Possible to use Presenter AFTER recording lecture (that wasn't recorded in Presenter)?

[CatDP]

Hello, I have some recorded lectures (currently in wmv file format, but can be converted), and I'm wondering if I can use Presenter to produce a finished product that has the previously-recorded video on one side of the display screen, and the corresponding powerpoint slide(s) on the other side of the display screen? 

I guess this would be possible if I had originally recorded the video directly into Presenter, but this is not the case.  The recording was done from about 20 feet in front of the podium, and using a high quality camcorder with lavalier audio mic hookup.  I'm looking for a way to edit that will allow me to directly feed in the corresponding powerpoint so that the finished product shows the speaker on one side of the display and the powerpoint (separately) on the other side.   I'm not very familiar with Presenter, but I'm hoping there might be a way to do this, however indirect it may be. ugges

Any suggestions are much appreciated!

Thank you!

Catherine

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Well, this can be done in Presenter, though it may be a bit of work.

You will need to split the video into different segments for each slide. Then the video can be insterted using presenter and placed on the side bar. The video will be smaller, giving focus to your PPT content. If you want equal realestate for both the video and the PPT slide, If you have animations on the slides this makes the syncing even more difficult, as there is no tool for

Captivate can take PPT slides and video. A video can be placed across mutiple slides in Captivate. You can also make the size of the slides in Captivate appropriate to fit the video and the slides, as well as overlaying the video on the slides, if you wish.

[CatDP]

thank you for your helpful reply!  I forgot about Captivate.  I will check it out.  I don't mind doing the work in Presenter, although it might be nice to have some control over the size of the speaker video screen.  The powerpoint screen should be bigger, but since the speaker shot is more than just a a headshot, I don't want it to be too small.  I will look into both options. 

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

I suppose you could make all the PPT slides larger to accomodate the video, but between that and having to split up the video, I'd be inclined to look at Captivate as a more viable option. Both can work, but I'm sure one will prove to be a better workflow for you.

[CatDP]

Thanks for your input a couple weeks ago!  I went ahead and purchased Captivate, and now I'm trying to figure out how to change the size, scale, and/or position of the slides vis-a-vis the video.  I think I've figured out how to make such changes to the video (basically, by just dragging the borders to adjust size, scale and position on the screen), but I haven't been able to figure out how to slightly reposition (toward the "other" [non-video] side) and slightly shrink the powerpoint slide display.  I'm putting the video on the "stage" rather than the Table of Contents section because I don't really plan to use a TOC and in any case there does not seem to be much (or any) flexibility regarding the size of the video display when it is put in a Table of Contents bar (where it appears really tiny).  So the "stage" needs to be shared by the powerpoint (probably 75-80% horizontally) and the video (20-25% horizontally on the other side).  I don't mind if there's a little bit of overlap (maybe 5-10%) of the video over the edge of the powerpoint, but for the most part, they need to have their own real estate.  The powerpoint seems to be inflexibly centered in the display with no ability to move or shrink it.   Might you know of a solution?

Thanks again.

(I imagine that my next challenge will be figuring out how to set the adjusted sizes and positions of the video and the powerpoint in such a way that I don't have to adjust the size and position for each slide once I've set the adjusted master sizes/positions for both the slides and video.)

[CatDP]

oh, and I just discovered that the video window that I had placed partially past the right edge of the powerpoint is actually being cut-off (w/re/to everything past the powerpoint's right edge) when viewing on the "browser preview".   Hmmm. Hopefully it's not the case that the powerpoint must necessarily occupy the entire screen, with the video forced to share some part of the PPs turf by being superimposed on top of a section of the PP. (at least when the vid is put on the "stage" rather than the TOC). 

[Jorma_at_CoSo · Accepted solution]

Here is the workflow I have used:

I used the create a project from PPT function and brought in my slides using the settings that Captivate auto-detected. After the project was created I used Modify > Rescale Project. I used the % value to increase the width of the project slides to 150%, and then chose to not rescale the objects already on the slide and keept them on the Center Left of the rescaled slides. This gave me a blank area on the right hand slide of the slide where I could place the video. Depending on how large you want the video, you can increase the width to a value best suited to your needs. You can also then use Captivate to place objects on the blank portion of the slide to dress up the areas where the video and PPT deck are not (I've got a pet peeve with blank white areas on presentations). This can be a good opportunity for branding or additional information (video title/topic/speaker/etc.).