I have been working on editing an important talk slides recently. Since it cost me lots of time and energy, it's better to keep a record of the editing tips for future use. There are some useful tips to make a Microsoft powerpoint presentation look professional:
1. Video editing
I need to show many videos in my presentation. Some need to be edited to show a "zoom-in" version of that video to emphasize on details of a particular region. Some need to be split to show only a portion of the videos. There is also a need to change among different video file formats (.mp4, .avi, .wmv etc...). I used the following software for those purposes:
(a) Video split: I tried Windows Movie Maker on a .mp4 video, the progressing bar always stopped at 99%... which was completely annoying. It's quite common for Microsoft to produce such crap though. Then I tried a free software Free Video Cutter. It's very simple to use. However, the starting and ending frame cannot be set precisely. Finally, I used a free video converter Any Video Converter to change the .mp4 to .avi, then use Camtasia Studio to do the splitting job.
(b)Video converter: Recommend a free software Any Video Converter.
(c)Extract images from a video: The free software Avidemux 2.5 is able to extract any image frames from an .avi video.
2. Image editing
To make a slide show using some of the materials from papers (mainly done in Latex), it always require the following functionalities:
(a) Make a .gif image from several images: Showing a .gif image is more convenient and efficient than showing the playing the whole video. Once some important image frames are extracted from the video, you can find a website to combine those images to a .gif. There are quite many websites doing this for free, just Google it...
(b) Concert .eps image to any type of image: If you have .eps images as usually used in Latex editing, you can change the format to other formats (.jpg, .png. .bmp etc.) on a website (http://www.converthub.com/) for free.
3. Show latex formulas and tables nicely in ppt
If you type the formulas by powerpoint Equation Editor, it will show very ugly during slides show. And it cost lots of time to type the long formulas in ppt. The best way to show a Latex equation as you already had it, is to convert the Latex equation to an image. Then insert the image to ppt. Some websites provide this service for free. One website I found very useful was http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php
For tables, however, I didn't find a good way to convert a Latex table to show nicely in ppt. Using a snapshot of the table in ppt is very ugly. So I re-made the table manually in ppt. They did look better than the snapshots.
4. Animations
Making animations is a good way to visualize abstract methods. Just customize the animation in ppt, and use some simple animations like "appear","disappear", and set "timing" or "path" for more complicated animations.
1. Video editing
I need to show many videos in my presentation. Some need to be edited to show a "zoom-in" version of that video to emphasize on details of a particular region. Some need to be split to show only a portion of the videos. There is also a need to change among different video file formats (.mp4, .avi, .wmv etc...). I used the following software for those purposes:
(a) Video split: I tried Windows Movie Maker on a .mp4 video, the progressing bar always stopped at 99%... which was completely annoying. It's quite common for Microsoft to produce such crap though. Then I tried a free software Free Video Cutter. It's very simple to use. However, the starting and ending frame cannot be set precisely. Finally, I used a free video converter Any Video Converter to change the .mp4 to .avi, then use Camtasia Studio to do the splitting job.
(b)Video converter: Recommend a free software Any Video Converter.
(c)Extract images from a video: The free software Avidemux 2.5 is able to extract any image frames from an .avi video.
2. Image editing
To make a slide show using some of the materials from papers (mainly done in Latex), it always require the following functionalities:
(a) Make a .gif image from several images: Showing a .gif image is more convenient and efficient than showing the playing the whole video. Once some important image frames are extracted from the video, you can find a website to combine those images to a .gif. There are quite many websites doing this for free, just Google it...
(b) Concert .eps image to any type of image: If you have .eps images as usually used in Latex editing, you can change the format to other formats (.jpg, .png. .bmp etc.) on a website (http://www.converthub.com/) for free.
3. Show latex formulas and tables nicely in ppt
If you type the formulas by powerpoint Equation Editor, it will show very ugly during slides show. And it cost lots of time to type the long formulas in ppt. The best way to show a Latex equation as you already had it, is to convert the Latex equation to an image. Then insert the image to ppt. Some websites provide this service for free. One website I found very useful was http://www.codecogs.com/latex/
For tables, however, I didn't find a good way to convert a Latex table to show nicely in ppt. Using a snapshot of the table in ppt is very ugly. So I re-made the table manually in ppt. They did look better than the snapshots.
4. Animations
Making animations is a good way to visualize abstract methods. Just customize the animation in ppt, and use some simple animations like "appear","disappear", and set "timing" or "path" for more complicated animations.
