Blueprint for a Successful Presentation by Biswajit Tripathy - HTML preview

Adding Multimedia Contents

When you complete this chapter you will know

Recording a Voice Narration Insert an audio track
Insert a Video
Adding Flash Animation As the audiences become more sophisticated, they expect from you, more professional-looking presentations. Adding multimedia content such as video and sound to your presentation gives it the edge that it needs to capture your audiences’ attention and hold it. At the same time, multimedia content can often communicate more information than a slide with only a few sentences.

Sounds, music, videos, and animated GIF pictures are available in the Clip Gallery. You can insert a music, sound, or video clip into a slide show. You can have the clip play automatically when you move to the slide or have the clip play only when you click its icon during a slide show.

You need speakers and a sound card on the computer to play music and sounds. To find out what's installed on the computer and what settings are in use, check both the Multimedia and Sounds categories in Windows Control Panel.

P.S. Keep in mind that voice narration is not always the best way to get your information across. If some of your audience is deaf or hard of hearing, if some people in your audience have computers that do not have sound cards, or if the computer is located in a noisy room, you might want to use slide notes for each slide also.

About recording a voice narration or sound in a slide show

 

You might want to add narration to a slide show in the following cases:

• For a Web-based presentation
• For archiving a meeting so that presenters can review it later and hear comments made during the presentation
• For individuals who can't attend a presentation
• For self-running slide shows

To record a narration, the computer needs a sound card and a microphone. You can record a narration before you run a slide show or you can record it during the presentation and include audience comments.
If you don't want narration throughout the entire slide show, you can also record separate sounds or comments on selected slides or objects.

You can't record and play sounds at the same time, so while you're recording the narration, you won't hear other sounds you inserted in your slide show. Also, voice narration takes precedence over all other sounds. If you are running a slide show that includes both narration and other sounds, only the narration is played.

The narration automatically plays when running the show. To run the slide show without narration, click Set Up Show on the Slide Show menu and then select the Show without narration check box.

 

To record a voice narration

 

For this procedure, you need a microphone.

 

• On the Slide Show menu, click Record Narration. A dialog box appears showing the amount of free disk space and the number of minutes you can record.

 

• If this is the first time you are recording, click Set Microphone Level, and then follow the directions to set the microphone level.

 

• Do one of the following:

• To insert the narration on your slides as an embedded object and to begin recording, click OK to begin recording.
• To insert the narration as a linked object, select the Link narrations in check box and then click OK to begin recording.

• Advance through the slide show, and add narration as you go.

 

• To save the timings along with the narration, click Yes. To save only the narration, click No. A sound icon

 

appears in the lower-right corner of each slide that has narration.

 

To insert a CD audio track on a slide

 

You don't need to insert the CD in the CD-ROM drive for this procedure.
Display the slide you want to add a CD audio track to.
On the Insert menu, point to Movies and Sounds and then click Play CD Audio Track.
Select the track and timing options you want, and then click OK. A CD icon appears on the slide.

A message is displayed. If you want the CD to play automatically when you move to the slide, click Yes. If you want the CD to play only when you click the CD icon during a slide show, click No.

To preview the music in Normal view, double-click the CD icon. To insert a video on a slide

 

Display the slide you want to add the video to.
On the Insert menu, point to Movies and Sounds.
Do one of the following:
To insert a video from the Clip Gallery, click Movie from Gallery and then locate and insert the video you want.

To insert a video from another location, click Movie from File, locate the folder that contains the video and then double-click the video you want. Preferably try to copy the video file to the same directory as your PowerPoint Presentation.

A message is displayed. If you want the movie to play automatically when you move to the slide, click Yes. If you want the movie to play only when you click the movie during a slide show, click No.

To preview the movie in Normal view, double-click the movie.

Advanced Options: You can drag your movie clip around and insert text boxes & images around it, as with any other slide item. You can also resize movies just like pictures: drag on the white circle in one of the corners. For fullscreen projection, just enlarge your movie until it fills the slide. If you have PowerPoint 2003, you can also rightclick on the movie, choose Edit Movie Object, and check Zoom to Full Screen.

Adding Flash Animation to PowerPoint Presentations

Most of the people have the idea that Flash is a web design tool. It is no doubt, it allows you to create incredible web content with sound, animation, and graphics. However, if you are going to use Flash to create web content or other complex media, you can take advantage of this and use Flash animation (Shockwave files) to add to PowerPoint presentations. This will make your PowerPoint presentation look more attractive.

The advantage of having a Flash Animation are many. Some of them are:

• Vector-based animation: looks good at any size.
• much smaller files than gifs
• powerpoint loops all animated gifs
• very precise controls, including buttons, starts & stops
• gif files aliased to specific background color--easy to change in flash

Though PowerPoint supports various types animated files, these are quite static and are quite large in size. Using Flash animations inside PowerPoint presentations adds interactivity & vector animation to the PowerPoint presentation – with fairly little increase in file size. And, if the Flash ActiveX Control r25 is installed, the Flash movie can even be printed.
Integrating a Flash movie inside PowerPoint allows vector animation and interactivity to be added to a PowerPoint presentation.

Note: Don't Forget the ActiveX Control!

Using Flash in PowerPoint requires the Flash ActiveX control to be installed on the machine used to view the PowerPoint content. If that machine uses Internet Explorer 4 or higher and can view Flash, the ActiveX control is automatically installed.

To add a Flash movie to a PowerPoint presentation

1. Open the PowerPoint 2000 presentation to which you want to add Flash animation.
2. Select View > Toolbars > Control Toolbox. The Control Toolbox appears.
3. Click the Hammer and Wrench icon (More Controls). A list of all the ActiveX controls installed on the machine appears.
4. Choose Shockwave Flash Object from the list of controls.
5. Move cursor over the slide. Click and drag to define the area in which to play the Flash movie. You can make the movie any size.
6. Right-click on the Flash movie placeholder and select Properties from the popup menu that appears. The Properties dialog appears.

On the Alphabetic tab, scroll down to view swURL. In the box to the right, enter the path or URL to the SWF you wish to use. If the SWF is in the same directory as the PowerPoint file just enter the SWF name. The SWF can also be at any valid URL network address.

Click OK. Now view the slideshow. The Flash content should play as expected. When you choose the object, the cursor should change into a crosshair.