In my view, the disappointment that people often face when trying to convert
a PowerPoint presentation to DVD, or any other video format, usually
originates less from the technology used to convert the file as from a
misunderstanding of the differences between data and video display. Ooh,
get me with my long sentences; the punctuation police are already on my
back.
What I mean, in a nutshell, is this: for any presentation to look good it
has to be designed with the limitations of the display medium in mind.
Or...it's not PowerPoint that's the problem.
Data displays - computer monitors, plasmas* and projectors* (*when used with
the data input) have very few insurmountable limitations and we can usually
tell how a presentation will look on the destination medium.
Video displays have many more limitations, many of which exist in both
consumer technology and expensive broadcast kit, and we must not assume that
we can make every presentation look the same on a video display as it does
on a computer screen. This is not to say that presentations can't look as
good on video as they do on your monitor; some can even look better.
Here is a quick and by no means complete compare/contrast of the two
technologies:
Data display:
Variable resolution - 1024x768 very common; 1280x1024 and higher
increasingly so.
Variable refresh rate - 75-85Hz and higher very common.
Progressive scan (non-interlaced)
Video display:
Fixed resolution - 720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) most common.
Fixed refresh rate - 50Hz (PAL) or 60Hz (NTSC)
Interlaced
Even if you don't know what any of that means it's quite clear that we're
talking about two very different monkeys.
Resolution is straightforward - we all know the more dots/pixels in a given
area the sharper the picture. 720x576 is significantly lower than a typical
data resolution and means that fine detail is often lost, and in particular
text should be large and bold.
Refresh rate is how often the screen updates itself, and
progressive/interlaced describes how this updating is done. A
non-interlaced (data) monitor updates its pixels from top left to bottom
right in order, and the number of Hertz is how often this happens every
second. An interlaced (video) monitor deals with the odd lines first, then
goes back to the top to refresh the even lines. Back in the early days of
TV there was a primarily technical reason for this but it also has the
beneficial effect of smoothing out motion in video. From a graphics point
of view this has a damaging effect on thin lines and details (particularly
horizontal) and makes them shimmer; so lines should be bold and, again, fine
detail avoided.
Colour is another significant difference between data and video technology,
and another reason why what we see on a computer screen can vary
significantly to what we seen on video. Video has a more limited palette
than data and certain colours should be avoided (particularly saturated reds
and 100% white - use 97% white instead and it will appear white on video
without flaring).
All this is without mentioning the big differences between composite,
S-video, RGB, YUV...and others - the connections used to transfer an
analogue signal to a display or onto recordable media. The lower end of
these (particularly composite - avoid if at all possible) further reduce the
resolution and quality available, and this can be reduced further still when
recorded onto analogue media. It's often said that VHS has an effective
'resolution' of 352x288 - roughly a quarter that of the full size video
signal.
I've gone into far too much detail here and yet have only scratched the
surface. My point is more simple. Create presentations with knowledge of
your display medium and you'll probably not be disappointed. Look at TV and
DVD graphics - they are usually very simple and bold, with not much fine
detail.
I'll shut up now, as I've bored even myself.
Thank you and good night.
pthos2r said:
I have read the many questions and replies regarding converting
PowerPoint presentations to a DVD and have seen John Langhans' standard
reply many times over. Bottom line is, there is no good way to convert PPT
to DVD. Camtasia and other third party softwares don't produce smooth
transitions and animations. Burning to an external DVD recorder or video
capture card only renders VHS quality at best.
So, my question is, does anyone know of a single software that does what
PowerPoint does but also have DVD burning capabilities incorporated?
PowerPoint is a great program but until it has some sort of output to DVD
(or just export as a wmv file) I'm going to look elsewhere. I'm not using
PPT as an interactive presentation tool, I'm using it to create slideshow
presentations.
In my opinion at least