Smiths' New Idea for Thanksgiving Family Reunion Party - Make DVD Slideshow as Background

Thanksgiving Day is coming! In the parlor, the Smiths are discussing how to make the precious Thanksgiving family reunion party nice, colorful and unforgettable? Sh…listen! What are they saying?

Father: Novel decorations?

Mother: Cute cookies?

Daughter, the high school student says mysteriously: Good ideas, but not best ones! What I suggest is - make DVD slideshow as background for our Thanksgiving family reunion party!

Father and Mother: wow!!!

Daughter (excitedly): Yes, make our own family DVD slideshow for Thanksgiving party! How happy is the moment when family members reunite together. At this moment a joyful party is what we expected so much! Novel decorations and cute cookies are good, but may not cool enough. A family DVD slideshow as the background for the party is more exciting and must be able to strike a responsive chord in everyone's hearts.

Father : That sounds interesting! Go on, dear!

Daughter (proudly): Thank you, Dad! There are two major benefits for us to use a DVD slideshow as the background of our Thanksgiving family reunion party.

First, it will strengthen the lifesome and warm atmosphere of family reunion. We can collect photos from Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle, Auntie, Brother, etc, and then make them a DVD movie played on our big TV. When they come to our party, they must be touched by the vivid show. Happy moment comes! Right?

Mother: uh…let me see…see….

Daughter: Mom, there is another point! We can also take this DVD slideshow as a novel and meaningful Thanksgiving gift for family members. Cookies will be eaten up; decorations will be torn out after the festival, but the DVD slideshow can be preserved for a long time and played repeatedly. Even Grandparents can easily play this slideshow on TV with DVD player when they miss us.

Family reunion is for the love between family members and friends. We can make DVD slideshow with our own photos, stories, and words. Let's imagine: happy holiday, dear family members and the precious moments! Don't you think it makes more sense?

Father: Great! That really sounds touching and exciting. But I don't know how to make such DVD slideshow.

Mother: oh, genius! Dear, I can't agree with you more. I have already been touched once I think of the occasion. Well, is it hard to make such a DVD slideshow?

Daughter (confidently): Dad, Mom, it's just a piece of cake! Listen to my plan. Now that we have already got PowerPoint, I intend to make full use of it to make this DVD slideshow. Apart from PowerPoint, I just need a PowerPoint to DVD burner. Only these two little applications!

First I will make the slideshow with PowerPoint. You know I'm good at this tool and also I have many PowerPoint tutorials and Thanksgiving PowerPoint templates as references. The next and also the last step is to burn the PowerPoint slideshow to a DVD. I have tried some software like Acoolsoft PowerPoint to DVD burner. The conversion result is really satisfying.

In a word, everything is easy to do. Dad, Mom, I have said so much, while how do you think of this idea for our Thanksgiving party?

Father : Bravo! Oh, dear, that's perfect, isn't? Darling (turn to his wife), what's your opinion? ...Darling?

Daughter: Strange, where is Mom? ...Mom!
....
(Beside the telephone in the bedroom)

"Hi, Dad, could you please send me the photos you took with my Mom in California? I …" Mom says, making the telephone call.

Further reading:

PowerPoint 2007 to DVD - Two Effective Ways for You

PowerPoint to movie - Top 3 Methods about PowerPoint to Movie Conversion

How to Share your PowerPoint Presentations in Multiple Ways

Many of us make PowerPoint presentations, no matter it is for family use, business use or education use. But not lots of us know that there are multiple ways to share PowerPoint presentations. The most common way to send presentations to others may through email or put it on a server somewhere for access. You may also package your presentation to CD for the members using PowerPoint viewer only.
But what if you want to
-> Run a looping presentation on a kiosk or at a tradeshow where PC is not available
-> Send the presentation to people who may not have PCs
-> Burn the presentation onto a DVD disc for distribution
-> Et cetera…?

