Adobe Presenter: Publishing

Publishing requires that you already have prepared a PowerPoint presentation with audio attached to it, and have installed the Adobe Presenter plugin.. Please review the Recording section if your presentation is has not yet reached this point. Additionally, if you wish to publish to a specific Adobe Connect server, you must have an active Adobe Presenter account.

Begin by opening the presentation you wish to publish. Once your presentation is loaded, select Publish from the Adobe Presenter menu.

You will now be given the option to publish directly to your computer, or to the Adobe Presenter server. If you would like to publish directly to your computer, choose the My Computer tab on the left, and specify the folder location for where you would like to have your presentation saved.

Along with the Folder you wish the presentation to be published to, you can also specify the Output Options: if you would like your files to be generated as a folder (default), as Zip Files, or with an autorun.exe file for a CD.

A Settings menu is available on the right side of the publish window, just above the Help button. From there, you can change the title of your presentation, choose whether it will automatically play when a viewer loads the presentation, how long slides with no audio recording will play for, and add any attachments or flash files you wish to include. Press OK when you have finished altering the Settings.

To finish, click Publish at the lower right corner of the main Publishing screen.

If you would like to publish to your Adobe Presenter server, choose the Adobe Presenter Server tab on the left and click Publish at the lower right corner of the screen. While in the past, many instructors had to publish to the server for distribution, that is no longer the case. It is recommended that you publish to your own computer so that you can then upload to Blackboard directly into your course.

Presentation Data Files

The Presenter data for the PowerPoint presentation is saved as a .ppc file (Adobe Presenter Audio File) with the same name as the .ppt file (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation file), and is saved every time you save the .ppt file. Keep these two files together in the same folder, and with the same file name. If you wish to move the .ppt file to a new location, move the .ppc file with it; same with copying the files to new locations. If you wish to rename the files, we recommend opening them in PowerPoint and then choosing Save As to save a new copy of the presentation, to prevent any errors with the files being able to find each other. If they are separated, the audio, animation timings, and slide settings will not be available when you open the presentation in PowerPoint, or it will result in errors in attempting to load the audio or other Presenter changes. The .ppc files tend to be very large because they contain all of the imported audio and video.

The published file set is different and separate from the .ppt and .ppc files. The published files do not have to be kept with the .ppt and .ppc files. You can put your published files on your website, email them, or save them to a CD if you wish. In order to view your presentation, you can click on the View Output button when the publishing process alerts you that it is complete, or you can open the index.htm file in the resulting folder. This will open the presentation in your default web browser.

Do not separate the published files from each other. These include:

* a “data” folder
* breeze-manifest.xml
* components.swf
* index.htm
* loadflash.js
* viewer.swf

If the option to “Generate autorun for CD” was chosen when published, these files will also be present and should not be separated from the other published files:

* Autorun.inf
* autorun.exe
* Presenter.ico

Adobe Presenter: Recording

Before you begin recording be sure that you have the proper equipment to produce a quality recording. For a review of the necessary equipment please review Getting Started section of the tutorial. In addition to computer setup, you must have an active Adobe Connect account and installed the Adobe Presenter Plugin.

To access Adobe Presenter, first open Microsoft PowerPoint. Once you are in PowerPoint, take note of the Adobe Presenter pull down menu.

It is recommended that you do not use the interface provided by the Adobe Presenter software outside of PowerPoint. Using the narration tool built in to PowerPoint allows for easier backup and transitioning should you choose to use delivery systems other than Adobe Presenter.

First, you must go to Preferences under the Breeze menu.

Then you must select the Audio Source tab on the right. The default setting is for Microphone, but you must change to Line-in for the initial setup of Adobe Presenter

Now, choose Close, go back and repeat the following setup. Only this time, change from Line-in back to Microphone.

Click Close and you are ready to proceed to the following instruction. Again, this step is only necessary for the initial setup of Adobe Presenter and will not need to be repeated for each session.

Sorting Your Files

To facilitate data backup, we recommend placing any presentation files you wish to narrate in a new folder with the same name as the presentation file. To do this, open the My Documents folder from your desktop and right click a blank spot in the body of the window. Choose New and then Folder to create a new folder. Type in the name that you wish to use for the new folder (use the name of your presentation). Once your folder is renamed, drag the presentation to the folder.

Setting up PowerPoint for Audio

Once you have opened a presentation in PowerPoint that you wish to narrate, select Adobe Presenter from the PowerPoint menu, and choose Record Audio from the dropdown list.

Set the microphone level

When you select Record Audio a new window will open that will help you set the level of your microphone. It is a good idea to follow the instructions to ensure that your microphone is calibrated to an appropriate volume.

Checking input level

Speak into the microphone, for example using the test message provided in the window, and if the microphone is operating properly, the red box will turn green and say Input Level OK. You can then click OK to start recording your narration.

Mic input level Ok. A new window will appear, this is the Record Audio Window.

From here will be able to record the audio/narrations for each slide. Select the slide on which you wish to begin your narration. Do this by using the Previous and Next buttons in the Record Audio window.

