The Presentation Podcast on Spotify!
Spotify has been slowly, and selectively, adding podcasts to its library. We are very excited, because our very own podcast, The Presentation Podcast is now available on Spotify! Check us out on Spotify here.
Adobe Experts Productivity Tips
Lori and I were featured in a great PowerPoint Productivity Tips list (Lori tip #16, Troy tip #18) a few months ago, which is something definitely worth reading (see blog post with link to full article here). Recently, Paul at Acuity Training in the UK sent me a link to an Adobe Experts Productivity Tips article they posted, and it has some great power user tips and hacks, definitely worth bookmarking. Full article here.
Troy @ TLC
Want A Perfect PowerPoint Circle, Square, Triangle?
Sometimes just knowing a hack can save a lot of time. So this is one of those tips included in our TLC Creative PowerPoint training programs where someone always exclaims “Really!!” The tip is how to immediately add a perfect shape (same on all sides), ie. a circle, square or triangle. The solution is so simple, there is nothing complex to forget. Ready,
Click the desired shape in the shapes gallery
Click on the slide. Note: just a simple click, no click and drag, no modifier keys, nothing, just click on the slide.
Done! A perfect, equal sided, square, circle, triangle, etc. is added to the slide
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And the shortcut to the shortcut!
Hold down the CTRL key and click on desired shape in the shapes gallery
Perfect symmetrical shape is automatically added to the slide!
Troy @ TLC
The Presentation Podcast Episode #43 Released Today!
A new episode of The Presentation Podcast with Troy, Nolan, and Sandy is available today! Check out the latest episode, #43 – “O365 Features We Use.”
Office 365 is Microsoft’s subscription based software and service that goes beyond the Office apps by encompassing SharePoint, Teams, Groups, Unified Communications with Skype and much more. Troy, Sandy and Nolan talk about they each use Office 365 for their studios and the ‘secrets’ to making the most of it.
Spotify and Sleep Timer Hack!
This has nothing to do with PowerPoint or presentations, but it is an amazing tip for those that use Spotify and have noticed it is missing a sleep timer option (which I have!).
Scenario 1: You are deep into developing an amazing PowerPoint presentation and have some great inspiration music playing. You have a meeting to attend, so having the music stop would be a great reminder to save your work and leave (and much less jarring than an alarm going off).
Scenario 2: You are in noisy hotel and having music to mask the noise would be great, as long as you have a sleep timer to turn the music off in a few hours.
Unfortunately, the Spotify app does not have a sleep timer function. Luckily, this great hack leverages the built-in iOS timer to control Spotify.
[KGVID width=”272″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/unnamed-file-2.mp4[/KGVID]
Action Steps, on iPhone or iPad
- Search for “Timer” and open it, or, open the Clock app and go to the Timer icon at the bottom.
- Set the time for music to play.
- Change the “When Timer Ends” (and this is the secret setting!) to STOP PLAYING by scrolling to the very bottom of the list of options.*
- Click START
- Go back to Spotify, enjoy the music and let iOS turn off the music when the timer runs out!
*Note: This feature also works with Apple Music, Spotify, and all other audio enabled apps.
Happy listening!
The Presentation Podcast Episode #42 Released Today!
A new episode of The Presentation Podcast with Troy, Nolan, and Sandy is available today! Check out the latest episode, #42 – A Conversation With Tom Howell & Mike Parkinson.
Enjoy listening to an amazing conversation with Tom Howell of Synapsis Creative, Mike Parkinson of Billion Dollar Graphics, Nolan Haims of Nolan Haims Creative and Troy Chollar of TLC Creative Services. Recorded at the 2017 Presentation Summit, our conversation covers a range of topics from design projects to studio policies to whether our university degree applies to our career, and so much more!
The Presentation Podcast Episode #41 Released Today!
A new episode of The Presentation Podcast with Troy, Nolan, and Sandy is available today! Check out the latest episode, #41 -“Presenter Notes.”
Presenter Notes: what are they, are they needed, what is the best way to create them, where is the best place to create them? So many questions for such a useful presentation tool. Yes, there are less helpful ways of creating, formatting and using Presenter Notes. No, there is no perfect way to create, format or use Presenter Notes. Troy, Nolan and Sandy share their notes about using Presenter Notes.
Logitech Spotlight Presentation Remote
The Logitech Spotlight remote is more than the standard presentation remote. It has a sleek, minimalist design, and has an app that offers a lot of other useful tools to the presenter.
The remote comes with a charging cable and the quick charge feature works in 1 minute, giving the remote enough power for 3 hours of use. A full charge takes as little as 60 minutes, and can last up to 3 months. Installing the software is a breeze and I got it up and running in less than 5 minutes.
