Tutorial

PowerPoint As a Video Editor – Combine Video Clips

PowerPoint has some very good video features, such as the ability to play multiple video formats, embed videos into the slide deck file, visually stylize the video and export video from the PowerPoint.

It is the export video feature that is being used for this tutorial.
Here are three videos that are inserted into PowerPoint 2013.

Each video is set to auto play, one after the other.

Then, go to FILE.

EXPORT >> CREATE A VIDEO >> CREATE VIDEO

The result is a single video file that was previously 3 separate videos.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:08:02-07:00November 16th, 2013|Tutorial|

Watermark Images Direct in PowerPoint

Watermarking an image is common in several scenarios. Identifying who owns the image and copyright and indicating it is a low resolution “proof” image are the two most common watermarking scenarios I see.

TLC Creative Services has a large library of royalty free images and subscribes to image sites which make developing visual presentations much easier. In both cases, our designers can download the low res, watermarked version of the image(s) they want to use in the presentation. Then, when the client approves the images, they can download the high resolution version of each image and replace the watermark images throughout the presentation. Of course, this routine takes a lot design time and it displays the company watermark vs. a generic watermark.

Note: “FPO” is an design industry standard phrase, “For Placement Only.”

TLC Creative Services creates all our watermark images directly in PowerPoint.

1. Here is our slide layout with high res (optimized for use in PowerPoint) image. But we do not release the slides with usable images until it has been approved.

Watermark images 1

2. Here is our PowerPoint stylize “FPO” text box.

Watermark images 2

3. We paste the “FPO” text box onto each slide and position over the image.

Watermark images 3

4. We then select the image and FPO text box and copy them.

5. Next we delete the image and FPO text box.

6. We then PASTE SPECIAL as a .png (this assures quality and eliminates issues if the text box extended paste the image).

Watermark images 4
Watermark images 5

7. This adds a new image to the slide that is watermarked.

Watermark images 6

8. We position the new watermarked image on the slide.

Watermark images 7

9. Last, we do a SAVE AS so the “real” presentation with the high res images is not lost.

By |2016-08-10T10:08:26-07:00November 14th, 2013|Tutorial|

SnagIt OneClick – How to Disable

As a designer, SnagIt is one of my most valued go-to apps. But even the best software sometimes creates problems. In the latest version of SnagIt, a new feature, “OneClick,” (at least this is the first version I have noticed it) just gets in the way. The concept is to have an onscreen button to activate SnagIt vs. a keyboard command.

OneClick puts a small red button at the top of your screen.

Click the red button and a small menu drops down, allowing easy access to many of the SnagIt tools and settings.

The dilemma is that the button is ever present, sitting on top of everything: windows, apps, slide shows! This is not good and something that took a bit of investigating to figure out how to turn off. Half the effort is knowing the name of this unwelcome feature – OneClick.

To turn off, open SnagIt, click the VIEW menu and click SNAGIT ONECLICK. This is an on/off toggle, so it should now be removed from your screen. You may also see a TURN OFF ONECLICK option in the Quick Launch dialog in the left action pane.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:12:50-07:00October 9th, 2013|Personal, Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Does PowerPoint Know I Need a Font?

There are dozens, actually 1,000s, of ways to display your ABC’s. Font styles are created to display each letter in unique ways. Microsoft supplies a set of fonts with Office. Adobe supplies many fonts with the Creative Suite (now Creative Cloud) software packages. And there are many ways to download and add custom fonts to your computer.

If you use a custom font in a presentation, and that custom font is not installed on the computer that is viewing the presentation, a font default – or substitution – is used. We cannot control which font is used as the default and we cannot guarantee what the slide will look like with the default font in use.

PowerPoint has a few tools to help with this situation. The tools are not extensive, and definitely do not do enough to aid us users in identifying font issues and resolving font issues.

The first step is to identify if PowerPoint is using fonts on the computer or substituting fonts. The tool is very simple, and simplistic. Select a text box, then on the home tab click the font selection drop down. In this menu, each font has 1 of 3 icon options to the left of the font name.

1. The Open Type icon is a large stylized “O.”
2. The True Type icon is two letter “T”s overlapping.
3. NO ICON, just blank space, lets you know PowerPoint recognizes a font is needed, but it is not installed on this computer. When there is no icon, PowerPoint is substituting that font with a default font (of its choice).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:28:04-07:00July 22nd, 2013|Resource/Misc, Tutorial|

Help – Cannot Move/Delete/Rename/etc. PowerPoint File!