Then it becomes a harder work. So how can you exactly share your information in the PowerPoint presentation? Here are some solutions for you.
1. Turn the presentation into a video to view on portable devices or website
Video is a media which could be broadcasted through many players. It can display your presentations in a more vivid way. With PowerPoint in video format, it is easy for uploading to your own blog and websites. Even there is no PowerPoint installed computers, you can also view your presentations through iPhone, iPod and all kinds of media player.


If take full advantages of PowerPoint, product advertisement can also made with it. Then with the PowerPoint product advertisement in video format, you can upload it to websites for more people to get familiar with your products.
As to the tools that can help convert a PowerPoint presentation to video, there are many programs out there. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried all of these. But here is one that looks promising. Although it is not free, if it does what you want it is worth looking into: PPT2Video Converter. For more ways about how to convert PowerPoint to video, you can click here.

2. Save and store PowerPoint presentation in CDs for distribution or broadcasting
If you have made precious photo albums with PowerPoint, saving them onto a CD would be meaningful. Family genealogy and other interesting events can all be widely shared with other family members who have no PCs and stored for long term preserve.
Useful courseware made with PowerPoint can also be distributed to fellows and students after being burned to CD/DVD.
Besides, PowerPoint product advertisement if saved in CD, it is possible to be viewed on a kiosk or at a tradeshow when there is no PC.

For programs to burn PowerPoint to CD, there is always Camtasia that will turn a PPT into a video/audio presentation, then with another program to make the video/audio presentation into a DVD. But if just for the function of burning PowerPoint to DVD, there are some better choices such as these ones: http://ppt-to-dvd.com/ppt2dvd/overview.html ; http://ppt-to-video.com/powerpoint-to-dvd-overview.html .
If you want to learn more ways about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD, you can click here.

3. Convert PowerPoint presentations to web-accessible presentations
There are a lot of ways to do this. One of them is converting PowerPoint presentations to HTML version. Open your PowerPoint first, and then click Save As in the Office Button. In the drop-down menu of Other Formats, choose Webpage.


Another effective way to do this is to upload your PowerPoint to video sharing websites such as YouTube. For more notes about how to share PowerPoint on YouTube, you can click here.

The next time you want to share your PowerPoint with others, don’t bother too much then. Just take the above suggestions into consideration. And use PowerPoint to boom your sales if necessary.

5 Ways to Convert PowerPoint to Video

Benefits of PowerPoint
PowerPoint is a powerful presentation application which is very commonly used by lectures, businessmen, students, trainers, etc. It is easy to use and featured with a lot of functions to create interesting and dynamic slide presentations. This has made it widely accepted and utilized.

Benefits of Video
Video is powerful because it’s demonstrative, clearly depicting procedures, techniques or visual information such as charts and graphs. Most of all, video showcases charisma of live images and animations, allows for transparency and communication skills, which can lead to trust. It is also a good idea to make videos for special occasions as a way of watching them and reminiscing the good times.

Benefits of converting PowerPoint presentations to video
-> Display your presentations in a more vivid way
-> With PowerPoint in video format, it is easy for uploading to blog and websites
-> Even there is no computer, you can also view your presentations
-> Videos can be uploaded to portable devices such as iPhone, iPod and Pocket PC

5 Ways to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to Video (free ways and cost-effective ways)
Method 1: Upload your presentations to http://www.slideshare.netwhich is one of the world’s largest communities for sharing presentations. It can generate video for your presentations.
After uploading your presentations onto it, you can directly download the generated video onto your own computer, or embed the video to your blog.

But there are limitations to the presentations uploaded to it. Max size of the presentation is limited to 100MB; animations, video clips and other complex elements couldn’t be added; PowerPoint 2007 is not supported. Sometimes, objects inserted into the presentation may be modified after the uploading.

Some other similar online PowerPoint sharing sites such as http://www.authorstream.com and http://www.slideboom.com/ also support generate video for the presentations uploaded. The advantage is that you don’t need to download any programs onto your computer and they are all free. If your presentation’s size is not too big, and there are only texts and pictures in your presentation, you can have a try at these sites.

