Hello Bill,

I reported a similar issue on August, 9 :  "Presenter 8 crashes after connecting external Firewire cam"

("http://forums.adobe.com/message/4609394#4609394")

The lack of support for FireWire connections is making the product less usefull than I tought it would. We also record conferences and corporate training presentations, and recording the speaker with just a low quality webcam is not always the best option (limited options of framing, zooming, panning, tilting, following the speaker ... they are not always standing on the same spot ).

Being in the "trial" period still, I digitized and copied a pre-recorded videofile of a recent presentation on my PC and tried to synchronize it with the PowerPoint presentation, but then I found out that I need to split up my complete recording in as many individual pieces of video as the amount of slides the speaker presents. Presenter only allows to import and synchronize one videofile with one particular slide. This type of post-processing is time-consuming and inefficient.

I also can't ask the trainer to do his/her presentation in a classroom first before an audience, and then repeat the whole presentation again afterwards in front of his/her webcam to record it to make it available for people who couldn't attend the session.

That is why the connection of an external camera or recorder is a necessity. There is nothing as easy and efficient as having a camera at the back of the class or conference room, and synchronize the camera image with the PowerPoint slides in real-time, while the speaker is presenting the slides before an audience. We simply don't have the time to go through a time consuming post-processing cycle by cutting the recorded presentation into several individual videofiles and importing them into the individual slides, or asking the speaker to repeat the presentation for the 2nd time in front of a webcam.  Time is Money.

I also found out that only presentations recorded in real-time with a webcam (via the RECORD button on the toolbar) gives me the possibility to upload the presentation to YouTube. When using the possibility to import a videofile to a slide via the Presenter toolbar (Video --> import), it only gives me the possibility to publish to My Computer (or network), to Adobe Connect or to a PDF-file.  No YouTube publishing possibility here anymore.

Why not, Adobe ?

Company policy to only connect to the proprietary Adobe Connect platform?

That is a real pitty.

I really don't understand Adobe's policy to not support FireWire appliances in Presenter 8.  This would open so many possibilities for the product.

FireWire support is nothing new for Adobe. I'm an Adobe Premiere user for more than a decade, I use Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder to stream training sessions, conferences, etc ... and all these products support FireWire without any problem.

Don't tell me that the Adobe team needs to start studying for months how to connect a FireWire camera or recorder to its Presenter 8 software.

I hope they will investigate how they can solve this flaw as quickly as possible.

In the meanwhile, I guess, I will let the trial period pass and might consider purchasing the product once this issue has been solved.

Regards,

Patrick ROTEN

CIPAL

Governmental ICT Agency

Dept Marketing & Strategy

(Belgium)