21 Apr 08 YouTube video in PowerPoint and PowerPoint to YouTube

As an expert of sharing PowerPoint on most popular media, I have been asked by lots of people about how to embed a YouTube video into a PowerPoint slide and how to share a PowerPoint presentation on YouTube. I want to take the chance to write an article to help people who want PowerPoint and YouTube to get married. I will introduce a way of embedding a YouTube video into PowerPoint presentation in the first part of this article. You will learn how to upload a PowerPoint presentation on YouTube in the second part.

Part one: Embedding YouTube video into the PowerPoint presentations

YouTube video is encoded in FLV format, while PowerPoint just accepts Mpeg, AVI, MOV and WMV video files. So we must convert the FLV format to Mpeg, AVI, MOV or WMV formats. There are two ways for you to convert it.

The first way is using the Online FLV Converter , You can directly paste the YouTube video URL in the blank, choose the format you like and then click start, after the conversion finished, download it to your computer and then you can insert the video in your PowerPoint presentation.

This tool is totally free but it is very slow and sometimes it can not finish the conversion because of some error information. Hope you are lucky!

The second way is using some professional tool like YouTube downloader. This tool can help you download the YouTube video and convert it. When you open a YouTube video, it can download the video automatically. Open YouTube downloader, then main interface shows (see the illustration below). Click the “+” button to paste your YouTube URL in the blank, and then click OK.

After you finishing downloading you can see your video in the left “categories”. Click “play” to view the downloaded video. But the most important thing we must do is converting our FLV video. Now click “Convert” and choose a proper format. AVI and WMV are recommended.

Save the converted file to you computer, then you can embed YouTube video to PowerPoint presentation now!

Another way to show your YouTube video on your PowerPoint presentation is give a link in your presentation but it has a limitation of your network connection. When you play your presentations you must connect to the Internet.

Part two: PowerPoint to YouTube

You may havegorgeous photo albums or business presentations created by PowerPoint that want to be shared online.Now you need PowerPoint to YouTube to convert PowerPoint presentation to video clips ready for YouTube or MySpace. Here I also introduce two ways for you to make a reference.

Using Windows Movie Maker (WMM). It’s free and it comes installed on XP and Vista. In your PowerPoint program save your presentation as JEPG format and then you can make a movie with WMM. You can also insert some transitions and sounds into it to make your movie more dynamic. But the disadvantage is the animations and sound synchronizations originally exist in your presentation will be discarded completely. If your presentation does not contain animations and transitions and sound, WMM is competent in doing this job. But if not, here’s the second way for you.

Using PPT to YouTube.
. It is more convenient and easy to create compelling video presentations with PowerPoint to YouTube with this little creature. Here is the guide.

Step 1: Download PPT to YouTube and install it.

Step 2: Click "Import file" button to load PowerPoint files

Step 3: Click "Format" box to set the output formats, you can choose MP4 or WMV format

Step4: Click "Start" button to start converting.

Step5: Upload your video PowerPoint Presentation to YouTube

With these tips I hope you can go freely between the PowerPoint and YouTube. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Filed in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

17 Apr 08 Top 10 PowerPoint presentation tips to gain applauses from your audience

Chances are either you have had to create a PowerPoint presentation yourself or you have had to observe one at one time or another. PowerPoint presentations have become one of the primary ways online meetings are conducted today. It is easy to put some slides together and then read them back to the audience verbatim. This approach however will make for a very monotonous meeting.

Days ago I have written an article “The principle of creating attractive PowerPoint”. I give some PowerPoint presentation tips such as not putting more text in the slide, telling the story by the person rather than the PowerPoint presentation itself. Here I got 10 PowerPoint presentation tips from Lynn Marotta, the successful freelance writer and contributor to Web-Conferencing-Zone.com.

There are better PowerPoint presentation tips you can use to get your message across more effectively. The following is a list of our top ten PowerPoint presentation tips and techniques to help make all of your future meetings, whether offline or online, a big success.

