PowerPoint

AI is making amazing advances in language translation, both in written/captions and spoken/heard. But this is all very recent. Looking back to 2018, we had a post about a very cool PowerPoint add-in Microsoft released, called Presentation Translator. If you want to read the full post and see the screen capture examples, read here. 

Microsoft retired the Presentation Translator add-in back in March of 2021. What was not kept was the very ambitious feature to translate all on-slide content to other languages (see the 2018 blog post for examples of that in use). 

But some of the features from Presentation Translator did make it into PowerPoint, including the subtitle captioning translation feature. PowerPoint now has a simplified and consolidated set of controls for text subtitles. Look for this on the SLIDESHOW tab in the CAPTIONS & SUBTITLES section.

SUBTITLE SETTINGS 

The ALWAYS USE SUBTITLES checkbox, in my opinion, should be renamed to TURN ON SUBTITLES. In reality, you can ignore this checkbox and see further below how I recommend dynamically turning on this feature. There are 3 settings in the SUBTITLE SETTINGS that I recommend setting before starting the slide show: 

1. Select the spoken language. This is the language the presenter on stage is speaking. 

2. Select the subtitle caption language. This is the language that will be displayed as text. It can be the same as the presenter’s language, or a different translated language. 

3. Select the microphone that PowerPoint will hear the presenter through (more recommendations on this below). 

With these settings, start the slideshow – speak – and see the subtitles (or live captions) automatically display! 

DYNAMICALLY TURN ON/OFF SUBTITLES 

During a slideshow, the subtitle settings are hidden – but accessible if you know where to look!  

• Right-click anywhere on the slide 

• In the right-click menu is START SUBTITLES and SUBTITLES SETTINGS. The issue is this big menu on screen is a distraction to the audience, so instead… 

• In presenter view, right-click on the active slide  

• The same right-click menu is available to you, but invisible to the audience!  

• Select START SUBTITLES and the subtitles are added to the screen for everyone to see (see below for more details on the settings options) 

TIP: Subtitles can be dynamically turned on/off seamlessly during a presentation. For example, if one presenter is native Spanish speaking, turn on subtitles via the Presenter View method described above to “hear” Spanish and display English subtitles for just that segment of the meeting. 

POWERPOINT SUBTITLES VS. MICROSOFT TEAMS PRESENTING TRANSLATION 

When you share your screen or use PowerPoint Live in a Teams meeting, a similar translation subtitle option is available. However, in Teams, subtitles are called “Captions” (Microsoft, where is the cross-app consistency?!). 

The other big difference in a Teams meeting is that captions are turned on individually by each attendee. The presenter has no setup or control over the captions being used. In a Teams meeting, each attendee has the option to go to the MORE tab, in the language and speech section, click “show live captions”, and select the language they want to see or read. 

During a regular presentation (e.g., not a Teams meeting), when the subtitles are active, the presenter’s screen is the slide plus the subtitles, and everyone in the audience will see the same thing.  

SETTINGS 

You can customize and control the placement of subtitles in native PowerPoint (you cannot do this with PowerPoint Live in a Teams meeting). Choose from: 

• Bottom of the slide (this is the default) 

• Top of the slide 

• Bottom, overlaid on top of the slide content 

• Top, overlaid on top of the slide content 

In addition, the MORE SETTINGS gives you control over the colors, font used, and more (note that we change over to using “captions” in these menus – consistency, Microsoft?). 

TIP: Any changes you make to the caption styles will persist after closing and reopening PowerPoint. However, because these settings are controlled through Windows OS, this feature won’t work the same on a Mac.  

At this point in time during our use, the number of languages is approximately 63 so far, which is fantastic! 

MICROPHONE 

As a presenter, the microphone is a consideration. If you are presenting from the stage, then you (the presenter) are most likely not directly at the presentation computer and therefore PowerPoint cannot hear you speak. The presenter must have a lavalier or handheld microphone from the AV team, and how the computer gets access to that microphone for the live subtitles to work is a consideration to be worked out before the presentation begins! 

CONCLUSION 

Back in 2018, Microsoft was ahead of the AI revolution, and through its specialty PowerPoint add-in, we were offered some very advanced translation capabilities at the time. While the ability to translate the slide content is gone (and ironically something I have not seen any AI presentation system do better than Microsoft’s 2018 feature!), the live subtitles feature was preserved and is still part of the PowerPoint app for everyone to easily use.  

Of note, for our live events, the PowerPoint subtitle feature has been used many times – and always amazes not only to the AV Production team but is thrilling to the client and audience (note to Microsoft – please do not remove this feature from PowerPoint!). 

-Troy and TLC Creative design team

If you work with PowerPoint files packed with images, you’re probably familiar with the struggle of huge file sizes, sluggish performance, and headaches when trying to share or upload! This is where NXPowerLite comes in. It’s a gift to PowerPoint users, giving us powerful image compression with the ability to control how that compression happens.

The TLC Creative design team uses NXPowerLite daily on the many project files we receive and create. By default, NXPowerLite offers three compression profiles. 

• Balanced – a nice middle ground between quality and file size 

• Strong – gives you the smallest files (great for when file size is priority number one) 

• Basic – leans toward keeping better image quality, at the cost of slightly larger files 

These options can cover a lot of typical needs, but at TLC Creative, we have gone a step further and created a custom set of seven compression profiles for our design team and fleet of show computers. These make it easy for us to apply the exact same settings across different files, ensuring consistency whether we’re working on standard presentations or complex, high-resolution projects. This is just another part of how we keep things consistent and reliable. 