Method 2: Use Camtasia which costs $299 to record your presentation and then generate a video
Step1: In the Task List, select Record PowerPoint.
Step2: Open a PowerPoint presentation to record.
Step3: Select the recording options from the PowerPoint Add-in Toolbar. Click the Record button.
Step4: The presentation opens in presentation mode. A Camtasia Studio dialog opens in the lower right corner of the screen. Click the Click to begin recording button.

Step5: Progress through the PowerPoint presentation slides. To stop the recording before the last slide, press . To stop the recording at the end of the presentation, click Stop recording.
Step6: Enter a file name and location and click Save. The presentation recording saves as a Camtasia Studio recording file.
Advantages with this method: The program can capture slide timing, animations, sound effects, webcam video and any applications displayed on screen during the presentation. You can also record your own narration while the screen-capture process is being carried out.
Disadvantages: This program eats huge system resources. If the configuration of your computer is not so good, animations may become laggy or even lost.

Method 3: Convert PowerPoint presentation to video with Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter
Step1: Download this PPT2Video Converter and install it on your computer.
Step2: Launch the program. Click Import button to choose the presentation you want to convert, choose an output format for the video you want to generate. And then click Start button to start the conversion process. (This program can convert presentations to video in MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP, FLV and MOV.)

Step3: Upload the video to blogs or websites such as YouTube.

Method 4: Use Windows Movie Maker to create a video for your presentations
Windows Movie Maker comes with all Windows XP and Vista installed computers. With this method, it may time consuming and animations in your presentation would be lost after the conversion.
Step1: Save your PowerPoint slide show as “PNG” images.

Step2: Import the images to your Windows Movie Maker.
Step3: Select all the imported images and then add them to Storyboard.

Step4: Add video effects to the slides (Optional)
Step5: Save the slide show as Movie File.

Method 5: Make a QuickTime movie on Mac
Export your presentation as a QuickTime movie “PowerPoint Movie”. Then you can save your presentations to MOV video file. Way to do this: click File -> Make Movie
But in this way, sounds and animations couldn’t be retained. If you are using keynote, just export your presentation to QuickTime file directly.

Take the advantages of PowerPoint and video. Convert your presentations to video. Share your presentation with more people and create a more convenient way to view your presentations.

Use Product Presentation to Boom your Sale during Christmas

As Christmas is coming, most business men would like to bet their sales fortune on this shopping season. In order to attract prospects at the critical first impression, appealing presentations are important to presenting your products in the best light possible. Especially under such an economic circumstance, using some cost-effective ways to help you promote your product is meaningful.

Why use PowerPoint to help you promote your product:
1. PowerPoint is available on most computers. And with the development of information technology, product presentation has become a powerful ad format for presenting products or for special promotions.
2. You can broadcast your product presentation on big screens in the main streets, on mobile TV, on Internet and so on.
3. Compared to asking an advertising company to make advertisement for you, making PowerPoint ad by yourself may help you save a lot.

As it to how to make an effective product PowerPoint presentation to advertise your product, below are some points that Mark J. Tiedeman points out. (Note: Mark Tiedeman has over 25 years in the high-tech telecommunications industry including 15 years in senior product management and marketing roles. He has served as Vice President of Marketing at Copper Mountain Networks and at Tut Systems and is currently providing marketing and product management consulting services.)

Before starting any product presentation, you should know what the purpose of your presentation is. As a product presentation, the purpose is to enhance the value of the product that is perceived by the audience. Depending on the circumstance, some presentations will be more overt than others in persuasion style.

