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- Create a Video from your Powerpoint Presentation
- Friday, March 26, 2010
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For our latest Tips for Small Businesses, I will show you how to create a video from your Powerpoint Presentation using trakAxPC. It really couldn’t be easier and also gives you greater flexibility to introduce multimedia elements into your presentation, whether that be videos, narrations or a soundtrack.
The video above shows a very simple implementation of this, but you could take this further - record in a video and using the collage functionality / picture in picture, you could present your Powerpoint in person in your video.
Just to note, Powerpoint 2007 definitely renders your text and graphics better and the exported JPEG / PNG files are crisper. If you are using Powerpoint 2003 or earlier, you may want to play around with your fonts to find a font that exports to PNG / JPEG clearly.
Obviously the first step to creating a great Powerpoint / video combo is to have a decent Powerpoint in the first place. I tested out Powerpoint 2007 recently and I was really impressed with the improvements in the templates, default diagrams and image handling. However, if you are like me and have Powerpoint 2003 or earlier, you are going to have to put in some work to make it look professional.
I have put together some ideas for you on how you can improve your Powerpoint presentations - this is just my thoughts, you may disagree with them, so let me know!
Tip 1 - Keep it Simple
My first tip is to remember that you are presenting the Powerpoint - not the other way around. It is always tempting to add more and more information to your slides. However, your audience will be too busy reading your slide to listen to your presentation. I suggest keeping each slide to one main point and make an impact. I don’t think you necessarily need a title, date and logo etc. for each slide. You can cover all these elements on the intro slide. Remember you can always add Notes to your slides and if you are preparing handouts, you can add headers / footers in the Print Layout.
Tip 2 - Banish Tacky Clipart
I am pretty sure that I have never seen tacky clipart done well. It almost always looks cheap and unprofessional. When using graphics in your presentation, try and keep them clean and sophisticated. If you can, try and use a transparent PNG so they sit seamlessly on your background - otherwise think about changing your background to suit the image. There are tons of places online to purchase great graphics very cheaply - try iStockphoto, BigStockPhoto, Graphic River or Fotolia.
Tip 3 - Keep Gradients Subtle
If you have just discovered how to add a gradient to your background / diagrams etc. it can be tempting to go all out choosing a rainbow of gradients. Resist this temptation! Subtle gradients always look better. After you set your first colour in your gradient, choose the same colour again for your second colour (it should appear automatically in the menu) and then use the custom colour picker in Powerpoint to choose a shade just a tiny bit lighter than the original colour.
Tip 4 - Get Inspiration
This may sound like an obvious one, but look at great presentations and get inspiration. One of the best places to see some of the greatest presentations in the world is TED.com. I recently watched Stefan Sagmeister’s presentation on “The Power of Time Off” and Jamie Oliver’s “Teach every child about food” and what struck me was the simplicity of the slides, but the power of the presentation. Another great place for inspiration is Apple’s Keynote speeches - the slides are always completely and utterly beautiful (if you can ignore the sometimes nauseating whoops and cheers from the audience).
If you really struggle with graphics, you may want to consider purchasing a Powerpoint template. The quality of templates varies hugely. Here are a few links to template providers which by and large are pretty ok - Slideshop, Presentation Load and Microsoft Office Online.
I hope that some of these tips may be useful for your next presentation. Have some tips you want to share? Please drop me a comment below and let me know your tips to creating a great presentation.
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