Importing a PPT…argh

[Todd Beabout]

Apple’s Keynote program will open most PowerPoint presentations, and it will export a QuickTime. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do this, but it worked for me. If I remember right I may have had to “tweak” a few things after I brought it into Keynote.

-Todd Beabout
Vazda Studios

[Walter Biscardi]

You can export all the slides as JPEG’s (and I think a few other still choices) and just bring the stills into FCP. You’ll need to rebuild the timing and any motions of the slides, but that’s the cleanest way I know of to bring a PPT into FCP.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

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[Walter Biscardi]

[Todd Beabout] “Apple’s Keynote program will open most PowerPoint presentations, and it will export a QuickTime.”

that is correct, I forgot all about that. It’s part of the iWork package which you can pick up at an Apple Store or any other Apple retailer.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Vladislav]

If you have Power Point App. on your laptop, you can play the presentation and re-capture it with your desktop. Since laptops have video and audio out, you can recapture it Analog to your desktop G5. We done it many times, looks good.

Vladislav Ponomarov
Post Production Supervisor / Producer
CAV Media Corporation
(707) 255-9467
vladislav@cavmedia.com

[John]

I have had to this several times. The best method I discovered is to open your PPT and to “save as”. Then select “Portable Network Graphic(PNG)” and save every slide in your PPT. This will create a folder of all the slides as PNG files. I found PNG files to be higher quality than JPEG files and for some reason handles fonts better. In most cases these PNG files will be 720X540 (The square version of 720X486) in general FCP will conform this file size to your sequence settings for you just fine.

Here are a couple of other notes.
1. If this PPT was created on a PC I would highly recommend opening the file in PPT on a PC and do the PNG “save as” at the PC. There is a good chance that there will font issues like kerning and leading even if you have the same font(s) on your Mac.
2. If small or thin fonts were used you may have to add the the flicker filter to that PNG still.
3. If there were any cute transitions you wanted to maintain they will not be part of the PNG files.
4. Most people who design PPT presentation ignore title safe. You may have to shrink all of you slides down a little to get them to line up with safe title.

[Tom Matthies]

If your PowerPoint presentation has lots of effects and builds then Keynote is the way to go. I just finished a corporate training video using Keynote to export the PPT and it worked great. As mentioned above though, some tweaking might be necessary since there are so many versions of PowerPoint floating around and not of the features or transitions in one version will necessarily translate to a different version, especially when going from PC to Mac.
iWorks is pretty cheap as well, about $80 retail. Well worth it.
Tom

[David Bogie]

It’s a waste of time. Powerpoints are created by idiots.
Bring in the background and start recreating the text and bullet items in video-friendy fonts using intelligent and elegant transitions. You[‘re going to have to repair them all anyway.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Ron Dylewski]

Hi all –

Thanks for lots of great advice. I am in the process of using the Keynote approach,
as there were a lot of overalls and animations of tiny (too thin!) lines which would
not work if it just imported the PNGs or TIFs…

I agree with the concept that PPTs are dicey; this project should certainly have
been edited just like anything else…but there was no time to go back to that step…

Hope everyone has a great weekend…and that is doesn’t involve cutting anything more
difficult than the grass!

Ron

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