Have you encountered this error dialog:

In this case, I was moving a project folder. I had just finished editing a presentation, closed the file and PowerPoint. But I was unable to move the entire folder. Frustration!

Often, PowerPoint is still open as a background application even though it has been closed. Why – I do not know, but it definitely causes lots of user frustration.

Solution:
1. Right-click on the bottom task bar and select TASK MANAGER

2. Scroll down, past the active Apps into the BACKGROUND PROCESSES and look for MICROSOFT POWERPOINT (it will be the same name with all versions of PPT).

3. Select it and click END TASK.

4. Now click TRY AGAIN on the error dialog and all should do as you wanted (move, delete, rename, etc.).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:29:42-07:00July 15th, 2013|Tutorial|

Add Twitter Feed To Slides

We were recently at a show to handle the presentations, and the presenter encouraged the audience to tweet about the conference daily events. During the break, we were asked to show the twitter feed. Advanced planning is great – this was not it.

We used Visibletweets.com to provide a solution. Visibletweets.com is a Flash based website with no download (other than the Flash player if not installed). On the website, you are prompted to type in a hash hag, search a term, or use someone’s twitter id.

Then one tweet at a time fills the page, each animates to the next. There are 3 types of animation to choose from: Letter by Letter (which is our favorite), Rotation, and Tag Cloud.

If you use the option to run the show in the web browser full screen, the background automatically changes colors.

There are 3 options for using visibletweets.com during a presentation.
Option 1: Run the website from a backup computer (with internet access) and toggle it to the screen.
Option 2: Have a link to the website on a slide and use it to switch from presentation to web browser (going back to the presentation requires using ALT+Tab or closing the web browser – so not as seamless and elegant).
Option 3: Use Shyam’s LiveWeb add-in to display a webpage directly on your presentation slide (this is a FREE add-in that can be downloaded here).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:31:07-07:00July 10th, 2013|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Stop PowerPoint from Getting the Animation Jitters!

Long scrolling animations worked great back in PPT 2003. But with the new .xml format (.pptx) came a new render engine for animations and it caused these same animations to stutter and “jitter” as they played.

You can fix these with a registry edit (Note: the registry controls the computer and in general mistakes in here can be very bad).

First, download this test file and run (download here, 3.7MB). Take note of how smooth, or jittery, the text animation is.

Close PowerPoint.

To update a computers PowerPoint settings:

1. Start >> search bar “regedit”

2. Go to Hkey Current User>>Software>>Microsoft>>Office>>15.0>>PowerPoint>>Options
– Note: This is the path for PPT 2013. For PPT 2010, it will be “12.0” vs. 15.0.

3. In the right section, right-click and select NEW >> DWORD (32-BIT) VALUE

4. Name it “DisableSpriteClipping”

5. Find the new entry and right-click and select MODIFY

6. In the VALUE DATA box, enter “1” (BASE can be Hex or Dec) and click OK

Start PPT and run the test file again. Take note of how smooth, or jittery, the text animation is.

Many thanks to Steve Rindsberg of PPTools for making me aware of Microsoft’s Chris Maloney’s shared bit of coding that works wonders for anyone fearful of animation jitters!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:31:29-07:00July 8th, 2013|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Get Back A File with Windows “Previous Version” Feature

Windows 7 and 8 have a built in feature to allow you to go back in time and recover files that have been deleted, become corrupt, overwritten, etc. – and it is great! Josh, a designer and IT pro on the TLC Creative Services staff recently showed me this feature – and saved the day by recovering a large project that had become corrupt. So Josh is the star of this post explaining how to use the “Previous Version” feature.

A little known feature in Windows 7 and beyond, Previous Versions is often overlooked and underutilized. Its simplicity of use, easily restoring, copying, or just viewing contents of previous versions of files changed or lost make this feature a “must have” in any power users toolkit. Luckily for us, it’s built right into the OS. Before we get into configuration and enabling previous versions (this should be enabled on the system drive by default), let’s have a look at how the feature works:

Open any folder, right click on the canvas area, folder, or file, and hit properties.

Clicking on the previous versions tab in a folder where you’ve deleted or modified some files will result in some form of the screenshot below, with previous versions of files or folders listed.

Restoring files is as easy as selecting the folder, and hitting restore.
Alternately, you can open any folder by double clicking, and copy, or even open and edit single files, as opposed to having to restore the whole directory.

