Monday, December 12, 2005
Christmas, PowerPoint, and Streaming Abundance!
As we enter the season of Advent, I know a ton of churches that are planning special PowerPoint programs...let's face it: people love singing Christmas carols this time of year, but sometimes, we forget the words!
To make sure we're all on the same page, many churches use the "follow the bouncing ball" type of Christmas PowerPoint presentation for lyrics. I've seen this done to great effect...with the more creative souls choreographing the lyrics with breathtaking photos of Christmas, as well as other powerful images.
It's a great time of year to get creative with Christmas PowerPoint! And you can easily share your visionary, spiritual PowerPoint presentation with a much larger congregation that your local church!
Here's how:
About a month ago, I received a call from a spiritual healer, Kim Spalding. Kim wrote and performed an inspirational song (complete with piano and vocals) -- and her friend created a PowerPoint slide show with images and lyrics. Kim wanted to share the PowerPoint file on her website -- but alas -- the file was too huge!
I told Kim to give Camtasia a try: Camtasia Studio by Techsmith easily records PowerPoint files, and will save them as any number of streaming video files: avi, wmv, mov, swf.
Why is this important? Two words spring to mind:
Instant Gratification- When the file size is smaller, your audience doesn't have to wait (long) to see your huge presentation! Further, your online audience doesn't even have to download your PowerPoint file, and then launch it to view your presentation. By streaming your presentation over the web, your audience can enjoy a richer web-based multimedia experience.
Kim chose to record her PowerPoint file as a .wmv file, so that her online audience could either use RealPlayer or Windows Media Player to view her presentation....and usually most online browsers will have one of these programs installed as their default media viewer. (If they don't -- no sweat! Each of the players is a free download, to boot!)
If you have RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, you can hear and view Kim's beautiful song and presentation "Calling All God's Children". You can visit Kim's site to see and hear her presentation...
And with the magic of Camtasia, Kim's song is readily available for the entire world to enjoy.
Now, what about you? How are you going to use PowerPoint to spread a message of hope this holiday season? ¶ 12/12/2005 04:23:00 PM
As we enter the season of Advent, I know a ton of churches that are planning special PowerPoint programs...let's face it: people love singing Christmas carols this time of year, but sometimes, we forget the words!
To make sure we're all on the same page, many churches use the "follow the bouncing ball" type of Christmas PowerPoint presentation for lyrics. I've seen this done to great effect...with the more creative souls choreographing the lyrics with breathtaking photos of Christmas, as well as other powerful images.
It's a great time of year to get creative with Christmas PowerPoint! And you can easily share your visionary, spiritual PowerPoint presentation with a much larger congregation that your local church!
Here's how:
About a month ago, I received a call from a spiritual healer, Kim Spalding. Kim wrote and performed an inspirational song (complete with piano and vocals) -- and her friend created a PowerPoint slide show with images and lyrics. Kim wanted to share the PowerPoint file on her website -- but alas -- the file was too huge!
I told Kim to give Camtasia a try: Camtasia Studio by Techsmith easily records PowerPoint files, and will save them as any number of streaming video files: avi, wmv, mov, swf.
Why is this important? Two words spring to mind:
Instant Gratification- When the file size is smaller, your audience doesn't have to wait (long) to see your huge presentation! Further, your online audience doesn't even have to download your PowerPoint file, and then launch it to view your presentation. By streaming your presentation over the web, your audience can enjoy a richer web-based multimedia experience.
Kim chose to record her PowerPoint file as a .wmv file, so that her online audience could either use RealPlayer or Windows Media Player to view her presentation....and usually most online browsers will have one of these programs installed as their default media viewer. (If they don't -- no sweat! Each of the players is a free download, to boot!)
If you have RealPlayer or Windows Media Player, you can hear and view Kim's beautiful song and presentation "Calling All God's Children". You can visit Kim's site to see and hear her presentation...
And with the magic of Camtasia, Kim's song is readily available for the entire world to enjoy.
Now, what about you? How are you going to use PowerPoint to spread a message of hope this holiday season? ¶ 12/12/2005 04:23:00 PM
