16 Feb 09 PowerPoint converter-Camtasia and Wondershare

PowerPoint is among the most prevalent forms of persuasive technology used by business people, educators, students and trainers.  Suppose you need to burn PowerPoint to DVD, I know it is not very popular, the most common reasons for converting PowerPoint to DVD are usability, portability and storage. Since DVD has become the preferred video format for most consumer applications and computer peripherals, creating a PowerPoint DVD makes good sense for storing and sharing. The DVD can be played on PCs which support DVD and TV with a DVD player connected.

Nowadays there are two types of tools meet the standard for converting PowerPoint to DVD. One is the screen recording tool and the other is the PowerPoint converter. The typical examples for these two types are TechSmith Camtasia and Wondershare PPT2DVD, after the testing, you may find the difference between these two tools.

TechSmith Camtasia 
 
TechSmith Camtasia allows customers to create professional and engaging presentations, demonstrations and marketing videos in HD-quality video to reach audiences online, on portable media devices, or on popular online video sharing sites. Furthermore, Camtasia provides a PowerPoint add-in which can quickly and easily record PowerPoint presentations and produce DVD right from within PowerPoint.

Pros of using Camtasia to convert PowerPoint to DVD:

1.Staring slide show in PowerPoint, you may advance the presentation as you wish. The output will look the same as rehearse.
2.You may add narrations into your slide show while playing in PowerPoint.
3.You may edit the recorded video with Camtasia. Many great and practical features are provided.
4.You can save the video file to almost all of the common multimedia formats like SWF, MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, RM, EXE and GIF.
5.A 30 days free try may meet your short term demand.

Cons of using Camtasia to convert PowerPoint to DVD:  You need a powerful computer (higher than mainstream configuration) to run Camtasia smoothly because it consumes a lot system resources when recording PowerPoint. The recommended RAM is 2GB and the processor is 3GHz. The recording process may be freeze sometime if your PC is a dog. When burning the PowerPoint video to DVD, a third part DVD burning software is needed.

Wondershare PPT2DVD

“If you’re interested in sharing your PowerPoint presentations as DVDs to be played on a DVD player, this program gives you a simple, no-fuss way to do it. Wondershare PPT2DVD burns a completed presentation to a DVD, and includes all aspects of it, including transitions, music, videos, and so on.” From PC world, Preston Gralla. 

As the first program that provides the PowerPoint to DVD solution, PPT2DVD has its own features such as:

1.The converting process is very simple and no-fuss just as Preston said, import the PowerPoint presentations into the program (you can import 12 files at a time), choose the right output format and some advanced settings if you need, then the program can convert your PowerPoint presentation to DVD without your attendance.
2.The DVD menu makes the output more easily to navigate. You can jump to the right presentation with a DVD remote control.
3.The playing mode, playing DVD automatically or manually gives you more choices when presenting your PowerPoint to your audience on TV.
4.It retains all sounds, animations, video clips and even the hyperlinks (between slides) in the output files.
5.Compared to Camtasia, an average configured is power enough for Wondershare PPT2DVD.

Compare to the first conversion method, in the converting process, you cannot figure out how will the output looks like. Just like a black box, you don’t know what happened in it. Sometimes it may lead the unpredictable failure. And, PPT2DVD can just record the elements in the PowerPoint, it is not possible for you to add your voice to your presentation, hope this function will be added in the future version.

Still, there are many other PowerPoint to DVD/video tools on the Internet like Acoolsoft PPT2DVD, E.M. Free PowerPoint Video Converter, authorSTREAM and so on. Users who are looking for the PowerPoint to DVD/video converter can have an evaluation about them.

11 Dec 07 5 methods to save PowerPoint onto DVD

Time and time again, friends from Allexpert.com asked me how to burn PowerPoint presentations onto DVD. 
One of them created a compelling PowerPoint photo slideshow with music and movie clips embedded, but he had no choice but attached the huge package in the email to send it to others for sharing.
Another one is a teacher. He had to make a presentation at a place where there was no computer but only a DVD Player and TV.

So it is necessary to write a comprehensive guide to help guys to burn PowerPoint onto DVD for easily distribute and share.  