If you put notes into your slideshow presentation, you can view them while recording by checking the “View script” box. This is useful if your notes include a transcript of what you intend to add as a narration, so that you can read along while recording the audio. Once you have checked the box, the Record Audio window will expand to include the script text box.

You can paste in notes or type your own script by clicking on the text box, or you can Import Notes from the slideshow by clicking on the Import Notes button.
Import Notes button

Press the record button Record button (red circle) and continue speaking until all of the audio for that slide is complete, and press stop (grey square). You can pause in the middle of recording, if you wish.

Pressing the play button Play button (green triangle) will allow you to hear your recorded narration. If you are not satisfied with your audio, you may press record and begin that slide again. If you are satisfied, choose Next to continue to the next slide.

Once you have moved to another slide, the record audio window will be ready to record audio for the slide which is displayed in the background. If you have notes in your PowerPoint presentation, you may check the box that says View Script and then click on Import Notes. You will be able to select and import notes from the current slide or all slides.

This process can be repeated for each slide in your PowerPoint presentation.

Note: You can record the audio for each slide out of order if you wish, and Adobe Presenter will automatically associate the audio you have recorded with the corresponding slide. In order to reduce confusion, it is a good idea to record audio sequentially.

Completing the Narration

Once you have completed adding audio to each slide, you may want to preview your presentation before you publish. To do this, select Adobe Presenter from the Powerpoint menu and choose Audio Editor.

From the View menu, select Slide Show.

If any slide is incorrect, or unsatisfactory, you can edit the slide text and images in PowerPoint as you normally would, and the audio will not be affected. If the audio is incorrect or unsatisfactory, choose Record Audio from the Breeze pull down menu and use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate to that slide. Re-record your narration by pressing the record button. This will not affect other slides or narrations in the presentation.

Adobe Presenter: Installation

Adobe Presenter works through a plugin for PowerPoint. Plugins add functionality to other programs, but can not run independently. Because of this you must first install Microsoft PowerPoint (version 97, 2000 or XP), which is part of the Microsoft Office suite of tools. Once PowerPoint is installed, you may proceed with installing Adobe Presenter.

By now you should have already requested an Adobe Presenter account and received a confirmation email with a link to download Adobe Presenter.

Choose Save or Save File after clicking on the link. When saving, be sure to place the file, presenter.exe, on your desktop.

Before starting the installation, be sure to close PowerPoint if it is currently running.

With the left mouse button, double click on the Adobe Presenter icon located on your desktop. If you receive a security warning, click Run to proceed with the installation.

Once Adobe Presenter has finished installing, you will be alerted to its completion. Select OK to close the alert window.

Now that you have completed the installation, it’s time to learn what you can do with Adobe Presenter!

Adobe Presenter: Getting Started

In order to use Adobe Presenter to produce narrated PowerPoint presentations you must have a Windows PC meeting the following requirements:

Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4, Windows XP with Service Pack 2, or Windows Vista (32-bit) Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, PowerPoint 2002 (XP), PowerPoint 2003, or PowerPoint 2007 600 MHz Pentium III processor or equivalent 256 MB of RAM 100 MB of free hard disk space Macromedia Flash Player 6 or higher Approximately 0.5 MB of hard disk for every minute of presentation audio A sound card A microphone (external microphones are recommended) 800×600 screen resolution (1,024×768 or greater recommended) A working internet connection with a current web browser (only when uploading your published content to Blackboard)

Because of the low quality of built in microphones it is recommended that an external headset microphone be used for all narration recording. Additionally it is recommended that a high-speed network connection be used to reduce the time needed to transfer the large audio files produced through Adobe Presenter.

Uploading Adobe Presenter content to a mobile device

Another important item to consider: how to get the eLearning content onto the device. As previously mentioned, it is not currently possible to access Presenter content from a device using a browser (HTTP). For now, the content must be manually loaded onto the device. I am hoping that someone proves me wrong on this point, because it would greatly increase the distribution options if the Presenter content could be accessed via the Internet. Fortunately, it is a simple process to load Presenter content onto the device using Nokia’s PC Suite.

Let’s take a look at a screenshot of the Adobe Presenter publish directory. Notice that there are six files and one directory. When you upload your Presenter content to the device, you only need to move the viewer-lite.swf and the data directory to play the content. It is not necessary to upload the other files, because they will not be used on the device to play Presenter content.

Adding quizzes to your eLearning mobile content

Adobe Presenter allows you to create or import a quiz that will be published with the other content from the presentation. Unfortunately the quiz functionality from the Presenter plug-in for PowerPoint is not supported when using viewer-lite.swf as the viewer SWF on a mobile device. In future releases, it would be great to have a feature that enables quizzes without reporting. This would at least allow learners to test their knowledge of a subject. Of course, it would be optimal if the reporting functionality was supported as well, but this would be an excellent first step.

Adobe Presente: Integrating imported Flash content

Adobe Presenter allows you to import Flash content and place it on a slide or the sidebar. As mentioned previously, you’ll need to ensure the Flash content is located on the slide, not the sidebar, if you are planning to distribute your presentation on a device.

