Suggestions for Online Presentations

Following are a number of suggestions and helpful hints for recording, developing, and publishing online presentations and education.

Slide Shows

Slides are useful for visually displaying speaking points, providing diagrams, graphs, and flow charts, and giving detailed text such as URL links. Teaching is aided by presenting information in different formats. Some students learn best from text, others learn by listening, others learn visually from spatial presentation. Use slides to amplify your points.

These are some of the more common methods of developing slides for presenations:

  • Microsoft PowerPoint
    Advantages: Large user base. Free viewers to Windows and other platforms. Many slide and presentation templates.
    Disadvantages: Editing confuses styles with content.
  • OpenOffice Impress
    Advantages: OpenOffice available on many platforms. Should export to more common file formats.
  • Portable Document Format (PDF)
    Advantages: Open Standard (ISO 32000). Viewable on many platforms. Can be created from many applications via PDF print drivers.

A Tuscany Slide Template (Microsoft PowerPoint format) is available for download.

Capturing Audio

Video or audio can be used to present a topic or educate students. Many people learn in different ways and often visual or audio presentation is a better method than just textual documentation. This section details a number of ways of making audio and video files of people speaking or presenting for use alongside a slide show presentation.

Audio tracks are useful for providing backdrops to slides or desktop demonstrations. Audio can be a single voice track or a fully mixed voice and music extravaganza.

  • Microphone or headset
    Most desktops and laptops have microphone inputs and speaker or line outputs for audio. You can record audio using a microphone or telephone headset connected to the microphone input. For better quality audio, buy a handheld or desktop microphone. Many podcast microphones are ideal to record voice, and they plug into any USB port. Use a quiet room to ensure the best audio quality. Never record a speaker from across the room, you will pick up too much air conditioning noise, rustling of papers, and motor noise (from tape or DVD based camcorders). Instead use a wireless lavalier microphone.

You can use third party audio capture software (e.g. Sony Audio Studio or Sound Forge). This has the advantage for providing tools to edit or improve the sound. You can also use low-end audio capture software (e.g. Microsoft Windows Sound Recorder). You can also capture audio with any webcam that has a microphone such as the Logitech Quickcam.

One free, open source, digital audio editor is Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net. You can use this software to capture and save audio. And it has several tools for normalizing the volume, removing noise, converting, and rescuing otherwise bad audio.

Common audio file formats are MP3, AAC, WAV or OGG. Most any computer or personal audio player understands these file formats. Inside the audio file, the audio may be compressed with various coder-decoder (codec) compressions. Most computers understand MP3 and simple WAV compressions. AAC and QT often require the installation of Apple Quicktime or iTunes software.

Capturing Video

Videos are useful for providing "talking head" newscaster style instructions, capturing a speaker at a conference, or capturing a lecturer in a classroom setting.

  • Webcam

    Many desktop and laptop computers support peripheral webcams. The webcam can capture a user sitting at a desk in a "talking head" style presentation, or they can be pointed away from the operator to capture a speaker at the front of the room. Often these devices are attached via USB or FireWire connector. They can be enabled to record directly to a computer file. Use the webcam in a bright well lit room for best results. Use a subdued and non-distracting background to keep the viewer focused on the subject. Do not use extreme closeups (a nearby webcam with wide angle lens), it tends to exaggerate faces in a non-flattering way. It is better to keep the webcam further back with a bit of zoom.
    • Logitech Quickcam Pro for Notebooks
      This web cam performs well for its size, and has auto brightness and auto focus capability. The QuickCam software can perform "QuickCapture" to a file. Press "Record Video" to record. You can specify the file name in the setting page. Or you can use the default video location (on Windows this is usually under ""My Computer" "My Documents" "My Video").
  • Video Camcorder
    Camcorders are useful for recording presentation videos. Often conferences and classrooms are recorded from the back of the room. In this case, be sure to use a nearby microphone to record audio, either a podium microphone or a wireless lavalier microphone. If you are not an experienced camera operator, the best thing you can do is set up the camcorder on a tripod and hit record and stop once: do not zoom in and out, do not pan the camcorder, do not start and stop the video needlessly.