1. Readability is important — Make sure the font is large enough for everyone to see. Another tip to remember is too many words can make following along a burden for the audience. People will soon lose interest.

2. Stick to key points — Only put the key points of the presentation on your PowerPoint slides. By following this advice, you can avoid the monotony of having your presentation follow verbatim what appears on each slide.

3. Use clear titles on each slide — Each PowerPoint slide needs to have a clear title summarizing its purpose. Using larger, bolder font can help ensure the title stands out from the rest of the slide.

4. Use simple backgrounds — Pay attention to the color selections you choose. Another tip is to make sure the background does not detract from the words or diagrams that appear. If you choose colors that are too dark, or patterns that are too bold, chances are the slides will be difficult to read.

5. Use graphs and diagrams — Using visual images such as graphs and diagrams can really help to make a point. Images also help to break the presentation up a little bit and provide some visual interest.

6. Stay organized — The PowerPoint presentation itself needs to stay organized and on topic. Make sure the slides are in the right chronological order and information flows easily and naturally.

7. Limit the number of slides — Do not overdo the number of slides in your presentation. Keep the information presented on the PowerPoint slides themselves as short and concise as possible. You can always embellish verbally.

8. Speak clearly — When presenting, speak clearly and try to be as enthusiastic and interesting as possible. People often think of PowerPoint presentations as dry and boring, but with a little creativity, you can be captivating.

9. Allow time for questions — This is always a good practice to follow when conducting any meeting. PowerPoint presentations are no exception. Make sure you factor in a question and answer time into your allotted time slot.

10. Allow for future follow-up — Depending on the nature of the PowerPoint presentation, it may be appropriate to provide your contact information (i.e., phone number, email, and/or website URL) so that meeting participants can follow-up with you should they have any further questions or wish to enlist your services.

The eleventh tip I think is, you can use some creative tool like PPT2DVD which can help you burn PowerPoint to DVD, and then you can watch your PowerPoint on TV. For some TV conferences and video conferences it could be very convenient.

With a little time and effort, you can really make your next PowerPoint presentation effective and memorable by following these simple PowerPoint presentation tips and techniques.

Filed in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

10 Apr 08 Play PPS (PowerPoint Show) on DVD Machine

PPS (PowerPoint show) is the PowerPoint file that can be opened by starting slide show directly instead of opening the editing view. You can "convert" a PPT file to PPS file simply by renaming the file extensions. To play a PPS file, you need PowerPoint or PowerPoint viewer installed on your computer.

Quite often, you might have received a PowerPoint presentation with a PPS extension rather than the normal PPT extension from others? Why? No presentation is created for presenting to the author only. A presentation must be shown in front of a group or wider range of audiences. PPS can bring you to the slide show view directly, any better ways? I don’t think so. Now, another problem, what is a PowerPoint show usually created for?

A. Deliver to your families or friends but do not want it to be modified.

B. For merchant or business show

C. For some celebration thing

D. For teaching or training

……

We can modify the PPS files by renaming the extensions breezily so if you want to send your presentations to others and keep your presentations originally, PPS is not the best choose.

Let see PPS for merchant and business show. It is the good idea to use PPS for merchant and business show because it can economize the advertising fee. The most import thing is we can design and revise our advertising easily if we like, the hardware we need is a computer and a projector.

Using PowerPoint for celebration like anniversary celebration, graduation ceremony and birthday party is also a judicious decision. It impressed me much when I was invited to a graduation ceremony with my senior. They created a wonderful presentation and put lots of pictures which are the wonderful memory of their college life.

I don’t know if you have noticed that there are some inconvenient things when we use the PPS for the merchant and business show. Or maybe you have been puzzled in the birthday party without a projector. We just have computer, DVD player and TV. Did you have even thought converting your presentations to DVD and then you can play back your slide show on a DVD player or on TV? If we can, the problem can solve completely!

