PowerPoint « DJ Dates

9Dec/090

PowerPoint Tutorial Series 4: Slide Masters, Charting, and OLE

While not discussed in the second video, the OLE behavior between PowerPoint and Excel is a little odd when copying and pasting.

If you create a chart in PowerPoint, from PowerPoint, your chart and data are 100% embedded.

If you create a chart in Excel and Insert Object -> Linked into PowerPoint, both your chart and your underlying data are linked. Delete the source file and you can not alter the chart or the underlying data, and the chart turns into a drawing object.

If you create a chart in Excel and paste the chart into PowerPoint, your chart is embedded but your data is linked (at least somewhat). Delete the source file and you can still alter the chart, but not the underlying data. I find it intriguing that copying and pasting results in a behavior that is neither embedding or linking, but something in between. Microsoft always seems to make the most puzzling design choices.

In this video, 4.1. Masters and Themes:

Slide Masters
Slide Layouts
Manipulating Placeholders
Creating New Theme Colors
Saving Current Theme
THMX Files

In this video, 4.2. Charts and OLE:

Insert Chart
Editing Data
Switch Row/Column
Chart Layouts and Formats
Paste and Paste Special
Insert Object
Object Linking
Update Links

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28Nov/090

PowerPoint Tutorial Series 3: Animations and Multimedia

I have used KeepVid and Media-Convert a number of times, but I picked a horrible time to try to create this second video, because both sites were acting up. I'm surprised that we haven't seen a website that will download a YouTube video and convert the file to a PowerPoint friendly format in a single action. Update: ZamZar converts and downloads YouTube videos, all in one shot. Even has a bookmarklet... if it is reliable, it should be pretty slick.

I've used SUPER and Avidemux in the past, but I no longer use SUPER because it doesn't like that I always have a Cygwin X Server running. Besides, anymore I spend most of my time using Premiere and After Effects for video tasks.

In this video, PowerPoint 2007 3.1. Animations and Timing:

Animations Ribbon
Animate Dropdown
Transitions
Timings and Rehearsal
Custom Animations
Motion Paths
Advanced Timeline

In this video, PowerPoint 2007 3.2. Adding Sound and Video:

Inserting Sound

WAV vs. MP3
Change Picture
Custom Animation

Inserting URLs
Inserting Video

Keepvid Bookmarklet
Video Codecs
Video Conversion

Links:

Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.archive.org/details/MLKDream

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

KeepVid

http://www.keepvid.com/

SUPER

http://www.erightsoft.com/

Avidemux

http://www.avidemux.org/

Media-Convert

http://www.media-convert.com/

“Interchangeability” by clay10mograf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryXDhXqR-SE

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19Nov/090

PowerPoint 2007 Tutorials Series 2: Vector and Raster Graphics

After having the CamStudio beta crash multiple times, I rerecorded the last two videos (video only) with Camtasia Studio 2. Luckily, I discovered my department had licenses that weren't being used. I'm not sure why Camtasia isn't capturing selection marquees and dragged objects, so I will need to look into that.

In this video, 2.1. Vector vs. Raster:

Screenshots using PrintScreen
Cropping Images
Vector vs. Raster
Inserting Clipart
Grouping and Ungrouping Objects
Changing Fill and Outline Colors
Inserting Shapes
Send to Back

In this video, 2.2. Art Objects and Effects:

WordArt & Text Effects
- Reflections, 3D,& Transformations
SmartArt
- Adding and Removing Shapes
- Layouts, Colors, & Styles
Picture Recolor, Brightness, & Contrast
Picture Effects
Format Painter

In this video, 2.3. Using Web Images:

Google Image Search
- site: and imagesize: commands
Why Resolution Matters
Aligning Objects
Copying versus Saving Images
GIF Animation
PNG Transparency
JPEG Lossy Compression

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10Nov/090

PowerPoint Tutorial Videos – Series 1: PowerPoint Basics

This semester, I am teaching my first online course. I recently purchased CS4 Production Premium and saw this as a great opportunity to start learning Adobe Premiere.

The following videos were created using CamStudio and edited with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, with title and end screens created in PhotoShop CS4 . I have entered into the hell of one thousand codecs that Premiere does not recognize, so the first two videos were converted into MP4s using Avidemux on my Ubuntu box and then the third using After Effects CS4 to get the videos into something meaningful for Premiere. Elsewhere, some have suggested using the LZOCodec with CamStudio and Premiere for a shorter workflow, but I wasn't able to get this working... perhaps because I am on Windows XP 64bit (which is really closer related to Windows 2003 than Windows XP), so I am still using the horrid Microsoft Video 1 codec.

This is my first attempt at making videos like these, so they are admittedly a little rough. After obsessively editing these videos to get rid of various "ums" and "ahs", I thoroughly hate the sound of my own voice. I am told it is soothing, so you may also find these videos handy as a sleeping aid. I often have students who have little prior experience with computers, so the videos start real slow and assume little prior experience.

These will probably be posted on YouTube at some point, in case someone might find them helpful or for feedback to improve my skills. When they are, this post will be updated to include the YouTube links. ~~So far, I haven't been happy with the quality of the videos when posted on YouTube.~~ The videos below are ~~hosted on SmugMug,~~ at 640x480 resolution scaled down from 800x600 originals.

Update (11/10/2009): Videos now hosted on YouTube. The secret is using the QuickTime MOV format from AE CS4 to upload files. Huge difference.

The first video, 1.1 PowerPoint Basics, covers the following topics: