Conversion of PPT to Flash

Issue : which software to buy

Purchased quite a few years back POWERCONVERTER form the folks at Presentation Pro. I was never really impressed with the fidelity of conversion. I always had to try to figure out what the converter did not like on a slide and find a workaround solution to get my results. More of a hassle than anything else in second guessing the tool. And now it seems to crash too often.

Downloaded and tested POINTECAST software and tested it. It is quite reliable in its conversion. A few tweaks to the original file are required : it doesn’t like drop shadows on text ; it did not convert looped animation that was set to run till the next slide advance. The demo also ignored mouse clicks for the slides or animation stop points, although that might just be a demo version limitation (I hope). File size is an issue though, a PPT file of 1.1MB became 4.2!

Downloaded WILDFORM FLAIR. Wonky is the word of choice here. Many elements did not convert properly. More mistakes than PowerConverter. Text colours changed; special symbols changed to other letters, freeform shapes morphed into other forms; slide titles were gone; auto advance slides lost functionality; animation sequences were jumbled. Only good thing about it was file size. 1.0MB, close in size to the original.

I have heard but do not want to use TECHSMITH’s CAMTASIA, as it is more of a video-like screen capture utility than a Flash converter, therefore file size would be huge.

Solution : iSPRING

Geetesh Bajaj (indezine.com) suggested iSPRING, over at ispringsolutions.com. Geetesh is a well know PowerPoint expert, author, runs a few websites ( indezine.com) and discussion groups. Located his help on the subject at the linkedin.com website user group "PowerPoint Stuff from InDesign"

There is a free demo software link on the ispring website. I installed. It showed up as an extra menu at the top of my PowerPoint window. 2-3 clicks and I had an absolute mirror image of my animation. Zero learning curve. Just a matter of choosing the type of interface I wanted for my webpage.

Super. The best!

Examples of PowerPoint slides converted to Flash, click one of the thumbnails in the grid below, to view a conversion.

Examples of PowerPoint slides converted to Flash:
Click one of the thumbnails in the grid below to view the Flash file.

	Oilsands Quest requested a series of slides to explain visually, their bitumen recovery process. Not an easy task in PowerPoint, the software has limited animation capabilities. I was given a video file where an engineer spoke in detail of the process. My task was to graphically expand on his whiteboard sketch and flow chart. Make it attractive. Make it understood. Make it simple. The final series of slides was programmed on-mouse-click, to allow the speaker to progress at his own pace, and permit questions or elaborations, depending on the audience. This flash file has only the slide advance mouse clicks, have a look.
	Oilsands Quest was the client. If the above animation is macro in scale, this one was micro. It zooms-in to the sand grains and shows the sand particles, surrounded by a water layer and bitumen globules. The same process is shown, as above, water injection, steam... and bitumen flowing away from the sand grains.
	Nimble Communications contacted me to create a series of slides for a kiosk at a Trade Show. A three and a half minute loop was built, following the company branding. Slides were programmed to allow ample time for reading the content on each slide. And again, trying to stay away from boring repetitive title and bullet layout. Much imagery, much animation, condensed text for a quick story.

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