Tutorial Archives - Page 20 of 57

Using Pic Resize to Optimize Images for PowerPoint

Pic Resize is a very useful tool to resize and edit images that are larger than needed. This website offers a quick and easy-to-use method to optimize a large image so that it fits your needs.

To get started, make sure you have selected From Computer to choose an image on your computer to resize. Click Browse to locate the image on your computer, select the image desired and click Open.

Once you have selected the image, click the Continue (Resize, Crop & Special Effects) button.

On the top portion of the next page, you can crop or rotate your image, if needed. Continue on to the second section to resize your image. The website defaults to resizing the image to 50% of the original size. If you need a different size, click on the drop down menu and select another preset percentage or resolution. You can also select Custom Size… to enter in the dimensions of your choice.

To optimize this image for use within PowerPoint, I will resize this image to 800 pixels wide. By leaving the Height field empty, Pic Resize will automatically keep the image proportionate by determining the correct height value. You can also select a custom percentage of the original image by selecting Percent from the drop down image next to the Width or Height fields. The new dimensions of the image can be found on the right next to Estimated Final, which will be highlighted in green.

In the next section, you can select one of many special effects to enhance the image, if desired. Some of these special effects include Oil Paint, Scorched, Grayscale, and Sharpen, which can be seen below.

In the last step, you will select the format, quality (if JPEG) and maximum file size (optional) to save your image as. The original format of the image will be automatically populated but JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP are all supported. PNG images with alpha transparency are supported, so transparency will be maintained if resized. If resizing to a JPG as the format, you can also select the quality of the image being saved.

Once you have selected the format and quality, click the I’m Done, Resize My Picture! button. When successfully resized, you can select View Image to preview, Resume Edit to continue editing, Save to Disk to save onto your computer, or Save to Web to upload the image onto a social media website of your choice. For this instance, we would save the image to the desired location by clicking Save to Disk.

Once saved, you now have an optimized version of your image that can be easily used within PowerPoint. Below, you can see the new, optimized image, which was resized from 5184 x 3456 pixels down to 800 x 533 pixels.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:41:20-07:00May 21st, 2014|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Search for Images on Google by Usage Rights

Legal use of images is something we at TLC are always concerned about. It is also something we see abused by many presentation designs (ie. using copyrighted images without permission). One of the largest image resources for someone putting together slides is web images searches, particularly Google Images.

But, Google does provide some good search options to use “legal” images, by searching by usage rights.

Begin by initiating a Google image search for what you are looking for (in our case, we searched for “picture”), and hit enter, or click search.

After the search results for “picture” have loaded, you’ll find you have some additional search tools available. What we are looking for in this case is “advanced search,” which you’ll find by selecting the gear icon at the top-left corner.

After selecting Advanced Search, you’ll find in the following options available to you under usage rights:

A cautionary note: Some of the images returned under “free to use or share, even commercially” still required attribution, so it’ll be important to double check the terms for each image.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:42:15-07:00May 16th, 2014|Resource/Misc, Tutorial|

FreeEncoding.com Online Video Conversion

Transcoding is the process of changing a video from one format to another. For example, converting a .wmv to .mp4, or .avi to .wmv. Transcoding is done with video editing software, which is typically installed on a computer. But there are a number of online apps starting to show up. FreeEncoding.com is a free tool for easily converting videos online. It has a number of encoding options and makes things easy for presentation designers.

Go to www.freeencoding.com and click SELECT FILE to get started.

Select the video you to convert and click Open.

With the video selected, click the drop-down menu next to Output Format and select the format you want to convert your video to. For this instance, we will select AVI as our output format.

Next, select the Conversion Quality from the next drop-down menu.

You can click on Show Advanced Options to enter specific formatting options, such as resolution, FPS, video or audio bitrate and more. Once all desired formatting options have been selected, click the green Start Free Encoding Now button.

Enter your email address on the next screen (or you can choose to login using Facebook) and click Encode Now to have Free Encoding email you a notification when your video has been converted. An uploading status bar will appear at the bottom of the screen.

For your first time uploading, the below screen will appear, instructing you to activate your account to access your completed encodings.

Visit your email, and click on the activation link to access your converted video. Once activation is complete, you will see your video under Your Encodings. There are many actions and options available at this point.

To simply see the File Information you can hover over the link under Original File Name or hover over the pen icon under Actions to see Encoding Information.

Under Actions, you can also delete the video with the trash icon or report an issue you experienced with the encoding using the exclamation point icon. Also, if you have a Dropbox account, you can choose Save to Dropbox under Options. Otherwise, you are ready to download your encoded video.

To do so, click on the arrow icon under Actions and save your file to the location of your choice.
Note: You can only download two videos before the oldest will be deleted. The remaining videos you can download appear when hovering over the arrow icon.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:42:56-07:00May 14th, 2014|Tutorial|

Video CoDecs Information in Windows 7

CoDecs are the information needed to play a video. CoDec stands for “compress – decompress.” When a video is played, the computer needs the “decompress” information that matches the way it was “compressed” to play it. Sometimes, in troubleshooting video playback issues, it is good to see a list of the CoDecs installed on a computer.

To locate a list of all Codecs installed on your Windows 7 system for playing audio and video, first begin by opening Windows Media Player.

If there is no menu bar, click on Organize > Layout > Show menu bar, in the upper left-hand corner.

In the menu bar, select Help > About Windows Media Player

If prompted with a warning dialog box to notify you the program is protected under copyright law and international treaties, click Technical Support Information in the lower left-hand corner.