The next important thing is to fix who the audience is for your presentation. Product presentation audiences can be segmented as follows:
• Within your company: sales, sales engineer, customer support, marketing, product management
• Distribution or solution partner: sales, sales engineer, engineering, support, marketing, manager, executive
• Customer: purchasing, engineering, operations, support, manager, executive. Additionally, customers should be segmented, as appropriate, by market and/or application.
• Investors
• Industry and market analysts
• Media

For more details of how to create an effective product presentation by Mark J. Tiedeman, you can click here: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/4/4/0608mjt

A well-done product presentation is just the first step of making advertisement for your product. To present it in various ways is the final purpose of making the masterpiece. Only in this way, you can make the most of your product presentation and let more potential users get your promotion idea. Finally sell out your product. Regarding this, below I list some most effective ways to help you present your product presentation.
1. Convert your product presentation to video. Then you will be able to upload the converted video to website in the advertising area; broadcast your product presentation on digital signage indoors and outdoors; let people see your promotion on TV within transport vehicles.

Benefits of doing so: Creating video advertisement with PowerPoint yourself is much more cost-effective than asking a third-party company to do that. And PowerPoint is easy to deal with. You can fix the content you want to spread freely.
In order to do this, all you need is a PowerPoint converter that can help you concert your product presentation to video. There are many such tools in the market, but here I would like to recommend some tools that I have experienced and function well. Wondershare PPT to Video and Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter. They can help you convert your PowerPoint to MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP and MOV that can be accepted by almost all media.

2. Burn your product presentation to DVD. Then you will be able to send a DVD disc to your premium customers and agents to provide them the promotion information.
Benefits of doing so: compared with written promotion documents, DVD promotion slideshow can be accepted more intuitively, as there can be animation, pictures, transitions and even background music, videos in a PowerPoint.

Also, with a DVD disc, your agents can conveniently spread the promotion information to their stuff by playing it on a big screen.
Tool recommended: Wondershare PPT2DVD. With it, you can also create DVD menus for your presentations for quick navigation.

A great product presentation could be the power for your Christmas boom. Use all effective tools and resources as you can to drive up your Christmas business.

Tips for making PowerPoint courseware and how to distribute it

In modern education, PowerPoint is frequently used when preparing courseware. A judicious use of this tool helps guarantee a high-quality class. However, if it is used ineffectively, it can obscure teaching content, turn a great lesson into computer chaos. So using PowerPoint courseware effectively in teaching is very important.

Below are some main tips of ensuring a well-designed PowerPoint courseware.
1. Set Your Goals
Before starting any PowerPoint courseware, ask yourself a question, “What is the goal of this lesson?” Goal is the key. You cannot well organize your class without figuring out the goal of a lesson. Many educators suggest using an outline to list clearly what skill or knowledge is being assessed. Brainstorm in mind, and then outline your ideas in PowerPoint.
And, the most important thing, be sure to weigh content heavily in the assessment tool, don’t let style to take precedence over content.

2. Style Matters
Avoid using too many animations, clip art, backgrounds and so on. But keep in mind that a judicious use of those tools can be effective. Below is a research on under which set of conditions people learn best.
• Hearing spoken text and looking at graphics – 91% more learning,
• Looking at graphics alone – 63% more,
• Reading printed text plus looking at graphics – 56% more,
• Listening to spoken text, reading text, and looking at graphics – 46% more,
• Hearing spoken text plus reading printed text – 32% more,
• Reading printed text alone – 12% more,
• Hearing spoken text alone – 7% more.

3. Other tips of creating teaching presentations• Include only 3-7 points per slide and 3-7 words per bullet
• One theme or background; one font set; one text animation effect
• Avoid using complete sentences, using clause instead
• Don’t show all points on a slide at once, otherwise, students will read ahead and stop listening to the presentation
• Challenge students to use pictures in stead of text, initiate talking with students and among students

According to different teaching contents and teaching goals, pay attention to the tips above, I presume doing a successful PowerPoint courseware is not a hard thing.

