M
Matt
Hello,
I'm in the verge of buying Articulate Presenter for
PowerPoint-to-Flash conversion capability. I'm curious to see if
anyone would recommend I buy something else instead.
Here are the key features/requirements I seek (in priority-descending
order):
1) Support PPT animations in Flash conversion, including PowerPoint
2002 (Office XP) and above animations
2) Support Flash embedded in PowerPoint (I use RoboDemo5 to generate
Flash movies that I then embedded in PowerPoint, and I want the
"embedded" RoboDemo Flash movies to be included appropriately in the
overall PPT-file conversion to Flash).
3) Produce slide-by-slide hyperlink table of contents, viewable
thumbnails, and search engine in Flash output
4) Provide option to manual-user-control of animation advance (instead
of just one big timed playback) in Flash presentation (like I can do
in PPT animations--eg, click the right-arrow to trigger the next
animation, and the next animation does not appear until the user
issues such a "trigger")
Articulate seems to provide all of these things except for #4 (please
anyone correct me if I'm mistaken). However, there is slide-by-slide
control; furthermore, per-animation advance is not a critical
requirement, nor will I always want it in my presentations
(particularly for such content that is distributed without a human
presenter--so it can play just like a movie). However, I would really
like it if Articulate could put such a feature in a future version of
Presenter.
(An aside: I'll admit that my feature list comes about mostly from
trying out Articulate Presenter and seeing what the state-of-the-art
can do today...and thus everyone else seems to be compared to
Presenter. If there are alternative/better approaches to solve my
broader business problems, please let me know. From a higher-level
perspective, I am training and selling my customers on how to use my
software products, including educating them on the broader concepts
and philosophy of my company's products. Hence I use RoboDemo to
capture the product demos and tutorials of the software interfaces
directly, and I use PowerPoint graphics and animations--not all
created in PowerPoint, mind you--to help explain the concepts behind
the software usage. I then use the PPT-to-Flash to collect all my
"scenes" together in a laid-out script.)
I see a compilation of potential solutions here (as well as a few
other places):
http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/04/14/powerpoint_to_flash_conversion_tools.htm
Macromedia Breeze
http://www.macromedia.com/software/breeze/
seems to target a different user market then Articulate
Presenter--they seem to want to offer the "whole ball of wax" with web
conference, presentation, and other things far beyond PPT-to-Flash
conversion. I'm told via Articulate that Breeze is a server-based
product. I'm told (by another non-Articulate Macromedia competitor)
list price tag is around $40K-plus. Quite a bit more then the $500
Articulate Presenter ($700 Presenter Pro).
PowerCONVERTER
http://www.presentationpro.com/products/powerdelivery/PowerCONVERTER.asp
seems to be a reasonable alternative, but after talking with them,
they seem to be unable to support PPT 2002 animations and my have
trouble with the Flash-embedded-in-PPT requirement.
Everything else I've scoped out on the above top-20 list seem to come
up pretty short.
Before I buy, I would like a general "stamp of approval" from this
community, if possible. I at least want to make sure I'm not missing
another potential solution out there simply because I did not look
hard enough or ask around.
-Matt
I'm in the verge of buying Articulate Presenter for
PowerPoint-to-Flash conversion capability. I'm curious to see if
anyone would recommend I buy something else instead.
Here are the key features/requirements I seek (in priority-descending
order):
1) Support PPT animations in Flash conversion, including PowerPoint
2002 (Office XP) and above animations
2) Support Flash embedded in PowerPoint (I use RoboDemo5 to generate
Flash movies that I then embedded in PowerPoint, and I want the
"embedded" RoboDemo Flash movies to be included appropriately in the
overall PPT-file conversion to Flash).
3) Produce slide-by-slide hyperlink table of contents, viewable
thumbnails, and search engine in Flash output
4) Provide option to manual-user-control of animation advance (instead
of just one big timed playback) in Flash presentation (like I can do
in PPT animations--eg, click the right-arrow to trigger the next
animation, and the next animation does not appear until the user
issues such a "trigger")
Articulate seems to provide all of these things except for #4 (please
anyone correct me if I'm mistaken). However, there is slide-by-slide
control; furthermore, per-animation advance is not a critical
requirement, nor will I always want it in my presentations
(particularly for such content that is distributed without a human
presenter--so it can play just like a movie). However, I would really
like it if Articulate could put such a feature in a future version of
Presenter.
(An aside: I'll admit that my feature list comes about mostly from
trying out Articulate Presenter and seeing what the state-of-the-art
can do today...and thus everyone else seems to be compared to
Presenter. If there are alternative/better approaches to solve my
broader business problems, please let me know. From a higher-level
perspective, I am training and selling my customers on how to use my
software products, including educating them on the broader concepts
and philosophy of my company's products. Hence I use RoboDemo to
capture the product demos and tutorials of the software interfaces
directly, and I use PowerPoint graphics and animations--not all
created in PowerPoint, mind you--to help explain the concepts behind
the software usage. I then use the PPT-to-Flash to collect all my
"scenes" together in a laid-out script.)
I see a compilation of potential solutions here (as well as a few
other places):
http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/04/14/powerpoint_to_flash_conversion_tools.htm
Macromedia Breeze
http://www.macromedia.com/software/breeze/
seems to target a different user market then Articulate
Presenter--they seem to want to offer the "whole ball of wax" with web
conference, presentation, and other things far beyond PPT-to-Flash
conversion. I'm told via Articulate that Breeze is a server-based
product. I'm told (by another non-Articulate Macromedia competitor)
list price tag is around $40K-plus. Quite a bit more then the $500
Articulate Presenter ($700 Presenter Pro).
PowerCONVERTER
http://www.presentationpro.com/products/powerdelivery/PowerCONVERTER.asp
seems to be a reasonable alternative, but after talking with them,
they seem to be unable to support PPT 2002 animations and my have
trouble with the Flash-embedded-in-PPT requirement.
Everything else I've scoped out on the above top-20 list seem to come
up pretty short.
Before I buy, I would like a general "stamp of approval" from this
community, if possible. I at least want to make sure I'm not missing
another potential solution out there simply because I did not look
hard enough or ask around.
-Matt
