[Rob Duncan]

Hi Bruce,

If your displays are *not* mirrored (ie. you see different images on each screen when *not* presentation mode), select:

Apple > System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement; Mirror Displays is unchecked

Then inside Powerpoint, select:
Slide Show (either Ribbon or Menu) > 'Set up show...' > Screen
Then select the screen without the white bar.

If you are mirrored, turn off mirroring first, or you it won’t show you 2 screens in the ‘Set up show…’ dialog.

Alternately, while you are in the presentation mode, move your mouse pointer to the extreme right of the laptop screen, and it should ‘appear’ on the left side of the TV screen (wiggle it around a bit in case it gets stuck in a corner. From there you can click the ‘switch displays’ button.

Good luck!
Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA
https://roki.ca/me

[Rob Duncan]

One word of warning to those using a TripleHead as a Dual (from one who should have known better, but painfully forgot) — the 2 screens come out of Output ONE and Output THREE of the TripleHead2Go.

I’m sure it’s documented, but I’ve rarely been accused of using my brain for solutions.

R.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

Yeah, Matt you’re right. If you are running Powerpoint:Mac in a less than fullscreen environment, there are likely hidden ribbon options off to the right.

Of course, there are no visual indications that you’re missing anything, so you could be banging your head against the keyboard for a while. Don’t worry: this behaviour is consistent across Excel and Word, so if you’re wondering why you can drop down the box border selector in Excel, it’s because MS has efficiently streamlined your workflow.

Even more tricky? The icons and items pop on and off quite dynamically in Excel and Word, so you don’t just lose the right-most icons, but whichever icons the UI staff at MS felt were least important to them.

My only advice? Click the ‘maximize’ button whenever you feel frustrated. Just don’t ask me to explain why the box border selector is in the ‘Font’ sub-ribbon of the Home ribbon.

Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

Wirecast will take in multiple inputs.
Gathering the inputs is easiest with a desktop machine that has PCI card slots for a Blackmagic card (or equivalent), though external devices would also work with a laptop, if necessary.

I’ve been waffling between using retail software like Wirecast, and homebrewing my own solution using Quartz Composer, available as a free download with the Apple Developer Tools. It’s a project that’ll sit on the back burned for the next month though, as I’m all booked up until April.

Let me know how you make out.

Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

I second Walter’s suggestion.

Keynote and PPT 2010/2011 will both handle videos, transitions and the like. Just make sure to set the canvas to the correct pixel count and ratio for the 2 or 3 part screen you will be displaying onto.

Otherwise, you may run into pixellation or stretching on playback.

Quick and dirty is sometimes the best tool in the box.

Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

I’m not sure. On my screen, selecting ‘Slide Show’ on the ribbon menu gives me a set of icons on the right, like this:

I haven’t checked this without a secondary monitor attached yet, as I’m currently in show. Perhaps the option doesn’t show unless the 2nd screen is attached?

The default is presenter view, and selecting ‘Mirror Show’ will switch the computer into the mode you want when you play the slide show. [Cmd-Enter] to play from current slide or [Cmd-Shift-Enter] to play from the start.

Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

Well, one side-effect of forcing Presenter View even when the computer is Mirrored (or Cloned in PC-speak) will be that more and more presenters will insist on having their presenter notes visible on confidence monitors, etc.

Goodbye laptop playback.

We’ve had good success loading a Mac Mini with dual-boot capabilities and using it’s dual outputs to send both presenter view and presentation view out simultaneously using Powerpoint Windows, Powerpoint Mac and Keynote.

R.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

The licensing isn’t cheap ($500 a seat, $1000 for the editing master), but synchronous playback of multiple computers can be done with little configuration on a series of Macs using Renewed Vision’s Pro Video Player [link].

Add in a few Dual or TripleHead2Go [link] units by Matrox, and you could have 2 or 3 Macs driving all 7 screens in sync.

Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

Alright, I have been educated in the way of Microsoft.

Turns out, they have a ‘Slide Show’ menu in the menu bar, and ANOTHER ‘Slide Show’ menu in the ribbon interface they love to talk about (it’s the sub-menu underneath the usual Mac menu bar).

Turns out that in each of these 2 ‘Slide Show’ menus are different options.

1) open the ribbon ‘Slide Show’
2) on the right is an option to present cloned (or mirrored), or with the presenter display.

NOTE: this option does not appear in the Preferences, ‘Set up show’ dialog or the real ‘Slide show’ menu, like you’d expect.

In case you’re curious,

"The Ribbon is part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface [and] is designed to help you quickly find the commands that you need to complete a task. Commands are organized in logical groups."

Like putting the ‘Master Slides’ under ‘View’ instead of ‘Design’

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Rob Duncan]

<< Sorry if this is brief -- the COW ate my first answer >>

The ScreenPro series can act as a switcher, but I would not recommend it:

1) there is an input sync lag every time you switch inputs on the PVW bus,
2) the buses are locked while this happens,
3) if you aren’t careful and change the PVW input while switching, your change will take and you’ll see your next cue up on PGM.

I’ll do it if there are only 2 cameras on the shoot, but anything fancier requires a separate console and a separate operator. This is also better for cuing into clips or graphics. If you only have a ScreenPro, and there is an imminent cue, the camera switching has to stop in order to line up that cue.

It comes down to the complexity of the show, and understanding the limitations of the equipment. Oh and budget’s usually in there, too!

Rob.
————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA