The PowerPoint® Blog

I work with PowerPoint on a daily basis and I am very honored to be a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP. We have a talented team of presentation designers at TLC Creative Services and ThePowerPointBlog is our area to highlight PowerPoint tips, tricks, examples and tutorials. Enjoy! Troy Chollar

Pro’s and Con’s of Webcast Formats

I have been doing a lot of webcast projects lately. Most involve syncing a PowerPoint presentation with video of the presenter. One client’s IT department needed more information to determine which format fit their needs best so I provided this quick run down on the pro’s and con’s of the formats we were discussing:

Flash Legacy (.swf)
Pro: This format is virtually guaranteed to work on all computers, through firewall settings and has an install rating of over 98% of all computers worldwide.
Con: It is not optimized for live video, so it produces larger files and does not stream as well as an .flv

Flash Video/Flash 8 (.flv)
Pro: This format is optimized specifically for video. It produces good size files and streams extremely well (even if file is larger than a .swf it streams much smoother and faster).
Con: Still requires many computers to do the free upgrade, which is permitted through most corporate firewall systems (although it can be problematic in a tightly controlled corporate IT setting).

Windows Media Video (.wmv)
Pro: Optimized to playback on Windows PCs and now works on all Macs that have the Flip4Mac QuickTime add-in (included in a free auto update, so installed on majority of Mac systems). Can be embedded in webpage or forced to launch player application on computer.
Con: Larger file sizes than .flv (similar to .swf), fewer pre-load options (eg: a status bar before playing).

All of this is very simplified information, but it provides a quick overview of some common formats. Stay tuned for a very detailed set of posts on Streaming Media formats I have been working on.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:15:05-08:00September 1st, 2006|Resource/Misc, Tutorial|

Find the RECOLOR button

I like to setup PowerPoint so I can get edit accomplished in the fewest clicks. If you find a need to use the RECOLOR function (see Saturday’s post), you can add the RECOLOR button to your PICTURE toolbar.

Click the far right edge of the picture toolbar, choose ADD OR REMOVE BUTTONS >> PICTURE >> RECOLOR PICTURE. Now select the Excel table (that does not have data with it), click the recolor button, adjust colors, done.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:14:47-08:00August 30th, 2006|Tutorial|

Great Write-Up On Corporate Events

Mike Wilson from Instant Effects has a great article that posted at Indezine last week. I have worked a lot with Mike and his developers over the past few years as OfficeFX has evolved. Even better is knowing he has spent time out of office and backstage at large corporate events to really see what the presentations need to do and how they are used.

This is a long article, so have a few minutes, but it captures a lot of the enviroment, equipment considerations and requests I work with every day. View it here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:14:20-08:00August 28th, 2006|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Use the RECOLOR tool

So you have a slide like this with an imported Excel table:

And you need to adjust the colors of the excel chart to coordinate with the presentation template. You double-click the table and get the image format box, not the Excel data:

But all is not lost! Some information is still there. On the PICTURE tab, click the RECOLOR button to access this “secret” data.

In the RECOLOR PICTURE dialog you can see the original colors formatted in Excel and have the ability to change to any other color in a few easy clicks.

This is an invaluable tool within PowerPoint to know of and use when faced with pasted in Excel tables.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:14:01-08:00August 26th, 2006|Tutorial|

CNET review of Office 2007

Just this week CNET has posted a very good review of PowerPoint 2007. It is in a quick read format that is comprised of 12 topics, each with a screen capture and few paragraph description.

Take a few minutes and click through this informative overview here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:12:35-08:00August 20th, 2006|PowerPoint|

Great “PhotoShop” Shadows Inside PowerPoint

Often you have a nice, well designed slide such as this title slide. It does not really need any images or animation, but it would be nice to give it a bit of depth.

Adding a soft, PhotoShop, drop shadow to the title text helps the slide differentiate itself from the “standard” PowerPoint content and add some depth and appeal.

This effect was created in less than 4 seconds using PPTXtreme‘s SoftShadow add-in. I selected the text box and clicked on the QuickShadow button.

Looking closer you can see the smooth feathered black shadow that was applied to each letter. Something that helps the text float above the background artwork.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:12:17-08:00August 18th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

How Long Was Each Slide Displayed?

Turning PowerPoint presentations into webcasts has become a fairly routine request. One of the more difficult aspects of recreating a presentation is knowing when the presenter advances the slide. This is critical in syncing video of the presenter with the slides. Here is one method I have used – and best of all it is built into PowerPoint!

A few points about this process:
1 – This is at larger conferences where I am backstage running the presentations.
2 – I am running a backup computer and I run this timer on it.
3 – I use a remote system so both computers advance simulataneously.

(1) With the presentation open go to SLIDESHOW >> REHEARSE TIMINGS

(2) The slide show begins and a pop-up timer is visible.

TIP 1: As soon as the Timer window is visible click the PAUSE button. When the meeting begins click the PLAY button (the last thing I want is to have to many things distract me at the beginning of a meeting!).

TIP 2: Even though the timer is running on the backup computer, drag the timer to the very bottom so it is virtually invisible – just in case you have to switch to it!

(3) When the presentation is done click YES to the save the timings.

(4) Each slides time onscreen is seen next to the slide thumbnail. Be sure to do a SAVE AS to keep these timings for reference when building the webcast.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:11:56-08:00August 16th, 2006|Tutorial|

The Two Looks of a PowerPoint Table

A recent project involved taking a good presentation and making it great. I had some very clean and easy to read PowerPoint tables. They conveyed the information and made good use of the tools in the application. Here is the original:

But the goal was to add visual dynamics to the presentation and this means making all elements coordinate with a common color scheme, font use and positioning. Here is the same table with some additional formatting:

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:11:38-08:00August 14th, 2006|Portfolio|
Copyright TLC Creative Services, Inc | All Rights Reserved
Go to Top