Adobe Presenter still falls short of the mark...
Adobe Presenter is basically the same application as the older Breeze Presenter application that was packaged as a part of Breeze. It has just been updated basically to say "Adobe" instead of "Macromedia". It still falls far short in the ability to customize many elements of the shell. It seems like Adobe would take the initiative and rework the product giving users the control over the presentation shell that they need to have. Instead, we are left a generic tool that you can't properly brand to your needs.
Presenter is an extremely good tool for taking power point presentations and converting them into online flash presentations with audio and video. My gripe is with the "viewer.swf" that is published along with the files from powerpoint. Where is the source for it? Adobe will tell you there is no source for it. It is generated from the Presenter tool and is part of the presentation. What they don't tell you though is that the "viewer.swf" file is generic and isn't tied to any one presentation. What drives the "viewer.swf" are the supporting XML files and not the swf itself.
What does this mean? This means that Adobe could release a "viewer.fla" to users so they can customize the shell for their company. This means you wouldn't be stuck with the generic loading screen and you could further customize the shell to fit your needs. There are ways that I talk about in my blog to "hack" some things together to rebrand parts of the shell to meet your needs, but there are a lot of things you can't change from the XML.
Again, let me say that Presenter is a first rate app, but it has some serious shortcomings. The lack of control over the customization of the shell is rather shocking. For a tool that developers pay thousands of dollars for they should be releasing the entire source code and not hiding it. It is a shame for me to be so negative about a good tool, but it is also a shame that Adobe and Macromedia prior to them released such a restricted application.
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-Adobe should release a viewer.fla file so licensed users can customize the player to meet the needs of their clients. Presenter hands down blows away Microsoft's own Producer for Powerpoint, which has lied dormant since 2003. But as a Producer publisher, I can change any element I wish and completely brand it my own. Microsoft knows I don't want to lose my clients to their own company, becuase I'll continue to spend money with Microsoft to deliver to my customers. Adobe should look at it the same way.
-Video and Audio syncing needs major tweaking. While I can fairly easily sycnronize audio to the slides, and Presenter does a nice job of chopping the audio files up so everything loads quickly and conveniently, they left video out to dry. In many of my presentations for corporate clients, they want a talking ehad. To do this, I need to edit the entire video clip into seperate clips to coincide with the slides. This takes a long time, and makes the video choppy in feel. In Adobe's defense, this might be becuase of too many factors going into the video streaming, but some sort of solution should be presented in the long run.
All in all, I'm very thankful this program is available, as I'm able to deliver a much higher quality product to my clients in a short time, but I am afraid of losing them becuase of the inability to take out branding by Adobe.
To end on a positive note, Presenter has given me a chance to wow my customers and keep them working with my company. Adobe: Please give us an fla to customize so we can really show off your fine fine product!
The viewer.swf is generated from the PowerPoint plugin and is generic. There is no reason why they couldn't at the same time they generate that viewer.swf also generate a viewer.fla in that same folder. It seems a waste for such a good product to lack important features.
It would be like having the flash player, but have the Adobe logo appear before every flash movie you generate. You have to pay quite a lot of money for the ability to even publish Adobe Presenter files. And then you get the privilege of advertising for them before every presentation. Presenter should be just as hands off as Flash is and it should only have stuff like that in the right-click menu.
I know that recording with the built in audio-recorder sometimes produces low quality audio. This is especially true if you are using a pc microphone. But you can increase the quality by going and getting a good microphone. When I say a good microphone I mean go to a store that supplies recording equipment and get a microphone from there. They sell microphones that will hook up to a pc using the mini plug instead of the standard XLR plug.
Our client was still unsatisfied with that and we ended up having to go to a studio to record the audio for the presentations and then import that audio into Presenter.
Another reader actually had a lot of luck using multiple decompilers to decompile the code. That actually came close to a viable version, but it still wouldn't work correctly.
"Flash Movie API
"Flash movies created by the PowerCONVERTER have an Interface that allows software developers to execute any function that the movie supports or that is used in reproducing the functionality of PowerPoint. This Interface also raises events to its host in two ways. The more sophisticated method functions when the movie is hosted within another Flash movie. With this method, events can be reviewed or modified before and after they are handled by the movie. The second method works when the movie is hosted in an HTML page. The events are raised by calls to the host HTML page's Javascript engine. Beyond the functionality that supports PowerPoint functions, the Interface also supports settings that suppress certain functions like navigation buttons, automatic slide advance, etc. This facilitates features like replacing the movie's built in navigation with functionality in a host Flash Movie. Lastly, the Interface exposes access to the slide thumbnails and speaker notes (as sprites) so that they can be selectively displayed or hidden and repositioned as needed."
http://www.presentationpro.com/products/pcxp_api.a...
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I haven't tried Powerconverter yet to see if its quality of output compares with Breeze, but if it does, this could give perhaps provide the customizability (a word?) you're looking for.
Speaking of Breeze shortcomings, this seems like there must be some workarounds/fixes. If it works published from Flash, shouldn't it work in Breeze Presenter too? Anyone know of a way to fix this other than just taking the audio out of the Flash file and recording it in Breeze Presenter?
I really appreciate any help with this,
Jared
Another method to preserve the end quality of the audio would be after you published your presentation in Breeze to replace the MP3 files with higher quality versions. You just have to keep them the same length as the ones exported and the same filenames. This is because their lengths and the filenames are in xml.
var MyClip_mcl = new MovieClipLoader();
MyClip_mcl.loadClip("viewer.swf", MyClip_mcl);
Does anyone help me, please?
Thanx in advance
Luis
var MyClip_mcl = new MovieClipLoader();
MyClip_mcl.loadClip("viewer.swf");
You can also use it like this as well if you have a MC on the stage you want to load your clip into:
MyClip_mcl.loadMovie("viewer.swf");
Hope that helps.
Thanks.
If you go into the "Data" folder of a published Breeze/Connect presentation you should see an xml file named "vconfig.xml". In this file you can modify this line to set the initial tab:
<uireplace name="initialtab" value="outline"/>
And these lines to select which tabs you want to show:
<uishow name="outline" value="true"/>
<uishow name="thumbnail" value="true"/>
<uishow name="notes" value="true"/>
<uishow name="search" value="true"/>
The formating of the above items in that xml file isn't the best it could be. A lot of them show up on the same line... :(
I hope this helps though.
I am trying to disable the Next button of the builder-in Breeze viewer until the timing for the slide has expired in order to prevent users from clicking forward before the slide has completed playing. Can anyone help?
It would also be great if there was a way to prevent this on the Contents tab.
Thanks,
Taylor
Has anyone researched the Articulate Engage program? It seems to do the same things as Presenter. Any comparison would be great. Thanks.