After install, the app will guide you through how to use the remote, but it’s pretty intuitive on its own. The standard back and forth buttons can be configured to do much more, like fast forward, blank out the screen, scroll, adjust the volume, or a even custom keystroke.
We set up the remote to control the computer volume when holding down the next button. Like a smartphone, it uses the up/down motion to change the volume level – which could be great during a presentation that has embedded video or music.
The top button on the remote is where almost all of the software features are triggered.
During a presentation, click and hold the top button, then move the remote to “point” where a very nifty Zoom bubble is on the screen. This allows a presenter to zoom in and highlight anything on the slide. The app also offers customization for the zoom, like making the highlight area bigger or smaller, adding a color circle, or even adjusting the fade out around the circle.
Among the other software tools is a timer function that the presenter can set and the remote will vibrate at certain markers, like when only 5 minutes remain on the clock. There are several other fun tools and features and definitely a remote any presenter should consider as part of their setup.
It is just over $100 and more details on the Logitech site here.
Troy @ TLC
PowerPoint (Setup) Mistakes We All Make
In the most recent episode of The Presentation Podcast, episode 40 “Mistakes We Have Made,” we talk about presentation design and business mistakes we have made along the way. On LinkedIn, I have a new article that gets more PowerPoint specific, “PowerPoint Mistakes We All Make.” Part 1 of a 3 part series details 15 behind-the-scenes PowerPoint application setup customizations for a faster and more efficient work environment.
Troy @ TLC
Video Across Slides (Sort Of)
Unbeknownst to the world, Microsoft somehow enabled video to play across slides again! This is something I have been requesting since the release of PowerPoint 2010, when video-across-slides stopped working. But don’t get too excited, there are limitations in using it today.
First the technical note: I am using Office 365, PowerPoint 2016 on Windows 10. This is untested on legacy versions or the Mac version.
Here is my sample slide deck; 5 slides with a video on slide 1 and indicator text on balance of slides.
When things are setup correct, yes we can play video across slides (yay!) as this video of the sample slides in slideshow demonstrate:
Side note: the above video was a Camtasia screen recording, because I discovered that using the Export As Video option does not show the video across slides (which makes sense with the below explanation of why I believe this is working)
Backstory:
- Back in PowerPoint 2003, a video could be set to continue playing across slides and it would!
- The reason was more of a limitation of PowerPoint that users were able to exploit and make a good thing. Back in PowerPoint 2003 video was not embedded and ran as a separate video player layer on top of PowerPoint. The good news was PowerPoint could keep the external video player going across multiple slides. The bad news was among other things, no PowerPoint content could be on top of the video while it was playing, because it was on top of the slides when playing.
- Fast forward to PowerPoint 2010 and videos became embedded and content could be on top of videos! The downside was the embedded video removed the hand off to an external video player on top of the slides (but the improvements in reliable playback and styling effects were far superior options to have available!)
- Today, video across slides works again. Here is my theory:
- When the play across multiple slides option is selected for a video, the video uses a legacy video player and reverts back to the PowerPoint 2003 model of being a layer on top of PowerPoint. So yes, you can play a video across slides, but the video has a lot of styling limitations.
How to Set a Video to Play Across Slides:
- Add video to slide (can be an embedded video, no legacy settings needed)
- My example video was set to play the video automatically
- Open the Animation Pane
- Right-click the video animation
- Select EFFECT OPTIONS
- Go to the EFFECT tab
- Look in the STOP PLAYING section
- Change the AFTER dialog to any number of slides needed (maximum 999 slides)
- Click OKAY
Limitations of Applying Styling Options to Videos That Use The Play Across Slides Option:
- Below video demonstrates things that do not work when play across slides is set; 3D perspective, distorted aspect ratio, reflection, and more
My Advice:
- Don’t count on this working in the future. It was broken for years and suddenly started working (thanks to Taylor Croonquist for mentioning it!). It could easily stop working with another update (and the ultimate update would be to enable video to play-across-slides AND maintain the embedded video player for z-order control and styling effects!!).
- But don’t hesitate to use it if needed. I was recently used a 60 second countdown video to play across a series of slides and all worked perfect (but the request was a circle shaped clock, which I could not do because of the above noted styling limitations). I tested on my show computers and was confident all would work for the meeting. If the same client asks for the same effect next year, I cannot promise it will work until we are close to the meeting date and I can test and confirm it is still a supported feature (eg. I am not sending out Sales Team decks using this feature, because it would be bad for things to stop working in the future).
Troy @ TLC