Creating a Presentation with Microsoft Producer

After installing the self-service studio, Fabrikam needs to provide detailed information about how to use it. They have designed ease of use into the setup. Now to make using the studio as foolproof as possible, they will intentionally limit the user’s options to one simple, preferred method for capturing, editing, and playing back a presentation. Then they will carefully document the steps and test the process to make sure everything works as expected. They will also make sure troubleshooting issues are covered as completely as possible.

Of course, there are many things users can do with the camcorder, computer, audio processors, and the other components, but recording a user’s garage band or editing home movies will not be allowed as options. Users will know that the studio can be used for the following tasks:

• Recording a PowerPoint presentation.

• Editing and synchronizing the recorded presentation.

• Packaging and publishing the final project.

If a user needs to create a product that is outside the scope of these tasks, she can contact the Media department and a producer will work with her to complete the project.

In this section, we go through the entire process of creating a Producer presentation. Fabrikam will provide instructions like these for their mini-studio users. We will start with the assumption that everything is connected as shown in figure 19.9.

Recording a PowerPoint Presentation

Open Producer and start the New Presentation Wizard from the File menu. Enter the following settings in the New Presentation Wizard and Capture Wizard:

• Presentation Template, Scheme, and Information. Choose the layout template for a presentation and enter metadata information, such as title and description. The default presentation template includes audio, video, and slides.

• Import Slides and Still Images. Enter the path to the PowerPoint presentation file, which has a .ppt extension. The project can be accessed on any computer on the corporate network, such as a presenter’s personal computer, a SharePoint team site, a floppy disk, or a CD.

• Import or Capture Video and Audio. Click Capture and the Capture Wizard opens.

• Capture Options. Capture video with audio, and use the recommended settings. The correct capture devices should be chosen and properly configured by default. On the Choose Capture Devices page of the Capture Wizard, make sure the camcorder image displays. Also make sure audio from the lavalier microphone is selected and that the audio input level is correct.

After the project is configured the Capture Video and Audio page of the wizard is displayed:

1. Click the Capture button when you are ready to begin recording.

2. Click Stop when you are finished, and enter a name and path for the new video file.

3. Repeat the previous two steps as many times as necessary until you get a good take of the presentation. You can save each take separately, or overwrite the previous take with a new one.

After you have successfully recorded a take, you will return to the New Presentation Wizard and enter the following information:

• Import or Capture Video and Audio. Enter the path of the file you just recorded.

• Synchronize Presentation. Select Yes to synchronize the slides after they have been imported.

The PowerPoint slides and the video just recorded are imported into the Producer project, added to the timeline, and the Synchronize Slides dialog box opens.

Synchronizing and Editing the Recorded Presentation

The New Presentation Wizard guides you through the process of creating a project and capturing video for the presentation. Then the Synchronize Slides dialog box enables you to manually add slide changes so they are synchronized with the video.

Many users will want to retake a recording, add other images and effects, edit a project, or do something else that breaks the flow of the wizards. If the studio schedule is tight, you can suggest that they spend studio time capturing the presentation and roughly synchronizing the slides, and then complete the project later, outside the studio. For example, the presentation can be recorded in the studio, and then the project can be copied to the presenter’s computer and finished there. If the presenter does not have the time or expertise to finish the project, the project can be handed over to a producer or assistant.

In Producer, to synchronize the PowerPoint slides to the newly captured video manually, do the following:

1. In the Synchronize Slides dialog box, select Set slide timing.

2. Click the Play button.

3. Click the button below the playback controls to display a new slide (with the Next Slide button) or start the next effect (with the Next Effect button). The button changes depending on what action occurs next in the PowerPoint presentation. The button will not be enabled until the current action is finished. For example, if a transition effect lasts 10 seconds, you cannot start the next action until the transition ends.

4. After setting the slide timing, click Preview slide timing, and then click the Play button to play the video back with the slide changes.

5. If timing looks good, click Finish to update the slide timings on the timeline. To redo the slide timings, repeat steps 1 through 3.

After you finish the wizards, you can change the timing of the presentation elements on the timeline that runs across the bottom of the Producer window. You can change when a video or audio clip begins or ends by dragging the left or right borders of the clip. You can change the duration of a static item such as a slide or HTML by dragging the right border to the left or right. To change the start time of a clip within the presentation, click anywhere within the clip and drag it.

You can also add transitions and effects to the video, import more media elements, such as different video clips or Web pages, and edit a video clip. For more information about working with the timeline, see chapter 21. For more information about Producer, see the Microsoft Producer Help.

After you have arranged the slides, video, and other elements on the timeline, save the project. If you open the folder where you just saved the Producer project, you will notice that it contains several folders and a project file with an .MSProducer file name extension. Producer uses a non-destructive editing technique. Unlike film editing, where you physically and permanently cut the film, nondestructive editing enables you to make as many edit changes as you want without changing the original digital media. All those folders hold the original digital media elements. The only thing that changes is the project file. As you play back the timeline, you are playing portions of the original digital media along with the edit decisions you have made on the timeline and saved in the project file.