After creating your wonderful PowerPoint courseware, you may sometimes receive appeals from your students and colleagues to share it, or you want to make your PowerPoint courseware be available online. The next and more important thing is to present and distribute it in a proper way so that more people can benefit from it. In the following, I would like to introduce some ways to help you distribute your PowerPoint courseware well.
1. Directly e-mail your PowerPoint courseware to others
It is a way that many people could think. And it is also easy to operate, just attach the PPT file and then send it to others via e-mail. But in this way, the people who receive it should have a MS PowerPoint installed computer. Besides, the PPT file sent to others could be modified by others.

2. Burn your PowerPoint courseware to DVD/CD
As DVD discs are convenient for sharing. Burning your PowerPoint to DVD/CD will be ideal for distributing your courseware. You no longer need to worry if others have PowerPoint installed or not because DVD discs are supported by most computers and players. You can click here to learn more about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD, and create eye-catching DVD menus for your presentations.

3. Convert your PowerPoint to video/flash, then upload it to website or blog
You may have your own website or blog, upload your PowerPoint courseware to it can make your students and others see your PowerPoint courseware as long as they visit your web page. In order to do this, you will need to convert your PowerPoint to video or flash first. Tools recommended: Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter, Wondershare PPT2Flash. You can click here to know more about the benefits of converting your PowerPoint to video.

4. Convert your PowerPoint courseware to PDF
PDF is accepted by many people as it is easy to open and can be printed easily. Convert your PowerPoint courseware to PDF is also a good idea to distribute your PowerPoint. You can click here to get the tool to convert your PowerPoint to PDF.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful teaching tool. It can greatly improve the efficiency of teaching. So take the advantages of PowerPoint courseware, make your class more interesting and let more people get your teaching ideas.

Create DVD Menus for Your Presentations

Burning PowerPoint to DVD is a good solution of preserving PowerPoint presentations and preventing them from being edited by others. Also, by burning PowerPoint to DVD is ideal for viewing PowerPoint presentations through various media. But have you ever thought that you can create DVD menus for your presentations to be viewed on TV with a DVD remote control just like a movie?
With eye-catching DVD menus, one can easily catch audience’s attention and set quick navigation for the PowerPoint presentations. Here below is a ready-made DVD menu for some PowerPoint presentations.


Also want to make one for your own presentations? So follow the step-by-step guide of how to burn PowerPoint to DVD with Acoolsoft PPT2DVD and create stunning DVD menus.
1. Install Acoolsoft PPT2DVD on your computer and open it. You can get it free from here.

2. Click Import button to choose the presentations you want to convert.

3. Click DVD Menu button on the top navigation, and then you will come to the DVD menu page. Click DVD Menu Creator button, then you will be able to start to customize the DVD menu for your presentations.

Here you can set the background, button style, frame style, icon style, caption and more to the current selected menu. In the preview area, it shows the preview for the current menu, and changes will be shown in real-time when you design it. Tool pane is used to set properties of current menu.

4. Tool Pane:

In the Background tab, you can choose a background for your menu from the gallery that the program itself offers, or choose one from your own computer. There are several different types of background for you to choose, including business/exhibition type, education/training type, holiday/celebration type, nature/environment type, religious/spiritual type and others.
You can also set background music for the current selected menu by clicking Background Music button.
In the Button Style tab, you can set the button style, frame style and the icon style for each of your menu. There are many different options for you. You can choose a proper one according to your own interest.
Apply to All is used to apply your settings to all your menus.



In the Caption tab, you can edit the caption of a selected object just as in word.
In Advanced tab, you can tick Disable this menu button to disable current menu, and you will need to select an action that will be taken at the end of show. In Menu Options, it lists the options on current menu. You can remove corresponding object by removing the tick of the item.

5. Want to see how the DVD menu you’ve created will work in real time? So follow this step. On the top right of the DVD Menu page, you can see a DVD remote control simulator.

This is a soft-remote-control integrated in menu simulator. You can find those buttons on normal DVD remote controls. The simulator includes four cross direction selection buttons, which allow you to select items on the menu, and the center one is the confirm button. The Menu and Title button are for switching to different menus when playing presentation.

