PowerPoint to YouTube + iTunes - authorSTREAM

The online presentation-sharing site authorSTREAM offers an exciting array of features that teachers, trainers, students, and other presenters will love. I gave the service a brief test (shown in the image above), and was very impressed.

The freely available authorSTREAM Beta promises that when I upload my PowerPoint presentation, I will be able to easily share it online. So how is this different from an online presentation service like Slideshare? Let me share only three of authorSTREAM's distinctive features:

1. Animation and Narration. After uploading, the authorSTREAM content retains PowerPoint narration and animation. This features alone would make the service worth checking out. But there's more...
   
   
2. Download as Video. After you upload your narrated, animated PowerPoint presentation, authorSTREAM will also let you download it as an mpeg file -- perfect for uploading to YouTube. Now, your presentation can become even more visible.
   
   
3. View in iTunes. Those who have iTunes installed on their computers (and what student doesn't? ;) can choose RSS delivery of the narrated presentation. From there, it's a short hop to a portable mp3 player like a video iPod. This can make PowerPoint presentations more portable.
   

My test experience. I gave authorSTREAM a test run, and found the experience easy and enjoyable. After signing up for a free account, I quickly narrated the slides in a short PowerPoint presentation. I uploaded the show to authorSTREAM. Within a few minutes, I received an engaging email that told me how to view and share my uploaded presentation. I quickly saw that I made three glaring mistakes:

1. Learn from my sound mistakes! Upon viewing my presentation, I noted the sound quality was poor. Because the service has a 30MG upload limit, I set my PowerPoint recording levels very low -- too low! To improve the sound, I significantly bumped up the quality of the narration within PowerPoint and re-narrated -- but this time, it was too high! I exceeded the 30MG limit -- rats! I re-recorded again at 44,100 kHz, 8 bit mono -- and achieved a better sound quality (not perfect, but not horrible, either.) In order to find the best level for your own needs, you might have to noodle with your own sound levels.
   
   
2. Learn from my animation mistakes! I also noted that some of my animations did not translate properly after upload. I only found out later that some of PowerPoint's animations do not translate properly -- authorSTREAM lists the effects that are most likely to work well. (Apparently, "Fly" isn't one of them! Slide 7 of my test presentation shows the late arrival of my falcon!)
   
   
3. Learn from my image mistakes! On slide 19 of the above-linked test, my images went awry -- and I simply cannot find a reason. The authorSTREAM FAQ suggests keeping image ascii values below 255 -- but that still didn't fix the wonky image display. This only happened in 1 slide the 24-slide presentation that I tested. All of the other images displayed just fine.

You can view my short test presentation, Birds + Bees : 4 Simple Truths About Social Media at the authorSTREAM site. Besides online viewing, the site allows blog embedding, commenting, bookmarking and many of the other social media features you'd expect. And as mentioned earlier, you can download the presentation as an mpeg file. I tested this feature, and was able to easily download, then upload the presentation to YouTube, as well (the YouTube version of the presentation is here.)

Have fun with authorSTREAM! I'm sure educators, trainers, students, and others will enjoy using the free service to easily find and share their narrated, animated PowerPoint presentations. ¶ 4/09/2008 09:54:00 AM 3 Comments Links to this post