powerpoint to vcd

[nanz1]

I wanted to find out if there is free software out there that can convert a powerpoint presentation that someone gave to me. I would like to put it to a vcd and be able to watch it on my dvd player. I also would like to know what are the steps to doing something like this. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[Vejita-sama]

Save each slide as a BMP, load BMPs in VCDEasy to make slide show (or encode each BMP to make one big MPEG or several small still MPEGs and burn).

[Cornucopia]

Vejita-sama is correct, but that is just one of the 2 main ways to do it.

The other is to screencap moving video, using one of the common apps such as M$Camcorder or Camstudio 8) . This allows you to incorporate slide transition animations, text slideon animations, etc. If your PPT has narration/music, you may want to do something similar with TotalRecorder for the audio, and then merge the two streams.

You could also get a Vid card with NTSC/PAL out (or VGA plus scanconverter) and record with VCR/VTR/VPR. This is all I could do years ago.

*Note: If you're going to just do the stills, make sure you have done this:
1. Set your video card to at least 800x600! The higher the better (within reason).
2. Also set your video card to 24bit color.
3. Place a 24bit color graphic (small) but place it off-screen. This forces PPT to export as 24bit color, which it wouldn't do even if you did #2 above but had text & background of just a few colors.
4. Place a solid black graphic behind any slides where there is no pre-selected background, otherwise some slide exports will stretch to match the other standard slides.

PPT takes #1 and #2 into consideration when exporting.
Also watch for non-4:3 aspect ratios. The std 35mm slide preset is wider than 4:3 and you have to make sure they are stretched/padded the correct way.

I also find the PNG format to be better at retaining all colors but not consuming as much space as BMP, and still be compatible with most graphics apps.

HTH,
Scott

[nanz1]

How do I save each slide? Ihave the powerpoint presentation on a cd that can only be viewed on the computer. I did not make the powerpoint presentation so I have no clue on how to do this. I don't have powerpoint on my computer, I just downloaded the viewer from Microsft in order to view it. So if you could walk me through this I would appreciate alll your help. Thanks

[Vejita-sama]

I don't think you can do it with just the viewer. I'm fairly certain you're going to need the actually/full powerpoint program to save as BMP. Much like adobe acrobat reader. You can see but not touch/edit

Sorry.

[Cornucopia]

If you want to export the individual slides as BMP's, you're gonna need the full PPT.

You could still do it the ScreenGrab way with just the PPTViewer, though.

Scott

[nanz1]

Thanks everyone for your replies.