Tweet PowToon: Online presentations with a difference

Most of you must be aware of the term presentation videos. Presentation videos are videos created from PowerPoint presentations. You must have tried websites like authorSTREAM or MS PowerPoint which let you convert presentations in video formats. But, have you ever used a tool which lets you create videos in presentation style?

PowToon is an online presentation style video creation tool. It's a PowerPoint alternative having capabilities of online presentation creation tool Sliderocket and PowerPoint add-in Adobe Presenter. Like Adobe Presenter, PowToons has inbuilt characters, shapes, clip arts and placeholders.

While websites like Sliderocket or tools like Adobe Presenter, let you export your presentations as PowerPoint (PPT or PPTX) file, PowToon creates a video output (HD or non HD).

PowToon is best fit for creating marketing videos. PowToon's interface is quite similar to PowerPoint or any other office software with easy to use tools and drag & drop features. Using PowToon, even non professionals can create stunning product demos, marketing and educational videos. PowToons's inbuilt send to YouTube and Facebook options will definitely delight you.Give PowToon a try and experience video creation in a presentation style.

Tweet authorSTREAM upgrades PowerPoint to video engine: claims to be better than PowerPoint 2010

Online presentation sharing website authorSTREAM has announced an upgrade to their PowerPoint to video conversion engine. authorSTREAM lets you convert your PowerPoint presentations in WMV, AVI, FLV and MP4 video formats. Once converted videos users can send share them on YouTube via 'send to YouTube' option or download on desktop to burn on DVD.

Prior to PowerPoint 2010, authorSTREAM was the only online option for converting PowerPoint presentations in video format. authorSTREAM's PowerPoint to video engine now supports embedded videos and slide transition effects.

Here is the comparison put up by authorSTREAM between PowerPoint to video capabilities of authorSTREAM and PowerPoint 2010:

Features	authorSTREAM	PowerPoint 2010
PowerPoint to Video conversion support	Supports video conversion for most PowerPoint versions (2002(XP)/2003/2007/2010)	Supports video conversion only in PowerPoint 2010
Audio support in video conversions, created out of any PowerPoint presentation version	Yes	Audio compatibility issues are more often
Playing sound across selected slides	Yes	Yes, but when more than 1 audio file is inserted in a presentation and selected for specific slides, audio overlapping problems crop up
Transition sound effect	Yes	No
Preference to rehearse timings set for each slide (in case when slide contains some media)	Yes	No
Video formats support	AVI, FLV, MP4 and WMV	WMV video format only
Share presentation videos on YouTube	Send directly to YouTube (no need to download)	Upload manually

Tweet Add special effects to your videos in PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 offers great deal of features related to images and videos which were otherwise available only in adobe Photoshop or Adobe premium. You can edit the videos and define the start and end of the video file, recolor the video, add special effects, give a shape to video and can set triggers on video timeline.

Recolor a Video inserted in slide
Just like an image, videos inserted in PowerPoint slides can have different shapes, color and effects. By using these advance effects you can show the video in oval shape or can apply a transparent green layer, set the video border to be grey and much more. See video below to learn more about recoloring a video:

A recolored video:

Add special effects to videos inserted

Effects like shadow, relection, glow can also be applied to videos inserted. Just double click the video and select the desired effect from the video tools under video effects drop down.

Tweet Brainshark announces PowerPoint to video

Brainshark, the on-demand presentations service and content marketplace has announced “Brainshark for YouTube” – a new capability enabling users to easily share their Brainshark presentations as YouTube videos for free. This functionality is available to Brainshark’s enterprise customers, as well as users of the free myBrainshark.com site. Brainshark for YouTube allows users – with only a PowerPoint deck and phone in hand – to immediately create high-impact business content that’s ready to post on YouTube.

After authorSTREAM, Brainshark is the second presentation sharing platform to offer online PowerPoint to YouTube functionality for free.

Here is a sample PowerPoint video on YouTube.

Tweet SlideShare is going to announce video uploads!

Update: As was guessed earlier today, SlideShare has released the video upload feature and joined the elite league of websites like YouTube and Vimeo. Here is the announcement video by Jonathan Boutelle, CTO of Slideshare:

video on slideshare

View more videos from Jonathan Boutelle.