Once you have captured the video, you need to transfer it to the computer. VHS, Hi8, MiniDV, and Solid State videos may all be transfered to a computer via capture software (e.g. Sony Vegas or a utility provided with the camcorder). Other camcorders allow video transfer via USB or FireWire cable. Solid State memory-based videos can be inserted into a memory reader or USB based memory adapter.

Editing of videos can be done at the original quality levels and resolutions. You then export a version of the video based on where you intend to publish your video.

You must be careful to save to a common file type and video codec. Common file types include AVI, WMV, Flash, and QT. Common codecs include MPEG, AVI, QT, Microsoft Video 1, and MP4. It is best to save to a common format to promote easy editing and uploading to servers.

Also consider your video screen size. For web presentations 320x240 pixels is best. Video sites such as YouTube, Vcasmo, and blip.tv recommend 640x480 for a standard video or 1280x720 for a high definition video. For burning to a DVD, you probably want 720x480. For high def or BluRay content, 1920x1080 is top notch quality.

Most online sites will resample and resize your video to fit their site. It is best to match the recommended sizes and resolutions to minimize resampling. Currently many of the video sites have problems with higher-than-standard video - you need well sampled videos on the server, and the customer needs a good high speed connection to receive a good video stream on the client.

File length may be a consideration. For the web, you can save download time by using a high compression. One way to save size is use 15 frame per second. Another is to use a more aggressive video compression badnwidth. Most DVD havs a 8 MbS (mega bits per second) video budget. You can compress the video to less than that with lower quality or lower motion.

Capturing Desktops


Often a presentation is enhanced when a presenter shows the topic in action. For Tuscany, this might be a hands-on software demonstration where the speaker drives the computer and illustrates the exact computer input and output to acheive the results. Users are better able to retain the material when they see windows open and close, lists scroll, and wizards in action. There are many tools that one can use to provide still screen shots or video screen captures.

  • Desktop still shots
    Most photo editing software includes some method of capturing screens. Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro and others all provide ability to capture entire desktops, single windows, client areas, or a screen area defined by the user. Other recommended screen capture programs include:
    • FastStone CaptureAn excellent dedicated still capture program for Windows. Free to try. Inexpensive to buy.
  • Desktop motion capture
    Presentations with moving mouse pointers, scrolling windows, page turning, animation, and action often engage the user's attention and are an excellent way to illustrate Tuscany in action
    • Camstudio Camstudio is an open source video product. Free to use. Donations accepted. This software can record your mousing, page turning, and web surfing. Be aware that this program only captures live demos, so your demonstration and speaking skills will be recorded in real time. Use the Microsfot Video 1 codec to ensure easy transportability. An example Camstudio Motion Capture Demo with computer desktop video and sound is attached.
    • Camtasia Studio. Camtasia is excellent for captuing desktop actions
    • Wink (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/). Freeware. Allows thought audio recording, text, balloons, editing, scripting. This software is excellent for recording scripted demos. In other words, you can record your presentation, and then go back to each screen capture and add audio or text balloons. With this method you can do multiple takes, and edit out any misstatements or mistakes. You can also edit out parts of the demo if your make a demo mistake. The program saves to ShockWave Flash (SWF) file format.

As with video capture, it is important to consider the screen size for your audience and whether you want the presentation to be fixed size or resizeable. Desktop captures, especially detailed windows such as the Eclipse development platform, degrade in quality when resized or made too small making fonts impossible to read. The best screen quality comes from a fixed screen size at a size that is slightly smaller than your minimum user's screen (to allow for window borders and presentation controls). To make a fixed size presentation window, embed the presentation as an object with a fixed size in a web page. A less desirable alternative, if you hand the audience an AVI or SWF file, they will resize it in their browser or player, and this will cause distortion. For presentation size, 800x600 and 1024x768 are common low-end laptop display sizes. Therefore 1000x750 (slighty smaller than 1024x768) makes a good fixed presentation window size.

