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 and rustling of papers. 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").
- Logitech Quickcam Pro for Notebooks
- 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.
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. For burning to a DVD, you probably want 720x480. For high def or BluRay content, 1920x1080 is top notch quality.
Similarly, the 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. Use the Microsfot Video 1 codec to ensure easy transportability.
- Camtasia Studio. Camtasia is excellent for captuing desktop actions
An example Camstudio Motion Capture Demo with computer desktop video and sound is attached.
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.
- Add picture-in-picture for multiple videos at once.
- Assemble multiple talking heads videos and desktop videos into one stream.
- Add exciting background music, 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.
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. 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. 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)
The 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.