It seems that document  sharing website Slideshare is going to announce video sharing in next few hours or sometime later. Though nothing has been mentioned on their official blog, yet  Slideshare users can see video upload link with a link to FAQs.  Slideshare will allow following video formats:

• mp4, m4v (ipod)
• wmv (windows media video)
• mpeg 
• avi (windows)
• mov (apple quicktime)
• mpg
• mkv (h.264)
• ogg 
• asf 
• vob 
• 3gp, 3g2 (mobile phones) 
• rm, rmvb (Real) 
• flv (Flash)

You can find list of supported video codecs here. Slideshare has mentioned at their support fourm

Slideshare's new video feature allows you to upload and share videos. This is an experimental feature SlideShare is launching in response to demands from the community. So now, apart from presentations, documents & webinars, you can upload videos to your SlideShare account.

Users will be able to upload videos of size up to 500 MB.

Tweet PowerPoint as a marketing tool

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

In last five years PowerPoint has gone a long way and so the PowerPoint software and websites. PowerPoint which was a traditional desktop thing is now more like a web product. More and more online products are being added to the ever growing list of PowerPoint resources and tools everyday. From PowerPoint creation to PowerPoint sharing, all has gone a complete makeover. Now only handful of people use email attachments as a way to share PowerPoint presentations. Most of the PowerPoint geeks are hooked to online PowerPoint sharing websites like SlideShare, authorSTREAM or are using online presentation creation tools like Google Presentations, Slide Rocket, slide 280 etc. Microsoft too will join the league of online PowerPoint sharing and collaboration websites with the launch of PowerPoint 2010 early next year.

Like video embeds, presentation embeds have become inevitable for bloggers. All such online and offline PowerPoint products have made PowerPoint presentations a great marketing tool.

You can upload your PowerPoint presentations either on SlideShare, Scribd or authorSTREAM and share it with your friends, family or clients in more easy and convenient way. Advantage of using Scribd or Slideshare is that your content gets more viewers while authorSTREAM is excellent in retaining animations, sound and video. In a nutshell, all will help you spread the word using a PowerPoint presentation. Get the flash embed and post it on your blog/website and anywhere where flash embeds are allowed.

PowerPoint to video

We all know that if a picture is worth than thousand words, a video is worth thousand picture. Creating a great video is not everyone's cup of tea. A great video requires excellent video shooting skills besides an awesome storyboard whereas PowerPoint is so flexible and easy to use
that even a grade III student can use it without much hassle.

With so many offline and online tools for PowerPoint to video conversion, it's just a matter of will that you convert your PowerPoint in video and share it on popular video sharing websites.

Online Free PowerPoint to video tools

authorSTREAM: Converts PowerPoint presentations to FLV, AVI, WMV or MP4. Maximum file size allowed is 1 GB and presentations below 5 mins are converted for free. authorSTREAM also lets you send converted videos to YouTube directly.

WonderSlide: Converts PowerPoint presentations to FLV, AVI, WMV or MP4. Maximum file size allowed is 50 MB.

Desktop PowerPoint to video tools

PowerPoint 2010
E.M. PowerPoint Video Converter
Wondershare PPT to video
http://www.acoolsoft.com/
http://bytescout.com/ppttovideoscout.html
http://www.ppt2video.com/

Create an appealing marketing PowerPoint presentation. Jazz it up with videos- Youtube embeds or videos from file, animations and sound. Upload it on authorSTREAM, Slideshare or any other PowerPoint sharing website, convert it to video using offline or online PowerPoint to video converters and let your marketing stuff go viral. All these presentation sharing websites have social bookmarking and post to network buttons which will help you share your stuff more easily.

Tweet Insert videos in PowerPoint using authorSTREAM desktop

Sharing PowerPoint presentations having videos has always been a big issue with normal PowerPoint users. People always wonder why and how video or movie file inserted in PowerPoint which plays well on their computer disappears when they run slide show on their office system or any other computer.

Most of the PowerPoint users are unaware of the fact that videos are always linked in PowerPoint slides and will not play on the system other than where the linked file resides. Few technical users keep PowerPoint file and video in same folder and share the zip file so that video plays irrespective of where you run Slide show.

For those who don't want to share bulky zip files or who don't know technical details related to video insertion in PowerPoint, authorSTREAM has come up with a promising solution. authorSTREAM desktop (a free PowerPoint plug-in from authorSTREAM) which lets you insert YouTube videos, can now take care of videos inserted in PowerPoint slides. You just need to upload PowerPoint presentation having linked audio or video using authorSTREAM Desktop and its inbuilt mechanism will take care of rest.

Presentation output on authorSTREAM will play inserted videos as they play in PowerPoint slide show on your machine and you only need to share authorSTREAM presentation link with your friends and family. So now besides inserting YouTube videos, you can insert videos from your desktop in your PowerPoint slides.

Funny Videos

See more presentations by aSGuest31176 | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

More details at authorSTREAM blog.