Editing and Compiling Assets

Once you have collected your slides, audio clips, talking head videos, desktop capture videos, you must assemble them into a useful video. Some ideas:

  • Add fade-in and fade-to-black at the beginning and end of the video.
  • Add titles for speaker name or organization or date or venue.
  • Enhance audio or video quality.
  • Cut out boring parts or mistakes. Silence coughs and other interuptions.
  • Add picture-in-picture for multiple videos at once.
  • Assemble multiple talking heads videos and desktop videos into one stream.
  • Add some lead in and lead out background music.
  • Add exciting explosions and laser light show effects (only kidding).
  • Add video watermark or copyright statements.

Before editing, it is useful to know which method of publishing you will use. Some sites offer features such as speaker notes and multi-language translations. You don't want to edit in titles or subtitles if the hosting site offers these features and the titles look mismatched. Similarly, you don't want to perform some other amalgamation (mashing together slides and video and audio) if the publishing site does this for you. Also be aware that mixing items of different sharpness such as razor-sharp slides and slightly-blurry video might lead to bad looking video for both.

Also remember the target customers for your media. Viewers are notorious for wanting fast and easy videos. A 5 minute video will be more likely to be downloaded than a 10 minute video. Many people will try out a 1 or 2 minute video. Ruthlessly cut the boring parts to get the time limits down.

Example video editing software includes:

  • Sony Vegas
  • Apple iMovie
  • Adobe Premiere
  • Microsoft Movie Maker

Publishing

Choosing a publishing medium or a hosting site is often the decision that drives all other presentation issues. Does the site offer multiple media? Can I include audio, slides, video, images unaltered? What quality and how much video can be included? How long will my presentation be available? What cost? This section describes various publication techniques and the advantages and disadvantages to each.

  • You Tube
    You Tube allows users to post videos on a publicly hosted website. They support video files only and submitted videos are resampled to fit the two quality levels offered. Unfortunately the quality levels are poor for slide presentations and computer graphics, so it may be difficult to read page or desktop captures. Videos can be tagged by subject, and similarly themed videos are easy to search and find. Users can comment on and rate videos. The videos are hosted indefinitely for free.
  • Vcasmo
    Vcasmo is a site that helps users assemble, publish, and view presentations and educational videos. Currently they offer a synchronized slide show and video. Clicking on various slides jumps to various segments in the video.

The site gives various tools for assembling and enhancing your videos. You upload all media assets to the site, and then you assemble and publish the presentation. The site accepts PowerPoint presentations, WAV or MPEG audio, AVI or MPEG video. You need a professional account to upload SchockWave Flash. You can subtitle videos for different languages. You can make presentations private, password-protected, or public, and you can control group access.

Videos can be hosted at the Vcasmo site, they can be downloaded as movies, or as JavaScript applications that you host on a different site. The Vcasmo hosting is free, but free accounts are limited to 1 GB in total storage and 200 MB upload/download daily. Paid accounts increase these limits.

Here is a link to an example presensation hosted at the Vcasmo site: "Java Security in Apache Tuscany", Dan Becker (password tuscany)

  • Self Hosting

Any web site can embed a presentation as an object. Upload to your site and use HTML or JSP pages to serve the presentation. Even the Confluence Wiki can serve presentation if you attach the media files to a page. The following HTML code shows an embedded SWF presentation. Notice how the file is embedded and wrapped in an object element in order to work with older and new browsers.

<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" 
   WIDTH="1000" HEIGHT="750" CODEBASE="http://active.macromedia.com/flash5/cabs/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0">
<PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="/confluence/download/attachments/96837/MyPresentation.swf">
<PARAM NAME=play VALUE=true>
<PARAM NAME=loop VALUE=false>
<PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high>
<EMBED SRC="/confluence/download/attachments/96837/MyPresentation.swf" 
   WIDTH=1000 HEIGHT=750 quality=high loop=false wmode=transparent TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash"
   PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">
</EMBED>
</OBJECT>

A Vcasmo hosted presentation looks like this:

Conclusion

Hopefully some of these hints and tips are useful for creating Tuscany presentations and educations. As you discover useful tools and new techniques, please add them to the article above.

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