A page will open in your default internet browser with details of the Codecs used along with other system information.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:43:17-07:00May 12th, 2014|Tutorial|

“PWN” to Download Youtube Videos

This is a very cool and fast download activator for YouTube videos. PWN originates from the “own,” which is an apt name for not having to rely on a web connection to play a video in a presentation.

Deturi.com powers this quick, easy and extremely convenient way to download YouTube videos without having to copy and paste links or save videos to convert.
1. Go to YouTube and find the video you want.
2. In the URL bar type “pwn” to the URL.
3. Type inb “pwn” between www. and youtube.

4. The page is redirected to the the Deturi.com download page.
5. Select from the many download options from various sites.

6. Note: Some of these sites require Java to be installed and updated on your computer.
7. The bookmarklet option makes saving streaming videos in the basic formats very fast and simple. Save the bookmarklet to your Favorites Menu/Bar to easily download the video in the future. Select the link under Download Tools that says “Bookmarklet to directly download videos” OR a yellow bar will appear under the top menus with download options for the streaming video.

You now have the video saved to your computer without ever entering additional URLS or copying and pasting information.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:43:37-07:00May 9th, 2014|Tutorial|

Keepvid.com Tutorial

Keepvid.com allows you to download streaming videos from of a variety of websites, including YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, and more. The process is quick, easy and very convenient.
Note: The keepvid.com has lots of buttons to download OTHER software. I recommend ONLY clicking on the options listed in this tutorial.

To get started, you must first make sure that Java is enabled. Below the big Download and Play Now buttons, make sure that Java says On next to it. You may still be prompted to install or update Java on your computer if you do not have the most recent version installed.

Once Java has been installed/updated and is enabled on your system, locate the video you want to download. Copy the link to your video and paste it in the field to the left of the Download button. When you click on Download, you may be asked for permission to run KeepVidDownloader. If so, click on Run.

A list of links to your video file will appear on the bottom of the page in various sizes and formats. Formats to select from include 3GP, FLV, MP4, M4A (Audio Only), WEBM, MP3 and SRT (Subtitles).

Click on the desired format to save the file to location of your choice. Note: You must click on the actual link for your specific format and size to simply save the video file. If you click on the large Download button(s) to the right you will be sent to iLivid.com and prompted to use their file management system.
You now have the video in the format of your choice downloaded onto your computer to be used as needed!

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:44:03-07:00May 7th, 2014|Tutorial|

Set Video to Autoplay in PowerPoint

Video in presentations has been a big item for me over the years. With each new version, and update, of PowerPoint I am constantly disappointed in the default settings applied to inserted videos.

Currently, and in all legacy versions, when a video is inserted the default animation settings is a Trigger animation.

A trigger animation is ‘triggered’ one of two ways, direct interaction (ie. move mouse on screen and click on the programmed item) or secondary action from a programmed animation (ie. when one item is animated it activates the trigger animation).

So, when a video is inserted onto a slide and then present, the video will not play until you move the mouse cursor on the slide and click on the video. Obviously for majority of my meetings the goal is to hide PowerPoint (and hide any software) to create a seamless environment where things ‘just happen’. See a mouse move across a screen is a bad thing.

Up next is a quick step-by-step tutorial on changing the video animation settings to what we use at TLC for virtually all presentation videos.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:44:38-07:00May 5th, 2014|Tutorial|

SharePoint Calendars and Internet Explorer Visual Formatting Issue

TLC adopted Office 365 before it was publicly available and have only good things to say about its use in a small business environment. Recently something has gone awry with the SharePoint calendars – something we rely on daily.

Up until 2 weeks ago, they looked like the left example, but suddenly the visual formatting changed to the ugly and hard to use right example.

But this formatting issue is only seen when using Internet Explorer. If logged in with Firefox, Chrome or any other browser, nothing changed, all looks good. So ironically, only the Microsoft web browser seems to be rendering the Microsoft SharePoint calendars useless!

After some research and testing, here is the fix we have implemented on every computer here:

– Open Internet Explorer
– Click the TOOLS icon in the upper right
– Select COMPATABILITY VIEW SETTINGS
– In the ADD THIS WEBSITE field, enter SHAREPOINT.com
– Click ADD and CLOSE
– Now SharePoint calendars should once again display as expected

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:46:05-07:00April 19th, 2014|Resource/Misc, Tutorial|

Using Multiple Masters To Organize

Multiple masters are usually used in relation to different templates in a single file. At TLC, we use multiple master slides for design organization as much as different templates.

This is from a recent project that was all one template, but with 4 distinct color options. The client requested a simple structure, specifically not 4 duplicate sets of master slides. So we organized the Master Slides into 3 categories:
Top row = section divider slides in each color
Middle row = all of the content slide layouts in each color
Bottom row = title slides in each color

Just another way of providing solutions for clients using the features of PowerPoint’s master slides.

– Troy @ TLC

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2016-08-10T09:47:58-07:00March 17th, 2014|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Creating Quote Mark Graphics in PowerPoint 2013

PowerPoint 2010 introduced the very great “Merge Shape” tools (see this post for details). With this toolset, editable vector shapes can be can be created directly in PowerPoint – something I refer to as “Illustrator 2.0.” With PowerPoint 2013, it includes the ability to convert text to vector, which is what we will use to create the stylized quote mark graphics for a complete PowerPoint workflow.