Tweet Insert royalty free images in PowerPoint using new PowerPoint add-in from fotolia

Images and video marketplace, Fotolia has released FREE Add-in for PowerPoint 2007 & Word 2007. With Fotolia PowerPoint add-in you can instantly add high-resolution photos, vectors, and illustrations using your free Fotolia account without leaving PowerPoint. See video below on how to use Fotolia Add-in.




You can download Fotolia Add-in for PowerPoint 2007 here.

Add-ins like authorSTREAM desktop which lets you insert YouTube videos and images from Bing, SlideFinder which lets you search the web for presentations and slides and Fotolia ribbon are going to give a new direction to creation of content and media rich presentations.

Tweet Video support in PowerPoint 2010

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 offers great support for videos. Besides letting you insert video files, PowerPoint 2010 has in built facility to let you insert embeds of video sharing websites. Also, with PowerPoint 2010 you will be able convert PowerPoint files in WMV format video files.

Embed videos in PowerPoint 2010

You need not to go go through complex steps of adding shockwave flash object. Just copy video embed from some video sharing website(say YouTube) and click video option provided under insert tab in PowerPoint 2010. Select " Insert video from online video site", paste embed and click insert.



Besides video embeds you can also use some other flash embeds; just try embeds of PowerPoint sharing websites and those embeds will play just like they play on some blog or website.

Convert PowerPoint to video

Video has become one of the most powerful content formats lately. Video content provides you wide range of audience. In today's scenario, if you have to convert your PowerPoint to video, either you have to purchase some PowerPoint to video software or use some online PowerPoint to video website. This all is going to change to some extent with PowerPoint 2010.


PowerPoint 2010 will let you convert your PowerPoint presentations with timings(rehearsed or narrated) in WMV video format. PowerPoint 2010 even converts PowerPoint presentations without timing. You just need to select "Time to spend on each slide". If some slides are having animation effects then total duration of those slides in video will be sum total of animation timings.

Tweet Insert YouTube videos in PowerPoint with authorSTREAM Desktop

Online PowerPoint sharing website authorSTREAM, today released authorSTREAM desktop, a plugin for PowerPoint 2007 (ribbon). Similar to SlideFinder which lets you search and insert PowerPoint slides, authorSTREAM desktop lets you search and insert YouTube videos and images in your PowerPoint file from within PowerPoint. So now with authorSTREAM desktop you don't have to remember and follow complex steps to Embed videos in PowerPoint files.

authorSTREAM desktop is pretty simple to use and contrary to SlideFinder their image and video search interface seems to be a part of PowerPoint software itself. Here's a video, in which Harman Singh the CEO of authorGEN(Company behind authorSTREAM) demonstrates authorSTREAM desktop:

Using authorSTREAM Desktop

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by authorSTREAM | Upload your own presentation

authorSTREAM's closest competitor SlideShare too allows you to embed YouTube videos in presentations uploaded on their website. You have to edit your presentation after your presentation gets converted on SlideShare. This video is inserted as a separate flash file after slide number selected by you. So if you download the PowerPoint file from SlideShare, there will be no slide having YouTube video.

YouTube videos embedded using authorSTREAM desktop not only play fine on authorSTREAM but they even work fine in PowerPoint slide show. This means you can share PowerPoint presentations having YouTube embed inserted using authorSTREAM desktop, through emails too. You can have text as well as YouTube video on same slide and next/ back arrows on player also work fine. See it yourself below:

Justin Ezarik

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by caliber | Upload your own presentation

You can insert YouTube videos in PowerPoint files manually too as explained here and authorSTREAM handles that too.


authorSTREAM recently changed their tagline to "Do More with PowerPoint" and their recent updates for PowerPoint to video, Channels, and authorSTREAM desktop validates that.

Tweet authorSTREAM now lets you convert PowerPoint files in WMV, AVI ,FLV or MP4

authorSTREAM the only online PowerPoint sharing platform converting PowerPoint files in video today updated its PowerPoint to video conversion engine. Now you can convert your PowerPoint presentation with timings(set to advance at its own) in different video formats like WMV, AVI, MP4 or FLV.

PowerPoint presentations below 5 minutes duration can be converted for free only in MP4 format and will have authorSTREAM watermark on it. To convert your presentation in file type other than MP4 or to convert a presentation above 5 minutes duration and without authorSTREAM watermark, you have to purchase video credits. One video credits costs $2 and can be used to convert single PowerPoint presentation to video of maximum 45 minutes duration. You can find more details at authorSTREAM blog or FAQs.