of Office, an AVI would probably be the best bet.

The PC should have a dedicated video card that doesn’t share system RAM. Playing back video in a PPT takes up a lot of video RAM, and if that RAM is being shared with the system, the video may stutter and/or in the worst case scenario, PowerPoint may crash.

If you can get the specs of the PC that will be used, post back and we might be able to tell you what’s your best-est bet!

debe

[Mark Suszko]

MPEG-1 works for any version of Powerpoint, you would have to put up with the lower quality but compatibility is 100 percent certain. You want to make sure the movie is kept in the same folder with all other elements of the presentation: if you merely create a link to the movie in some other section of the drive, it may not (usually doesn’t) carry over to the target machine and you get a blank screen when you hit the movie section. Keep the movie and the presentation and all the embedded fonts together in the same folder, always.

I just did a project where I used Compressor and Quicktime to render out some video into like five different formats for use in a powerpoint. I did Mpeg 1, Mpeg2/DVD, I did .AVI and something else. Trying them all out, the mpeg 1 and DVD mpeg 2 looked by far the best, the difference being the mpeg-1 had to stay it’s tiney 324-by-200-whatever original window size. Blowing it up to full-screen lookde way too blocky and pixellated. Keeping it small, it looked acceptible for what it was. If they want it nicer than that, they should author it in flash, is my opinion.

BTW, Powerpoint is an evil tool of the devil. That’s a boilerplate thing I have to say any time I discuss powerpoint, sorry:-)

[Debe]

One little thing…

A guy I know who travels the country doing PowerPoint for a living practically removed my spleen when I asked if MPEG1 was okay for PowerPoint.

In his vast experience, MPEG1 creates way more problems than it solves. If he HAS to go lower end, it’s AVI. He will NOT use an MPEG1 file in a PowerPoint presentation unless he has ABSOLUTELY no other choice.

But, to each his own. If it works for you, then use it. His reaction to the thought of it was pretty severe, so I thought I should pass that along.

debe

[Mark Suszko]

I said it was compatible, not beautiful:-)