PowerPoint and Premiere Pro

[Jeff Hanley]

First, thanks for all the info. I’m not sure I’ve figured out a solution from all the variables you’ve mentioned, but at least I know now that it’s a fairly complicated question.

We resize the slides before putting them into the project, and we’ve tried various ways of doing that. They resize without much visible distortion, but that may be aggravated when Premiere gets a hold of them. We’ve also tried pillar boxing the slides when they’re in the timeline by leaving them strictly 4:3 square pixels but that doesn’t seem to make much difference.

[Vince Becquiot]

I think we figured out your issues really mostly at the source, when PPT converts to TIFF, so your best option is to use a screen capture application instead.

As mentioned in my previous post, if you have access to a PC, I highly recommend ScreenPrint (I think It’s still free).

It will allow you to put PPT in show mode, then just by pressing an assigned key, it will automatically save screenshots with a name and an incremental value. You just hit that key for each slide.

Back when I was doing training videos, that’s the way we did it, it’s pretty fast.

If you’re only on a Mac, you may have to find a similar app. I believe Command-Shift-3 (or 4) will save a screen capture to the clipboard. You can then paste that somewhere else, like Photoshop.

Regarding frame size, it depends on how close the content is from the edge. If you have room on the sides, just fill top and bottom and let the side go out of the frame.

When content is too close to the edge, frame it down with black around or use a backdrop to fill the gaps.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Alan Lloyd]

I’m involved in a project right now using (in part) PPT exported to PPro.

Much of the problem is the stuff people make in PPT. Tiny font, things run out to the very edge of the frame, and those incredibly horrid, cheeseball animations. Oh, and 4×3 slides they want in widescreen programs.

The sad truth is, it will never look better than the original, rarely even as good, and most PPT isn’t that good to begin with.

/rant

[Jeff Hanley]

Thank you very much for the thoughtful and immediate response to my question. Once again, the CC community proves itself to be of great value.

I really appreciate it.