PPT2DVD - PPT to DVD with DVD menu enhanced

PPT2DVD - PPT to DVD with DVD menu enhanced
 

Burning PowerPoint to DVD is a good idea for preserving presentations or extending the use of PowerPoint. You can either burn PowerPoint files to DVD disc directly, or convert it to video or DVD and then burn them to DVD disc. Converting PPT to DVD is different from converting PPT to video. To know the benefits of converting PowerPoint presentation to DVD comparing with converting to video, the best way is to understand the DVD structure.

The DVD menu matters

When we play a video DVD with DVD machine, in most conditions, we see a main menu first, which allows us to decide how the movie will be played: Select subtitle language, choose a conversation language, start from a specific chapter, etc. While playback, we can use navigation buttons on the remote control to rewind or skip through movies. Also, we can back to title menu or main menu to play another movie or chapter. The menu function is not supported by common video files.  Let's back to PowerPoint presentation. When we slide show with PowerPoint, we can advance presentation animation by animation and slide by slide, moreover we can build internal hyperlinks to go to a specific slide and turn back. With DVD menu, all these practical features will be inherited.  But a raw video has no way to retain them.

Understanding DVD structure

What does a DVD disc contain? Actually, if you open a movie DVD disc on your computer, you should see two folders: AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. AUDIO_TS is created for storing DVD Audios (for audio DVD only), while the VIDEO_TS contains all data for the movie. Video DVD is what we concerned in this article, so let's take a look at the data contained in VIDEO_TS directory.

Usually, we should find three kinds of files under the VIDEO_TS: .BUP, .IFO and .VOB. IFO file is the content of the DVD. It tells the player where a chapter starts, where a certain audio or subtitle stream is located, etc. BUP files are just backup files of the IFOs. If the IFO files cannot be read, the player will read the BUP files instead. Next is the VOB file, it is a container that stores video stream, audio stream, subtitles and DVD menu. Video is MPEG-2, audio can be AC-3, Linear PCM, Mpeg 2 multichannel or MPEG1 layer2 two channel audio. It is why the DVD is encoded in MPEG-2 but not a MPEG-2 video.

Things about PowerPoint

Now, let's back to PowerPoint. If we burn a PowerPoint presentation to DVD disc in manual mode, we can use DVD remote control to navigate the converted video just like we doing so with PowerPoint. A professional PPT to DVD conversion tool should empower users to create and designed DVD menu.  The following illustration shows the title menu of a DVD, which is created by Acoolsoft PPT2DVD.

Here is the screenshots of Main page and ending page menu

Tools of burning PowerPoint presentation to DVD

There are many tools out there that are able to convert PowerPoint to DVD. The most famous one is Camtasia produced by Tech Smith, which is the leader in screen capturing field. Converting PPT to DVD is only a special function of the software. It may produce DVD video, but the menu design feature is not as good as Acoolsoft PPT2DVD, which is a professional tool in the world that is specialized in converting PPT to DVD with DVD menus. It retains most PowerPoint interactive features to the converted DVD video. Besides, it provides a way to burn PowerPoint presentations to HD DVD, like Blu-ray DVD.

Try it now!

Fw: PowerPoint backup to DVD and CD

How can I package my PowerPoint to a CD or DVD disc?
I am preparing PowerPoint presentations for my Classmates at our 50th High School Reunion. I need to know if I can burn PowerPoint to DVD and these will play on TV's & Computers for my Classmates.
Would like to play a PowerPoint presentation at a birthday party but no pc will be available only a DVD player?
...
These are common questions often asked by a lot of people, if you have ever lost your valuable PowerPoint presentation because your computer crashed or had one of your PowerPoint file ruined, and you are ready for an important presentation, but your PowerPoint cannot open. Then you know the value of having a backup copy and you may just want to play your PowerPoint on TV without a computer or PowerPoint program installed.
If you haven't experienced this yet, it's just a matter of time.

So it's time for us to tell you some tips and tricks about PowerPoint backup to a CD or DVD disc. Before we start, some questions needed to be figured out first .I split this tips into several parts:

Difference between a CD and DVD disc
Can I play PowerPoint with DVD player after I burn PowerPoint to CD or DVD?
How can I play PowerPoint on a CD or DVD player?
How to package and copy a presentation to a CD or DVD in PowerPoint?
Protect your PowerPoint presentation
Burn PowerPoint to video DVD and watch it on TV with DVD Menus

What's difference between a CD and DVD disc?
CD is usually for computer files, music and pictures. DVD holds more, because they're for movies, animations, etc. You can use DVD to store data and music if you want to, but they're just a tad more expensive.

