Best way to sync slides to video in Presenter

[EllenM1]

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out the best way to do this. I have an 82MB FLV of a lecture, which I want to appear in the sidebar throughout the presentation. What is the best procedure for importing and syncing this to the powerpoint?
At the moment it looks to me like the only thing to do is to import it on every single slide then use the in/out points to trim the duration of the video on each slide. Since the trim preview works very poorly (when you move the current time pointer, it always jumps back to the beginning!) this is at best an extremely tedious process.
Is this something no one else ever needs to do or something? Why is it so hard?

[leo_leo-vKUubt]

There is an indirect way to do this :

1. Import the video you want to import on slide from where you want video to start playing and publish the presentation

See <published folder> /data / viewer.xml . Copy the video tag within slide tag and paste it to slides where you want the video and modify start and stop time accordingly

This way you will be using single video and there you can modify time when to play and on which slide .

[EllenM1]

OK, I can do that, thank you.

[1TheMacBob1]

Leo/Ellen/Others
Hi. Help.
I've tried following your steps and am stuck. I an working on a 3 slide demo to get this figured out.

>First, I found that the default 5 seconds was applied to every slide and so I removed the default "5" seconds in the XML file. [defaultSlideDuration=""]

> Then while is was able to enter the XML text that allowed me to play the first slide perfectly, thank you,

I found that the 2nd slide started at the BEGINNING OF SWF file despite my 'asking' it to start where the previous slide "ended"

Here is my code. I only tried to work on slides 1 and 2. I'd most sincerely appreciate your advice as I can hardly believe that there is so little information to be found by googling "Presenter"

"Attach Code"

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<presentation width="720" height="540" defaultSlideDuration="" start="play" buildNum="7.0.0.7328">
<presentationTitle>Another Test of SWF across files</presentationTitle>
<speakers>
<speaker>
<name>Dr. Bill Me</name>
<speakerTitle>Job Title</speakerTitle>
<image>spk10100.jpg</image>
</speaker>
</speakers>
<search url="srchdata.xml"/>
<presentationBg url="bg.swf"/>
<masters><master url="Master0.swf" id="1" totalFrames="1"><backdrop frameNum="0"/></master></masters>
<layouts><layout url="Layout0.swf" id="1" totalFrames="1"><backdrop frameNum="1" displayBgSp="false"/></layout></layouts>
<slides>
<slide id="256" showInTOC="" inSequence="" frameRate="30" totalFrames="1" swfConvertorEngine="Nova" slideDuration="90" advance="auto" blockMovement="false" type="normal">
<content url="Slide0.swf" id="256"/>
<backdrop displayBgSp="true"/>
<master id="1"/>
<layout id="1"/>
<clickAnimations></clickAnimations>
<flvContents/>
<slideTitle>Testty Slide 1</slideTitle>
<video url="2007PANEL.swf" StartTime="00:00" StopTime="01:15:" MuteAudio="" IsH264=""/>
<notes isHTML="true"></notes>
<slideThumbnail url="thumb.swf" frame="1"/>
<slideSpeaker index="0"/>
</slide>
<slide id="258" showInTOC="" inSequence="" frameRate="30" totalFrames="1" swfConvertorEngine="Nova" slideDuration="55" advance="auto" blockMovement="false" type="normal">
<content url="Slide1.swf" id="258"/>
<backdrop displayBgSp="true"/>
<master id="1"/>
<layout id="1"/>
<clickAnimations></clickAnimations>
<flvContents/>
<slideTitle>Testty Slide 2</slideTitle>
<video url="2007PANEL.swf" StartTime="01:15" StopTime="02:10" MuteAudio="" IsH264=""/>
<notes isHTML="true"></notes>
<slideThumbnail url="thumb.swf" frame="2"/>
<slideSpeaker index="0"/>
</slide>
<slide id="257" showInTOC="" inSequence="" frameRate="30" totalFrames="1" swfConvertorEngine="Nova" slideDuration="" advance="auto" blockMovement="false" type="normal">
<content url="Slide2.swf" id="257"/>
<backdrop displayBgSp="true"/>
<master id="1"/>
<layout id="1"/>
<clickAnimations></clickAnimations>
<flvContents/>
<slideTitle>Testty Slide 3</slideTitle>
<notes isHTML="true"></notes>
<slideThumbnail url="thumb.swf" frame="3"/>
<slideSpeaker index="0"/>
</slide>
</slides>
<attachments></attachments>
</presentation>

