Thread: Flash Presentations

With the advent of Web 2.0, most websites include Flash videos. There are many sites, such as YouTube, Google Video, Streamload, where you can upload your AVI files, and the website converts the movie into Flash, and then gives a line of code to embed into your webpage. However, they only convert AVI or video format files to Flash. Moreover, while you can certainly use the services offered by the above websites to host your files, there are quite a few disadvantages to this method.

Your video will have a 'watermark' or a promotion of the host website, and maybe you want to host the file on your own server, or are afraid that because of some copyright infringement the sites will take down your video. While creating your own Flash file may seem daunting, we are going to simplify the process. Here
is a simple way to create a Flash FLV file from your PowerPoint presentation and embed it into your web page source code. You can make your presentation file as simple or as complex as you like-customize transistion animations, insert media files such as images, sounds and videos, and even store your speaker notes and rehearsal timings.

Normally, converting any file into Flash with an interactive user control requires either propriety or expensive software, and even though freeware exists they are meant only for video files. 'authorPOINT Lite' is a freeware that converts PPT files to Flash with player controls. The best feature of authorPOINT is its simplicity;
it takes your PPT file, with all the custom animations, images, text and media files in it and converts it into a Flash file. There are three types of video player interfaces in a variety of skin colors-blue, brown, green, dark green, purple and silver. This workshop is going to show you to create a slide show of your pictures and upload them to your website.

STEP 1: Open PowerPoint and start a blank presentation from 'File I New I From design template I Blank'. Open the 'Slide Layout' window from 'Format Slide Layout' and clear the contents of the slide by selecting 'Blank' content layout. Right click on the slide and select 'Background'. Select 'Fill Effects' from the drop down list, switch to the' Picture' tab, click the button 'Select Picture', browse to the location of your image, select it and click 'Insert'. Check the option 'Lock picture aspect ratio' and click 'OK'. Back in the 'Background' window, press 'Apply'. Create a new slide from 'Insert I New Slide' and follow the same process to insert all your photos (we show how to insert photos into slides in the story 'A Self Running Slide Show' at the beginning of this section!.

STEP 2: To set up the slide show such that it runs automatically with some entrance and exit transitions, go to 'Slide Show I Slide Transition I Slide Transition'. Select a transition method from the list, for instance, 'Fade Through Back'. In the 'Advance slide' option, set the slide to transition automatically after 4 seconds,then click 'Apply to All Slides'. You can preview your slide show by pressing [F5J or 'Slide Show I View Show'.

STEP 3: Now to import your PPT file into authorPOINT-open the application and go to 'File I Import' and the 'Import' window is where you need to add your PPT files. You can use the drag and drop approach or click 'Select File' or Select Folder', browse to the location of the file or folder, click 'Open' and 'Import Now' and sit back awhile till the conversion process tales place.



STEP 4: When the conversion is finished, your slide show will appear in -the left
side panel. On the bottom window are the individual slides, this means that, the integrity of your presentation is preserved. You can edit the keywords and description of the slide show on the panel 'Presentation Details':
Title: Photo Album

Description: Collection of photos Keywords: CHIP, how-to
STEP 5: We shall now add in the author's details. Click the 'Presenter's Information' icon and enter your 'Title', 'Name', 'Organization' and 'Email'. To insert images of the author and the company logo simply 'Browse' to the location of the images on your computer to insert them-BMP, GIF and JPG are the supported image formats.

STEP 6: We shall now edit the notes associated with the slide. Click [Edit Slide Title] to rename the slide from 'Slide 1', then click '[Edit Notes!' to access the 'Slide Notes' field and start editing the information there. These notes will be accessible to any user through the related buttons on the 'Compact' and 'Standard' player interfaces.
STEP 7: Click on the' Presentation Settings' icon, here you can manipulate factors like 'I mage Quality' (0-100). 'Audio Quality', 'Template Layout' and Template Color',
A couple of very useful elements are the 'Narrations/Rehearse Timings' and 'Speaker Notes' option where you can choose to keep the timings and notes as featured in the PowerPoint file. Set the 'Image Quality' to '90', and select the option 'Use if found' for 'Narrations/ Rehearse Timings'. Set the 'Template Layout' to 'Compact', and 'Template Color' to 'Blue' or any other color of your choice. STEP 8: All we have to do now is click 'Save'. To preview how the Flash file, with player, will look when after you embed it to your page, go to 'File I View'. This should start up your default web browser and load the file. If you are satisfied with the result, then you are ready to proceed to the next step, otherwise go back to Step 4 and make any necessary changes.

STEP 9: Your default 'save' folder is '\
My Documents\authorG EN Projects\ Presentation Output Folder\aP Lite

Flash', which you can change from the Options window accessible at 'Tools I Options'. The folders produced for each presentation are-'Slides', which contains individual Flash files for each slide in your presentation; 'Data' which contains XML documents about the author, color and layout; while 'Images' contains thumbnails of your slides. The files produced are 'AC_RunActiveContent.js' w~ich is the 'package' that holds all the elements together, 'index.flv' the Flash file and 'index,html' which is the default launch file. With your FTP client, transfer these files and folders to your web server, or if you host your server on your computer, move the folders and files to the appropriate directory.

STEP 10: The easiest method to insert the presentation into your web page is to use the iFrame tag which creates an inline frame that contains another document. Browse to your webpage, and open it using your default html editor, which
can be Notepad, Frontpage, or even Dreamweaver. The code to reproduce is: <iframe

src ="location/index.html" frameborder=O scrolling=no
height=lOO%
width=lOO%>
</iframe>

TIPS:
o During installation, check the option to install the PowerPoint plug in to convert your presentation from within the program. o While authorPOINT doesn't currently support OpenOffice formats, you can save your presentation in OpenOffice as PPT, then use authorPOINT to convert it.

o If you need to save on bandwidth, you can upload your Flash presentation to the authorSTREAM and use the embed tag to link to your presentation.
o To resize your player frame, change the attributes 'height' and 'width', in percentage or pixels. Now your website is all ready to go.