This guide will show you how to convert and save PowerPoint onto DVD. It includes the following 5 sections:

1. Use PPT2DVD to burn PowerPoint to DVD directly – $99.95  
2. Use PPT to Video to convert PowerPoint to video to burn to DVD –$49.95
3. Use Camtasia Studio to record PowerPoint as video to burn to DVD –$299.95  
4. Use Windows movie maker to convert PowerPoint to video to burn to DVD –Free
5. Mac users – Export PowerPoint/Keynote file to Quicktime video to burn to DVD

Part 1. Use PPT2DVD to burn PowerPoint onto DVD directly – $99.95

Download from: http://www.ppt-to-dvd.com/ppt2dvd/overview.html

Step 1: Import: You can import up to 12 presentation files at a time.

Step 2: Setting: Check the default settings and make some changes if needed. You must choose the right TV standard which is used in your country. If you are not sure about this, you can select it by country.

Step 3: Create DVD menu based on DVD menu theme: Click Design to choose the DVD menu theme or customize your own DVD menu using the frames, buttons and icons resources.

Step 4. Burn:  Click Start to burn your PowerPoint presentatin directly to DVD disc. Or you can burn the output DVD folder or iso file to DVD with a DVD Burner( either PPT2DVD built-in burner or Nero)

Part 2. Use PPT to Video to convert PowerPoint to video to burn to DVD –$49.95

Download: http://www.ppt-to-dvd.com/ppt-to-video-overview.html

Step 1. Import PowerPoint files to PPT to Video. And you are allowed to import 12 files at a time.
Select "PowerPoint to MPEG-2", "PowerPoint to WMV" or "PowerPoint to AVI" to transfer your PowerPoint presentations to MPEG, WMV or AVI
 
Step 2. Converting: Click " Start " to conver your PowerPoint presentations to video. Before this, you can also click Settings to set the properties of the output video

Step 3. Edit and burn the converted video to DVD with video to DVD burner software you have. If you do not have such burning tool, you may try this one named video to DVD burner. 

Part 3. Use Camtasia Studio to record PowerPoint as video to burn to DVD –$299.95

 

Download: http://www.techsmith.com

Step 1. Set your computer display resolution as 800*600

Step 2. Save your PPT file as PPS file

Step 3. Set Camtasia studio to record the whole screen

Step 4. Play your PowerPoint PPS file and Press "F9" to start recording the screen

Step 5. When you reach your last blank slide, Press F10 to tell Camtasia Recorder to stop recording. You will be prompted to save the captured slideshow, so choose a directory and enter a filename.

Click "Save". Camtasia will save your capture as an .AVI file.

Step 6. Then you can burn the video to DVD with Nero or Roxio

Part  4. Use Windows movie maker to convert PowerPoint to video to burn to DVD –Free

Step 1. Save your PowerPoint slide show as "PNG","JPG" images.

Step 2. Import the pictures to your Windows Movie Maker

Step 3. Select all the imported images and add them to Storyboard

Step 4. Add video effects to the slides (Optional)

Step 5. Save the slide show as Movie File

Part 5. Mac user – Use Quick time to convert PowerPoint to video to burn to DVD 

Step 1. In Powerpoint, export your presentation as a Quicktime movie "PowerPoint Movie".
If you are using keynote, just export your presentation to Quicktime file directly.

Step 2. Burn the Quicktime movie to DVD with your DVD burner.

Advantages and disadvantages(Pros & Cons)

1. Method 1 has a medium price, it can burn PowerPoint to DVD with DVD Menus and retain the animations, transitions, sound and movie clips in the original PowerPoint file. (Recommended) If you choose manual mode, the internal hyperlink would be retained and you can choose manual mode to create DVD which can be navigated using remote control. It is an all-in-one converter and burning tool.  
2. Method 2 is cheap and it can retain transitions and animations, but you are not allowed to create DVD menus and retain the inner hyperlinks. What’s more, you can not create DVD in manual mode to advance the DVD slide by slide.
3. Method 3 is fairly expensive, but Camtasia has lots of other functions such as recording the screen.  
4. Method 4 is free but the transitions, animations in your original PowerPoint will not be retained.
5. Method 5 is free, but only for Mac users. 

    

   Do you want to learn more? this is related…
   Case Center to learn more about the benefits of PPT2DVD
   5 Ways to Convert PowerPoint to Video