After you have finished editing and want to publish the presentation, Producer encodes the video and audio content on the timeline into a new video file (or files), and also creates copies of source files used in the presentation.

Packaging and Publishing the Final Project

During the publishing process, Producer uses information in the project file to automatically assemble a new, edited Windows Media Video file, which is encoded at the bit rate specified in the Publish Wizard. Producer also converts and compresses image files to the selected bit rate, and then creates a final project Web page, associated project files, and a folder containing the digital media files required to display the presentation. Producer then provides several ways to publish this set of presentation components to your computer, a CD, another computer on your network, or a Web folder.

After elements have been added to a timeline and the project has been saved, you can do one of the following:

• Continue to edit the project. You work with the elements on the timeline.

• Package the project. Producer automatically packages the project, so that it can be edited on another computer, such as your desktop computer.

• Publish the project. Producer automatically encodes the final Windows Media file, converts the PowerPoint project, and creates the files that display the presentation in a Web browser.

Packaging the Project

When packaging a project, Producer copies all the elements of the project into a compressed project archive file with an .MSProducerZ file name extension. To package a project, do the following:

1. On the File menu, click Pack and Go.

2. Enter a location for the project archive file.

The file is created. You can then copy the file to another computer, open the project archive in Producer, and then continue working on the project.

Publishing the Project

When it comes time to publish a project, the Publish Wizard is used. Producer uses the same basic process regardless of whether it publishes to the local computer, a CD, a network location, or a Web folder. This section will describe publishing to Web folders, because that is how the Fabrikam Media department will make the presentations available in the Media Guide. The process is similar for publishing to any other location.

Typically, after a Fabrikam user finishes a project, the project is repacked and sent to the Media department. A producer in the Media department then checks the project for errors and production quality. The producer then publishes it to the Media Guide. At another company, a completely different review process might be required before a presentation is released companywide. A SharePoint staging site can be created for a work in progress, which would be accessible only to a review team, the presenter, and others who are working on the project.

One useful feature of Producer is its ability to publish directly to SharePoint Portal Server. The moment the files have finished copying to the server, they can be accessed by users through the Media Guide. If the user has entered metadata in the project, such as title and descriptive text, the information is searchable from within the Media Guide.

At Fabrikam, when a project is published to the Media Guide site, the presentation Web pages and images will be copied to SharePoint Portal Server, and the Windows Media files will be copied to a location on the Windows Media server. The Publish Wizard in Microsoft Producer handles all of the linking automatically. All the user has to do is specify where the files should go.

To publish a project to the SharePoint Portal Server site, do the following:

1. On the File menu, click Publish Presentation.

2. In the Publish Wizard, click Web server, and then, in the drop-down list, click Add a new Web server.

3. On the Internet or Intranet Host Settings page, provide the following information:

   • In the Friendly host name box, type a name for this publishing profile. In the future, this name will appear in the drop-down box on the previous page of the wizard.

   • In the Publish Web files to box, type the location of the Web folder in the format http://PortalServer/Workspace/Documents. PortalServer is the name of the server running SharePoint Portal Server, Workspace refers to the workspace on the server to which files can be copied, and Documents is the Web folder the presentation files are stored in. The Web files in your presentation are copied to this location.

   • In the Playback presentation address (optional) box, type the intranet location from which the presentation will be played back (for example, http://PortalServer/Workspace/Documents).

   • Select the Publish Windows Media files to check box, and then type the shared network location to which the Windows Media files will be copied; for example \\Mediaserver\Wwwroot\Sharedfolder. You can also specify the URL in the format http://Mediaserver/Alias if IIS on the Windows Media server has Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) enabled. It was automatically enabled on the Web server when SharePoint was installed.

   • In the Playback address for Windows Media files box, type the publishing point on the Windows Media server from which the Windows Media files will be played back (for example, mms://Mediaserver/Alias).

   • If you have enabled Web discussions on the specified server, select the Discussion server address check box. A discussion server can be used if a presentation is part of a collaborative team effort or was designed to initiate a discussion.

   • In the Discussion server address box, type the name of the Web discussion server (for example, http://Discussionserver).

4. Complete the Publish Wizard.

When you click Finish on the last page of the wizard, Producer creates a finished video file, compresses image files, creates all the associated Web elements, and links the files. At the end of the process, you should test playback of the presentation to make sure the links and paths are correct. After a project has been published, end users can play the presentation by opening the default Web page in Internet Explorer.

In the next chapter, the Fabrikam IT department installs and configures Windows Media servers in remote locations so that end users anywhere in the company can stream on-demand content to their computer desktops.