Both CD and DVD write data in "pits" on the surface of disc. But, DVD technology writes data in smaller pits to the recordable media than CD technology. Smaller pits mean that for the same available area, more data can be stored. Moreover, the available data area for DVD disc is larger than the one of CD. A recordable CD disc has the capacitance of 700MB, while a DVD-/+R disc has about 4.7GB. The DVD is 6 times more than the CD.

Can I play PowerPoint with DVD player after I burn PowerPoint to CD or DVD?
If what you do is just a data backup (PowerPoint has a function of "Package for CD", which I will explain later), the burnt CD or DVD cannot be played on DVD machines. For example, after burn PowerPoint files to CD and DVD directly with common burning software, like Nero, the burnt disc cannot be played using DVD machine, because they are only Data CDs or DVDs. DVD machine can only play video DVDs, just like CD players only play audio CDs with music tracks. Of course, they will work on your computer.

How can I play PowerPoint on a CD or DVD player?
So, from what we have discussed above, you must convert your PPT files to video first, PowerPoint does not have the built-in ability to save presentations as video files or other video formats such as DVD-Video and, even if it did, there would be significant loss of interactivity (because DVD-Video and PowerPoint slide show have very different capabilities in this area) and loss of visual fidelity (DVD-Video resolution is less than typical computer display resolution and most television will not render colors the same way that a computer display will).

Using Windows movie maker is a free way to save your PowerPoint to video format, but you may lose timings, animations, transitions and audio tracks that an engaging presentation should have. We will tell you how to do this in the other tip.
If you search through Google, you will find a lot of PowerPoint to video software, but not all of them works well for specific presentations and computers. Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter is a no time limit program. You can try it for free, before you decide to pay the bill.

How to package and copy a presentation to a CD or DVD in PowerPoint?
PowerPoint has an option "package for CD"; this function enables you to pack up PPT Viewer, presentation, and any collateral linked files (e.g., audio and video clips). Then you can burn the Viewer, presentation, and linked files to a CD or DVD disc. This helps you view PowerPoint on computer without PowerPoint program installed. Take PowerPoint 2007 for example:

Firs Click "Office Button", then "Publish", Now "Package for CD".



Now there will be a dialog box which you can make some choices:



It's easy for you to add some other PowerPoint files, but they will be adjusted automatically to the format which can be opened on PowerPoint viewer (PowerPoint viewer cannot cope with PowerPoint 2007 files). You can also choose to copy to folder or CD.

You must understand this is just a simple data backup, so you can only open you PowerPoint presentation on a Computer with CD & DVD recorder. You can't play it with a DVD player or CD player.

Protect your PowerPoint presentation
Someone may want to prevent their Presentations from unauthorized accessing or editing. Luckily, "Package for CD" enables you to do it easily.

Just Click "Options" on the right of dialog box:

There are two options, one is used to protect from opening with password, the other is used to protect from editing.
Now you know how to protect your PowerPoint from unauthorized opening or editing.
Another method is converting PowerPoint to video and burn PowerPoint to video CDs and video DVDs with software like Acoolsoft, which we have discussed above.
Enjoy yourself.

Ok, here are some questions, some of you may be encounter strange problems, the most we often heard is every thing goes ok when view PowerPoint on the computer you used to package for CD. But some files cannot open when you insert the CD into other computer. That because you didn't put the link files and PPT files in the same folder when you package PPT to CD. It's only a link to the file on your computer but not include in your CD or the folder you packaged.  Of course, you can't open it on other computer.
So make sure you put everything in the same folder when you decide to burn your wonderful PowerPoint presentations to CD and share with others.

Burn PowerPoint to video DVD and watch it on TV with DVD Menus
You cannot burn PowerPoint to DVD directly and play it with a DVD player, because PowerPoint is not MPEG-2 Video formats which you can burn to disc directly with common burning software like Easy Media Creator, Power2Go and so on. You need certain software to convert your PowerPoint to MPEG-2 or that software has the function of burning PowerPoint to DVD directly. Here is a tip which introduces at least 5 methods to burn PowerPoint to video DVD.

But some one may wondering about how to create DVD menus when burning to DVD so that we can control our presentation when we are showing in on TV or big screen with DVD player.

Microsoft office does not include software to assist you, today, there are no freeware utilities that perform this activity for you, but there are many commercial packages available that have free trial periods.
Software of this type ranges in price from $40 - $200 for personal licenses, and much more for commercial or multi-user licenses. Here I recommend you take Acoolsoft PPT2DVD to have a try!

Acoolsoft PPT2DVD is a powerful presentation tool that lets you convert PowerPoint presentations to video and burn it to DVD without any complicated technical skills. You can even create flexible DVD Menus for your PowerPoint presentations to play on TV with a DVD remote control.

And you can check another article to know more about some top PowerPoint burning software.