Interesting presentation tool called Prezi imitates mograph fx

[Mark Suszko]

It has great potential for abuse though; a lot of tromboning zooms and whip pans can make a viewer queasy. An artist would use these powers only for good, and sparingly.

BTW, this app is rent-ware; you pay a yearly subscription to be able to use it. Good idea or not? Is this a concept that could work for effect plug-ins? Instead of amassing the plug-in equivalent of a huge pog collection for your NLE or compositor, maybe just a blanket annual fee for “all you can eat” from CoreMelt or the like? Or a micropayment for a single use?

[Alan Lloyd]

It’s moderately interesting. Unless it’s really high quality and incredibly fast I can’t see using it when I can simply keyframe moves around a larger-than-screensize graphic or set of graphics in an edit.

And frankly, the site design itself is pretty bad. What’s with the low-contrast text-on-page trend lately? Not everyone here is 23 years old. That alone makes me less than enthusiastic.

And does the “rentware” concept mean that presentations will timeout at the end of a subscription year?

[Mark Suszko]

Time out? Yes, that would be my guess, except of course for stuff you’ve rendered out and saved off. Or they may make a nag message watermark start to pop on, I don’t know. Like I said, I think it could be a fun tool to very quickly sketch out a mograph sequence with, to play around with ideas. And for walking you thru, say, a visual representation of a large form or pdf file, it may help keep a person oriented, if you don’t overdo the swoopy moves. We have to do a lot of training vids where we walk users thru forms and screens of input data sometimes. I could see this tool might help with thagt,and with walking you thru visuals of timelines, gantt and pert charts, things like that.

We all know however just how badly this stuff can be abused by untrained users; prepare for some virtual roller-coaster rides:-)

[Bill Davis]

I agree.

Somewhere in my heart, I can sense a new approach to information arrangement and display. But the unfortunate choice of example typography and the juvenile twirling/whirling eye candy has obscured that capability so effectively that I didn’t want to spend more time investigating whatever is in the engine behind it.

This reminds me of the RED camera. Somebody decided that the target group for that $20,000-$200,000+ gizmo consisted entirely of people who based their life’s design aesthetic on the movie Alien – and that all the design therefore had to be the coldest possible angular steel, spikey embellishments, and glowing, throbbing red against dingy mud-steel grunge. Look, I admire HR Geiger as much as the next guy – but he was the center of my life’s design aesthetic once upon a time in college. And that was 30++ years ago now.

Similarly, the design of this web site obscures something that might be very practical with a modified ransom note design that looks like the work of a new Mac owner circa 1989 – about 5 years after their personal discover that there are a LOT of fancy type faces in their zippy new computer.

Sigh.

Time to grow up folks.

[Mark Suszko]

The presenter’s not very good on that front page, and I hate those web-chromakey-popup spokesperson effects anyway. Still, there may be some situations where this tool could be useful, if used with restraint.

[Alan Lloyd]

Well said, Bill.

I really wanted to like the capabilities of this thing. The packaging just put me off enough that I will either work around them (by keyframing larger graphics when needed) or wait for a better implementation from someone else.

It’s like people who write things like they text message. Utterly off-putting, sometimes irretrievably so. Using “u” for “you” and “4” for, well, “for” will make you seem amateurish. Maybe to the point that what you have to say will be obscured.

We’re supposed to be communicators. At the end of a presentation, do you want them saying “Wow – great idea!” or is “Outstanding fonts and moves, dude!” more what you have in mind?

[Joseph W. bourke]

As with any technology which requires the user to bring some capabilities to it, there should be a disclaimer saying “Talent Not Included” on the masthead of the website.

It amazes me the number of people out there who just bought Final Cut Studio and are now editors, or those who bought a prosumer HD camera who are now Cinematographers (not even just Videographers, mind you).

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Saya Hillman]

I’ve used Prezi in a few presentations and both have really enjoyed it and the feedback from the audience — one gal blogged about my event, saying she groaned when she saw the project, “Oh no another powerpoint.” but was pleasantly surprised when I utilized Prezi.

Totally agree that you have to be cautious and not use too much motion.

And I’m able to use it for free with an educator’s email, which is great.

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