Like all tools, NXPowerLite does have its limitations. When you create a custom profile, the maximum resolution it allows is 8K (7680 × 4320 pixels). Now, 8K is a massive, gorgeous resolution, and for most projects, that’s plenty. But for us, working on ultra-wide screens and giant event presentations, we often create and work on even bigger files. That’s where we hit a wall with NXPowerLite. It’s a bit of a bummer, because we love the tool, but for these super-sized projects, it just can’t handle the size we need. 

Still, NXPowerLite has a permanent place in our hearts and our toolbox. While it’s not the right fit for every single project (like the ultra-high-res presentations), it’s incredibly helpful for keeping file sizes under control and workflows moving smoothly. 

-The TLC Creative Design Team

Here’s a PowerPoint Tip: This is How You Quickly Turn Presenter View On or Off in Microsoft 365!

In the present day, the Office 365 version of PowerPoint makes managing Presenter View much easier, compared to older versions. No more digging through settings — it’s now right on the ribbon for quick access. 

Here’s How to Find Presenter View

If you want find Presenter View:

1. Go to Slideshow

2. Then Monitors

3. Then click Show Presenter View

Then, you’ll see a simple checkbox to toggle Presenter View on or off. 

This means whether you prefer the full Presenter View experience, or want to mirror exactly what your audience sees, you can switch modes in just one click — even right before presenting!

It may seem like small change, but trust us: it makes a big difference in keeping your presentations smooth and stress-free. When you’re about to give a presentation, the last thing you want to do is start rummaging through the settings to find just what you need, so we’re glad this issue has been resolved!

-Christie, TLC Creative Design Team

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost nine years (9!) since we talked about this PowerPoint tip (the original post was published on March 11, 2016). Back then, embedded video was not as common as it is today. While some things have changed, this little trick still holds up so well! 

So, let’s revisit this tip! 

The Magic Auto Advance Shortcut 

Using PowerPoint’s auto advance transition feature is pretty straightforward… but trying to calculate the exact duration of a video just to time a transition? That part can be exhausting. 

Fortunately, there’s good news: you don’t actually need to know how long your video is! Why? Because PowerPoint will not auto-advance a slide mid-video – even if your timing says it should.  

Is that good or bad? That depends on the desired action you want PowerPoint to do. Because the TLC Creative presentation design team has been at this for a long (long) time – we expect PowerPoint, and auto advance slide transition to work this way, so we exploit it in our slide design. 

Basically, when an embedded video plays, PowerPoint patiently waits until the video finishes playing before doing an auto slide transition, if it has been set to auto transition. Of course, if an earlier slide transition is needed, your best option is to trim the video (eg. make it shorter) or advance the slide manually. 

The 2-second Auto-Advance 

Here’s how it works: 

In our example, we want slide 1, which has the embedded video, to automatically advance to slide 2 once the video ends. 

Set the slide 1 transition to auto advance after 2 seconds. This assumes the video is the only animation on the slide and set to start automatically. 

PowerPoint will go to slide 1, play the full video, ignore the auto advance at 2 seconds setting, complete the video playback, then automatically advance to slide 2!  

No need to match video duration and slide auto advance duration perfectly. This built-in behavior makes a simple and reliable way to create a smooth transition to the next slide that feels professional, vs. sitting on the last frozen frame until the presenter clicks to advance. 

Want to see it in action? Here’s a quick video demonstrating how this setup works (still a great video – and slide setup, from our work in 2016!): 

Still one of our favorite PowerPoint “tricks,” even years later. 

 – Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team 

Nine years ago in 2016, we made a PowerPoint Blog post about Microsoft PowerPoint’s video playback media bar. Back then, the playback bar could be seen in slide edit view when selecting a video. It provided all the standard video controls; click to any point, scrub, pause, volume control, and the ability to see the time code.

When in slideshow mode, the media bar would be activated by any mouse movement over the video, and its functions were then seen while presenting, displaying on the slide while in slideshow mode. However, once the mouse was moved off the video in slideshow mode, the bar would disappear.

There were a few differences between the edit view experience and the slideshow experience. The most visible was the position of the media bar. It is below the video in edit view and overlaid on the video during slideshow. However, in slideshow mode, there are fewer control options (no fast forward or rewind buttons, and no time code is displayed). 

One important note was that if you were presenting with Presenter View, the media bar was activated when the mouse moved over the video either on the slide OR in the Presenter View window. 

Now nine years later, there have been no real changes, updates, or improvements to the video playback bar – and no changes to the media interactions and information in PowerPoint!  

Here is our wish list for the Video Playback Bar (hey Microsoft PowerPoint Dev Team, are you listening?) in the form of a mockup of what we are dreaming about. 

• First, while we realize this is not related to media control it’s something we strongly believe is sorely needed so we want to continue bringing this request to the top of the conversation – PowerPoint needs to support alpha channel video (eg. transparency), please! 

• And when the media controls to play, pause, stop, rewind, and mute show up on the slideshow screen when triggered in Presenter View, we should have the ability to hide them from the slideshow screen (because we do not want the audience to see those controls)

• Make large, easy-to-use informative media controls in Presenter View (see above UI mockup)

• A live countdown showing duration until the video is complete

• Scrubbable timeline

• Duration of video displayed

• Pause, reset to the beginning, jump to end, loop, volume control

• The Loop icon would be color-coded to indicate if the video has any type of loop applied, and can be dynamically turned on/off by clicking the icon  

• Finally, a user-selectable option for “no media controls on the slide if presenting with Presenter View” (because the media controls will be available on the Presenter View window now). 

If anyone on the Microsoft PowerPoint Dev Team is reading this, thank you! Here’s hoping we’ll see improvements to PowerPoint’s video playback bar in the future. For everyone reading this post, I hope this is helpful information. 

-Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team