You can open any previous version of a folder or file by double-clicking on it, or selecting the “Open” button.

How to setup or confirm System Protection is Enabled
You can ensure Previous Versions is enabled through the “System Protection” window. This can be accessed by right-clicking on “My Computer” and selecting “Properties.” This will bring up the window below, wherein you will see a “System Protection” option on the left-hand pane.

When opening System Protection, you will be met with the window below. Take note of any non-system drives, and enable protection on them if desired. You will not be able to restore previous versions of files on drives that do not have protection enabled. Choose the desired space allotment via the “Configure” button. How many previous versions are available will directly depend on how much space you have allotted.

So there you have it, a few clicks and moments of configuration to put weeks or months of automatically generated backups at your fingertips.

– Josh @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:33:34-07:00June 26th, 2013|Tutorial|

Widescreen Presentations – Size Matters

PowerPoint 2013 has updated itself to use widescreen presentations as its default (which I believe is good). And the PAGE SETUP has changed as well. The aspect ratio is the same (16:9). My friend, and Microsoft PowerPoint MVP, Echo Swinford has a great description of the page setup change here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T10:44:08-07:00March 20th, 2013|Tutorial|

PowerPoint Leprechaun Animation (How To)

If you did not download the FREE 16×9 St. Patrick’s themed widescreen PowerPoint template on Friday, you missed the great Leprechaun flipping a coin animated title slide!

Here is Amber’s description and tutorial on creating the animation:

The animation is the leprechaun coming onto the slide and flipping a coin into the pot of gold. The elements used to create the effect are:
– Leprechaun with no hand on left
– Hand of leprechaun
– Gold coin
– Sparkle
– Pot of gold
– Grass and shamrocks for scenery

1. It’s always helpful to name your pictures in the selection pane before animating. (HOME tab > ARRANGE > Selection Pane). The names carry through to the animation pane, which is super helpful in knowing which picture you’re adding animation to. I’ve arranged my elements to have the grass on top, and the leprechaun in between the pot of gold and shamrocks.

2. Select the leprechaun, his hand, and the coin. Arrange them on the slide, I have him so he is peeking out right next to the pot of gold.

3. In the animation pane, apply ENTRANCE > FLY IN > FROM RIGHT > WITH PREVIOUS > .50 second duration.

4. Now that the leprechaun flies in, next we need to make his hand move in a flipping motion. The animation we are going to apply is spin, which spins from the middle of the picture. This won’t work with the bounding box the way it is currently. We need the hand to swivel from the base, not the middle of his fingers. Select the hand, and go to FORMAT > CROP. Pull the cropping edge down so the middle of the image will be the base of the hand. Now the bounding box is extended, filled with empty pixels in our PNG image.

5. With the hand selected, apply the EMPHASIS > SPIN > AFTER PREVIOUS > .25 second duration.

6. Right click on the animation in the animation pane and open the Effect Options. We want the spin to be a small angle, and come back to original position. Under amount, enter custom 19° Counterclockwise and check the Auto-reverse box. Now the hand is making a coin flip motion.

7. For the coin flip, we need to add a motion path. Select the coin, click the ADD ANIMATION button and apply CUSTOM PATH under the Motion Path section in the animation pane. WITH PREVIOUS > 1.25 sec duration > .10 second delay. Draw a loopy sort of path that goes up and end ends at the top of the pot of gold. You can always make fine adjustments by selecting the path, right click, edit points.

8. Coins spin when they flip, so we need to select the coin, hit ADD ANIMATION > EMPHASIS EFFECTS > SPIN > WITH PREVIOUS > 1.0 sec duration > .40 sec delay.

9. Right click the SPIN animation and click EFFECT OPTIONS. Under amount select TWO SPINS. Make sure this animation ends at the same time the custom motion path animation ends. We don’t want the coin to continue spinning once it lands in the pot of gold.

10. Now the leprechaun comes in and flips the coin into the bucket. The last element is the sparkle. Position the sparkle so it will be on the coin once it is in the bucket. Under animation pane apply ENTRANCE EFFECTS > ZOOM > OBJECT CENTER > AFTER PREVIOUS > .50 sec duration.

11. Your animation is complete! Here is what the animation pane should look like:

Download the PowerPoint template, which has this animation on the Title Master Layout here 1.8MB

– Troy, and Amber, @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T08:41:08-07:00March 18th, 2013|Tutorial|
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