LCD TV can be found on the street everywhere and the ADS rolled. At home we have TVs and DVD players, why not take the advantage of these sets and play your presentation on them?

OK, now it’s a thing of converting PPS to DVD, or burn PPS to DVD.

PowerPoint does not have the built-in ability to save presentations as video files or other video formats such as DVD-Video and, even if it did, there would be significant losses of interactivity (because DVD-Video and PowerPoint slide show have very different capabilities in this area) and loss of visual fidelity (DVD-Video resolution is less than typical computer display resolution and most television will not render colors the same way that a computer display will). And how can we do this?

Two solutions of converting PPS to DVD:

1. Windows Movie Maker (WMM), Windows XP and Vista contain this free software so you probably have it. But the troublesome thing is, you must save the presentation to a series of images and then import all the pictures onto WMM. Click on Import Media and select the pictures you want to make a movie. Finally you can use a third-party program to burn the movie you made to DVDs.

The advantage of this method is that it won’t spend you a cent, but all animations, transitions and videos will be discarded.

2. The professional PowerPoint to DVD conversion tool PPT2DVD
http://www.ppt-to-dvd.com

PPT2DVD empowers you to convert your PPT or PPS to DVD with DVD menu powered and then burn it onto DVD disc. You can play your PPS presentations on DVD player with a TV set.

After converting your PPS to DVD, you no longer worry about others will modify your presentations, you no longer worry about the projector and your AD fee. Just enjoy your time when designing the merchant show and celebration with your DVD player and TV.

Filed in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

03 Apr 08 Make Your PowerPoint Presentations as Mobile as You with Burning PowerPoint to DVD

I saw an article called “Copy Your PowerPoint Slideshow to DVD” on the DVDshrinknow blog, the author said, “However, transporting the hardware to show your slides can be a problem, unless you have the capability to copy the PowerPoint slideshow to DVD. Now your presentation can be as mobile as you”.

Do you even image that you can take your presentation with DVD? Do you also think burn PowerPoint to DVD is an impossible thing? And what is the advantage of burning PowerPoint to DVD?

I do not want to offend the author, but I still post a topic Copy Your PowerPoint Slideshow to DVD on their forum, what I want to say is, it is not a problem with transporting the hardware to show your slides, you probably has heard some word like PowerPoint DVD, pps to DVD, burn PowerPoint to DVD and so on. You can just do the job with one click with the software PPT2DVD.

As a business man, PowerPoint is probably the essential tool to present vital information to your company, your shareholders, or whoever needs the information. The slides encourage conciseness with professionalism. As a teacher, it is a great way for your to progress smoothly through your lecture. While you are talking, the notes came directly from the information on the slides. As a student, when you design your project, it is both visually appealing and informative to create a PowerPoint……

Since PowerPoint is an excellent tool for students, teachers and businessmen, we do can not work without it. But, to take your laptop everywhere to show your slideshow is a troublesome thing. Just imagining how much easier it will be to save a PowerPoint slideshow to DVD. Now, you can slip the DVD in a briefcase, a backpack, or a pocket, and take your presentation with you.

PPT2DVD is just the software that can burn your PowerPoint slideshow onto DVD. You can show your presentations on DVD player with a DVD remote control. Follow the 4 steps below,

1. Import the PowerPoint files

2. Configure settings or use the defaults and skip to the next step

3. Create professional look DVD menus with built-in templates

4. Start the burning process

Just slip the DVD in a briefcase, a backpack, or a pocket, and take your presentation with you and Make Your PowerPoint Presentations as Mobile as You with Burning PowerPoint to DVD.

Filed in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

31 Mar 08 The principle of creating attractive PowerPoint

For years, I have been working for helping people solve PowerPoint problems, specially creating DVD or video from PowerPoint. Lots of people get puzzled on the question “How to create a presentation attractive”. And most of them have difficulties of finding out resources to “fill” their presentations. They think the more information contained in the presentation the more attractive the presentation is.