[EllenM1]

1TheMacBob1, I've been experimenting and find that editing the xml file works fine for me, but I noted some differences between my xml file and yours which make me wonder if we are using the same version of Presenter, or if I am using different settings than you are. I'm currently using the trial version of 7.01. I'm using an FLV video, displayed in the sidebar.
I did notice that in the example you gave, the flvcontents tag is missing its opening tag, which might cause problems.

I'm providing you with the code for my first 2 slides which you can compare to yours and see if you see anything significant.

I found that no matter what I do, it hardcodes builds into the swfs so that they execute very fast. It ignores any settings in the xml file. When I decompiled the relevant swfs for the slides with builds they were in there set to about a half-second each. So now I am re-doing the powerpoint with builds made as separate slides.

Here is my code for the first to slides:

<!--title slide 1-->
<slide id="262" frameRate="30" totalFrames="270" advance="auto" blockMovement="false" type="normal">
<content url="Slide1.swf"/>
<slideBackground index="0" frameToPlay="1" duration="2" showAfterFrame="0"/>
<flvContents></flvContents>
<slideTitle>Mathematics and Music</slideTitle>
<notes isHTML="true"></notes>
<video url="master_262_2_60791.flv" StartTime="0.000000" StopTime="338000.000000" MuteAudio="0" IsH264="0"/>
<slideThumbnail url="thumb.swf" frame="1"/>
<slideSpeaker index="0"/>
</slide>

<!--slide 2 simple premises-->
<slide id="327" frameRate="30" totalFrames="270" advance="auto" blockMovement="false" type="normal">
<content url="Slide2.swf"/>
<slideBackground index="1" frameToPlay="1" duration="2" showAfterFrame="0"/>
<flvContents></flvContents>
<clickAnimations>
<clickAnimation start="1" end="16"/>
</clickAnimations>
<slideTitle>Simple Premises</slideTitle>
<notes isHTML="true">Both&#x20;musicians&#x20;and&#x20;mathematicians&#x20;create&#x20;patterns&#x20;of&#x20;great&#x20;variety,&#x20;beauty,&#x20;and&#x20;subtlety&#x20;from&#x20;the&#x20;simplest&#x20;of&#x20;premises.&#x20;&lt;br&gt;</notes>
<video url="master_327_2_90620.flv" StartTime="338000.010000" StopTime="388000.875000" MuteAudio="0" IsH264="0"/>
<slideThumbnail url="thumb.swf" frame="2"/>
<slideSpeaker index="0"/>
</slide>

[Guest]

Hi there,

I'm following your discussion and its helped but I'm trying to determine what the timecode represents. I've not attempted to use the mm:ss:ff as the format but there are things like XXXX.XXXX. What is that and how does it get calculated?

Thanks
jfm

[EllenM1]

As far as I can tell, it's milliseconds on the left, and I'm not sure what on the right.

[Guest]

Ellen,

Thanks for the information, that will help me get started. Do you know if Presenter (in the XML file) accepts the standard time format (hh;mm;ss;ff) or does it HAVE to be in milliseconds?

Thanks

[Guest]

I just did a little more investigation and it looks like the start/ stop in the URL tag for a movie is only used to calculate the duration that shows up next to the slide in the sidebar index. It also looks like it has to be in milliseconds and even there its not that accurate (not down to the frame) so it must be rounding the numbers.

None of this still helps us getting any closer to identifying a single FLV encoded video and entering the start and stop points as the way to use the video without segmenting it into various pieces...

[Guest]

A little more investigation of the XML file reveals that indeed, the URL tag to the video controls the actual video. So, if you have a complete video or you want to put your video files in a separate location for something like streaming, you could modify the url string in the xml file and it will find the file in that location.

Still is not allowing us to set in/out points for a single video which is what I think everyone here is looking to get accomplished.

thanks
jfm