Good morning everyone!
When you convert PowerPoint presentations to Flash movies, not only do they become more visually pleasing by having a more polished look, but they also save room on your hard drive in the process, by significantly decreasing the file size.
Today’s product is just such software and is in fact, a PowerPoint add-in that is easily accessible from within PowerPoint.
Thankfully, the program launches your preferred browser (Firefox in my case,) and not IE. Many programs these days don’t allow users any choice at all, if they need a browser to display an image/presentation – and I have to say that I become extremely irritated when I see IE automatically launch for some reason.
When one understands what is involved in the process, the complex task of the final creation can be appreciated – but only if the results stand up to one’s expectations.
Developer: CPS Labs
Supported Languages: English
System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Office 2000 (2003 recommended)
Additional Requirements:
- Pentium-III/AMD Athlon 500 MHz;
- 56 Mb RAM
- 100 Mb free HDD space.
You will also need the following:
Stand-alone Player to open files with .swf extension. If you don’t have one of these, you can’t display .swf files at all. There are quite a few freeware products you can use and Googling for them, will give you a selection to choose from and test. The other alternative, is to configure your system to view .swf files in your favorite web-browser. Refer to your browser documentation.
Tested on: Windows XP Pro/Office 2003
A couple of important points:
- If you wish to view/show your Flash movies using any Micro$oft products (IE; Office,) you will need to download a Flash player ActiveX component;
- You’ll also need a Flash plugin if you wish to use non-Micro$oft browsers.
According to FlashSpring, if you wish to show Flash movies with embedded video, you need to make sure that you also have video codecs installed. Unfortunately, they don’t tell you which particular codecs are needed. The user cannot use just any media player to display their results, it must be a player able to play Flash.
So understand, that if you didn’t have the right codec, certain parts of the movie won’t play. In fact, we’ve probably all experienced this at some time, in the early days of Flash, where we might see a movie but not hear the audio, or vice versa. If you find that you’re missing the required codec – you can always download a free one.
The process of the conversion, would require FlashSpring to first analyze the user’s PowerPoint presentation, then to process and generate the output – (and hopefully) to make it appear as though it had always been a Flash movie.
To put it in layman’s terms, the program should be able to assimilate all the data about each object in the original PowerPoint presentation (including its current applied effects; sliding in, embedded objects, shapes etc.)
Using this information, the software should then have the ability to make a Flash representation of each object for the output in the final Flash movie. The latter of course, being its stated purpose.
GUI (Graphical user interface:)
Because FlashSpring is actually an add-on for PowerPoint, the user is actually using the Micro$oft product, so there’s really no new GUI to get used to – unless you’ve never used PowerPoint before.
However, when you publish, you do see a new screen for the first time, as you see in the image to the left.
FlashSpring does add a new toolbar to the latter. The drop down menu options are Publish; Audio; Insert Flash; Help and About, which curiously doesn’t only contain information about the company itself, but also has a small arrow for a drop down menu, allowing the user to customize the toolbar by adding and removing buttons. Normally, one has to right click on the toolbar itself to access this action.
I created a small movie of 4 slides, all of which had differing transitions and timing and included embedded images. It took me about 30 minutes as I was playing around with the transitions and other other behaviors at the same time. Next time, it would probably only take me 15 minutes to create a small movie. The program is definitely intuitive for the new user to Flash, and even the new user to PowerPoint.
On the left of the user interface, there is a thumbnail column, containing all the slides that you create for your movie. You can also click on a specific one, to change any of the parameters, such as timing etc.
On the right, are all the different parameters you’re able to set for each slide – it’s just point and click on the ones you like – very simple. As you click on them, it shows you how each element of your slide will behave with your chosen behaviors. There are also two kinds of previews to select from at bottom right – you can choose to see a particular slide, or the entire presentation, to see how it all fits together.
Settings:
Other than the toolbar options, there is no additional configuration or settings for the actual program, which added to my ability to create the small movie so quickly this morning.
Help File:
Thankfully, the software has its own internal help file, as opposed to the program launching a browser to see it on the developer’s web site. That has been a strong cause of irritation for me in other software products.
The help file is fairly concise, because the program is so easy to use without it.
Features:
- Publish to email;
- Converts big PowerPoint presentations to much smaller files;
- Creation of Flash banners;
- Control of Flash frame rate;
- Zips flash movie within the program;
- Can also handle image and Mp3 compression;
- WMA audio support;
- Thumbnail creation;
- Installed layouts from which to choose;
- Can include animated images;
- Ability to use recorded narrations;
- Ability to include video clips;
- Ability to include hyperlinks.
- Ability to insert an external Flash movie clip, within your own Flash movie;
- You can configure the size of the screen for your movie;
- Includes information about the person presenting the movie;
- You can choose how the viewer handles the player on the web.
Negatives:
After embedding an Mp3 into a slide, I couldn’t get it to play in the final movie. I tried two other different Mp3s and it still wouldn’t work.
I wasn’t happy with the output at all:
Stuttering: I played around with the timing, but that didn’t help at all;
Anti-aliasing: Issues with text – no user fix of which I’m aware.
Points:
Originality: 5/10Functionality: 7/10
Intuitiveness: 9/10
Quality of result: 5/10
Summary:
While the software itself was extremely intuitive in its use, the resulting movie was of poor quality. For the high price, I’d shop around to see what other PowerPoint to movie software is available – however, if you pop on over to the Giveaway of the Day website today, you’ll be able to pick up a fully licensed, fully functional copy of FlashSpring Pro – today only. Price: US$99.00 Yes, it’s steep, but perhaps worth it to the web site professional who often deals with this kind of work.
In addition, there is a 40% educational discount. However, you need to prove that you belong to or learning at an educational establishment, by sending CPS Labs, an email with scanned copies of documents belonging to the school/college. They do mention that if you have an .edu domain, that they don’t even need the documents, because they’ll see the .edu in your email address.
In response, they will send you a coupon-code which you enter at the time of purchase. There is also a demo version, however the restrictions are:
- It can only show solid Flash movies;
- It adds a FlashSpring banner at the bottom of each slide;
- Automatically adds the FlashSpring demo slide after your created movie.
Recommendation:
I’d like to see how CPS Labs improves this product with the next release. But until then, for me, it’s not a keeper. This doesn’t mean that it’s not of any use to the casual user. It might be fun to use for someone who is interested in just playing around with the concept.
Until my next review, why not have some fun and get out in the sunshine!
~ Swan
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