Anyway, PowerPoint is Not a Game of “Let’s See Who Can Put More onto a Slide.” I know it kills you a lot of time to prepare for your presentations. To do a stunning presentation you have to inquire knowledge on the internet which is related to your topic, but, we should follow the principle which is very near and dear to us, that is, don’t let the slides tell the story, let the presenter tell the story! The slides are just your backup and your outline.

Maybe there is a rift in the age groups of the users. Those who are beginning with PowerPoint just see it as a tool that can show something by a projector. Maybe someone will think cramming 10 or more lines of text or some colorful images onto a slide can tell more to the audience, if so, why not use Microsoft word? We hope we can “grow up” with PowerPoint.

Please remember: "There’s nothing deadlier in a presentation than having a lot of text on a slide and reading every word…”

Filed in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

22 Feb 08 Convert PowerPoint Presentation to DVD or Video?

Burning PowerPoint to DVD is a good idea for preserving presentations or extending the use of PowerPoint. You can either burn PowerPoint files to DVD disc directly, or convert it to video or DVD and then burn them to DVD disc. Converting PPT to DVD is different from converting PPT to video. To know the benefits of converting PowerPoint presentation to DVD comparing with converting to video, the best way is to understand the DVD structure.

The DVD menu matters

When we play a video DVD with DVD machine, in most conditions, we see a main menu first, which allows us to decide how the movie will be played: Select subtitle language, choose a conversation language, start from a specific chapter, etc. While playback, we can use navigation buttons on the remote control to rewind or skip through movies. Also, we can back to title menu or main menu to play another movie or chapter. The menu function is not supported by common video files. Let’s back to PowerPoint presentation. When we slide show with PowerPoint, we can advance presentation animation by animation and slide by slide, moreover we can build internal hyperlinks to go to a specific slide and turn back. With DVD menu, all these practical features will be inherited. But a raw video has no way to retain them.

Understanding DVD structure

What does a DVD disc contain? Actually, if you open a movie DVD disc on your computer, you should see two folders: AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. AUDIO_TS is created for storing DVD Audios (for audio DVD only), while the VIDEO_TS contains all data for the movie. Video DVD is what we concerned in this article, so let’s take a look at the data contained in VIDEO_TS directory.

Usually, we should find three kinds of files under the VIDEO_TS: .BUP, .IFO and .VOB. IFO file is the content of the DVD. It tells the player where a chapter starts, where a certain audio or subtitle stream is located, etc. BUP files are just backup files of the IFOs. If the IFO files cannot be read, the player will read the BUP files instead. Next is the VOB file, it is a container that stores video stream, audio stream, subtitles and DVD menu. Video is MPEG-2, audio can be AC-3, Linear PCM, Mpeg 2 multichannel or MPEG1 layer2 two channel audio. It is why the DVD is encoded in MPEG-2 but not a MPEG-2 video.

Things about PowerPoint

Now, let’s back to PowerPoint. If we burn a PowerPoint presentation to DVD disc in manual mode, we can use DVD remote control to navigate the converted video just like we doing so with PowerPoint. A professional PPT to DVD conversion tool should empower users to create and designed DVD menu. The following illustration shows the title menu of a DVD, which is created by Wondershare PPT2DVD.

Tools of burning PowerPoint presentation to DVD

There are many tools out there that are able to convert PowerPoint to DVD. The most famous one is Camtasia produced by Tech Smith, which is the leader in screen capturing field. Converting PPT to DVD is only a special function of the software. It may produce DVD video, but the menu design feature is not as good as Wondershare PPT2DVD, which is the first professional tool in the world that is specialized in converting PPT to DVD. It retains most PowerPoint interactive features to the converted DVD video. Besides, it provides a way to burn PowerPoint presentations to HD DVD, like Blu-ray DVD.

Filed in Uncategorized with 0 Comments