Most Flash content imported using the Adobe Presenter plug-in for PowerPoint is retained, but interactivity can be restricted on devices (depending on the limited input options available on a specific device). For example, the lack of a mouse means that device users will utilize the navigation keys on their device to advance the converted PowerPoint slides. As a result, you cannot use those keys to interact with the imported Flash content. It would be helpful if Adobe Presenter had a method for remapping the keys used for slide navigation to adjust for the input requirements of the imported Flash content. Since content converted by Adobe Presenter uses different keys to advance slide content on the device—based on the orientation of the content—it is impossible to use the device’s navigation keys for Flash content. When a user presses a navigation key, they will move forward or back in the list of slides.

If it was possible to remap the keys, you could set the converted content to always use the same navigation keys to advance the slides. For example, when the presentation content is displayed in portrait mode, the right navigation button on the 4-way rocker is used to advance the slide content. When the user switches to landscape mode, they could use the down navigation button on the 4-way rocker to advances slide content. This approach would allow you to determine which keys are available, but it would limit the amount of interactivity that you can expect on a mobile device, because you’d still have to programmatically evaluate whether the slide content was currently being displayed in portrait or landscape mode. One solution would involve using screenResolutionX and screenResolutionY from the Capabilities class in the Flash file to find out if the content is being run in portrait or landscape, and then adjust the input keys accordingly.

Adobe Presenter: Working with themes and custom animations

Adobe Presenter includes the functionality to create and reuse themes, as well as the ability to retain custom animations created in the PowerPoint presentation. However, the viewer SWF that is used to play the converted content on a device (viewer-lite.swf) does not support themes, and they are not retained. The same project viewed on a computer uses the other viewer SWF (viewer.swf) and that viewer does support themes.

You can create custom animations in PowerPoint, which can then be used on devices. The animations you create are still displayed after the conversion process by Adobe Presenter. I tested several custom animations including Fade, Dissolve In, Fly In, Checkerboard and Spin. All of the animations worked as expected on the device.

Preparing and integrating video into Adobe Presenter mobile content

Video is a favorite media type for learning content authors. Adobe Presenter allows you to import and set preferences for your video assets. As you import video, you have the option to place the video on the slide itself or in the sidebar. In order to display video in content converted by Adobe Presenter on a device, the video needs to be placed on the slide, not the sidebar. As mentioned previously, the sidebar will not load when the viewer-lite.swf file is uploaded to a device.

I tested video playback by importing a QuickTime video that was fairly small (200×160 pixels). I set its placement to the slide and set the data rate to 400kbps. After uploading the project to the N95, I found that the video played well with no visible dropped frames and with decent quality audio.

Adobe Presenter: Recording and Using Audio and Video

Adding audio and video capabilities to your presentation can make it much more interesting for your audience.

In addition to adding existing audio files, you can record your own audio files to use in Adobe Presenter presentations. Recorded files are saved in MP3 format.

To record audio, choose Adobe Presenter > Record Audio and read the test message. When the Input Level shows OK, click OK to open the Record Audio dialog box. Using the controls in the dialog box, add and review audio to use for your presentation.

Consider these tips to ensure that you’re recording the best audio possible:

• Specify the audio recording quality. Choose Adobe Presenter > Preferences > Quality. Select from CD Quality (highest) to Low Bandwidth (lowest). Balance the required quality against the file size; the higher the quality, the greater the file size.
• Preview the audio as you record it in the Audio Editor. (You can also preview later from the PowerPoint window.) Choose Adobe Presenter > Edit Audio > View > Slide Show to display the Edit Audio window overlaying the presentation slides.

Use video you import from other locations, or record and customize it directly through Adobe Presenter—perfect for adding those “talking head” features to your presentation:

• Choose Adobe Presenter > Capture Video to open the Capture Video dialog box. Choose the slide to which you want to link, select the desired device and quality, and click Record. Click Stop when finished recording, and review by clicking Play. When you’re done, click Save to open a dialog box where you can name the file and choose a storage location.
• Select the slide where you want to add the video, and choose Adobe Presenter > Import Video. Select the video to import, click Open, and wait while the file is processed. You’ll see a white box overlaying the slide on which the video is placed.

Regardless of the method you use for bringing video into a presentation, you can edit it via Adobe Presenter. Here’s how:

1. Select Adobe Presenter > Edit Video to open the Edit Video dialog box.
2. To preview the clip, click Play; click Stop/Pause to stop the preview.
3. If desired, adjust the length of the clip by dragging the start and end markers in from the edges of the playbar.
4. Specify other features for the video as desired. For example:
   • Choose how to play video by selecting the slide or sidebar option.
   • Choose a Fade or Speed option from the Effects pull-down menu.
   • Choose when to play the video by selecting an option from the Start After pop-up menu. You can indicate a time delay, or specify that the movie will start after the slide’s animation or audio.
5. When you’ve finished your edits, click OK to close the dialog box.
6. Save the file. To view the video, you can either render the project or choose View > Slideshow from the PowerPoint menu.