6. Choose output options, video settings and advanced settings for your presentation and burn your PowerPoint presentations to DVD without attendance.

It’s all that easy to finish the whole process of designing specific DVD menu for your PowerPoint presentations. Start now, burn PowerPoint to DVD and enjoy the happy time it brings to you. Click here to learn more about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD.

PowerPoint show to DVD slide show--- PPS to DVD

Most PowerPoint users know that PowerPoint presentations are usually saved in PPT format. Some of you may have received presentations that can be played directly when you click to open. Those files are in PPS format, namely PowerPoint show. A PPS is just a PPT file with a different file extension that tells PowerPoint opened directly into the slide show view pattern, not the editing view pattern. You can change it by renaming the file extension.

Despite the advantages we can see of a PPS file, there are also many disadvantages of a PPS file:
1. You'll either need MS PowerPoint or the PowerPoint viewer to view these files. So it may be inconvenient for viewing a PPS file.
2. System language could also be a problem, that is, if the language of one presentation is in Japanese, Spanish or some other ones, when viewing it under the English Windows, all the content would become a mess.
3. A PowerPoint show made in PowerPoint2007cannot be viewed under PowerPoint 97-2003, unless you save it as a PowerPoint 97-2003 presentation, but some great features will lose.

Regarding the deficits of PPS mentioned above, you can convert the PowerPoint to flash, turn PowerPoint to PDF, or burn PowerPoint to DVD/video. PDF is ideal for static slide shows, only images and text will be retained. Converting PowerPoint to flash is great for presentations that contain external hyperlinks, linked files, like Word or Excel files. But, so far, no PowerPoint to flash tool can retain all animations in PowerPoint. As to me, I prefer to burn PowerPoint show to DVD movies or convert to video. Below are some main benefits of burning a PPS to DVD:
1. Easy for delivery. After converting PPS to DVD, you do not need to worry the loss of sounds and videos contained in your presentation.
2. By converting PPS to DVD, you can view the PowerPoint presentation with a DVD player or DVD machine. It is great for long time preservation.
3. After converting PPS to DVD, you can give your presentations to your audience without worrying about it being modified without permission.
4. By converting the PPS file to video formats, the file size would be much smaller, and you can also mail it to others conveniently.

Usually there are two ways for us. The free way is to use Windows Movie Maker. But, there is no free lunch in the world. By using Windows Movie Maker, all the animations in the original presentation will be lost after the conversion. Below are the steps of how to do it.
Step1. Save your PowerPoint slide show as "PNG" images.
Step2. Import the pictures to your Windows Movie Maker
Step3. Select all the imported images and add them to Storyboard
Step4. Add video effects to the slides (Optional)
Step5. Save the slide show as Movie File.

In order to get a higher quality, another way to do this is to use some specific PowerPoint to DVD software to help us do this directly. Search “PowerPoint to DVD” in Google, and you will get many advises. Recently, I have experienced 2 PowerPoint burning software.
1. Acoolsoft PPT2DVD


2. Wondershare PPT2DVD


They both are companies that have been dedicating in developing PowerPoint to DVD software. Acoolsoft PPT2DVD is more innovative, while Wondershare PPT2DVD is more sophisticated.
Common characters of these two tools:
• Work smoothly with Microsoft Office 2000/2002/2003/2007 and Vista
• Retain animations, transitions, sound tracks, movie clips and the inner hyperlinks from the original presentation
• Able to create professional look DVD menus
• Burn to DVD/HD-DVD with built-in DVD/CD burning program
• Support batch conversion
Difference:
The user interface of Acoolsoft PPT2DVD is more intuitive,cool black, users can even see the thumbnails of the inputted presentations; Wondershare PPT2DVD’s user interface is designed more focused on step-by step conversion.

Click here to learn more about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD/CD