Two for One PowerPoint

Organizations spend a great deal of money, time, and resources developing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. However, many miss an opportunity to get even more mileage from this investment by using the presentation as the basis for both a webinar and a video.

Webinars vs. videos
Both webinars and videos offer benefits, albeit different ones:

• A webinar's strength lies in its immediacy. Webinars offer customers an interactive, high-energy experience. Attendees usually have the opportunity to ask questions of expert presenters. Companies gain a valuable connection with contacts and potential customers.
• A video is a polished, visually appealing way to educate or excite viewers. Videos often reach a broad audience and can be used in a multitude of ways.

Webinars and videos also have differing requirements and restraints:

• Webinars, which have fairly simple production values, should have low bandwidth demands; video usually incorporates more complex graphics and recorded audio tracks, so it requires more bandwidth.
• Webinars are given by live presenters that interact with live audiences. Videos are not live, and thus no interactivity takes place.
• Webinars' pacing can be slower than that of videos.
• Viewers experience webinars from beginning to end but often jump through videos to find desired content.

So how can an organization use one presentation to create such diverse products? Planning is the key.

Four steps to success
By thinking ahead, companies can head off expensive and time-consuming revisions and develop a base presentation that can form a foundation for both webinars and videos.

1. Start with the basics. The first thing to understand is that webinars need toned-down animations and embedded objects; videos should pump up animations, add transitions, and take advantage of embedded objects. Therefore, the first step is to build a deck with high-quality, carefully chosen professional graphics and animation. Avoiding embedded video or other bandwidth-greedy objects at this stage is important.
2. Plan for the future. During development of the deck, the organization should be thinking about the "bells and whistles" that will be added for the video: animations, transitions, video overlays, and so on. Planning these components at this stage will help ensure they fit seamlessly with the existing style of the presentation.
3. Think before speaking. Speaker's notes are fine, but organizations should be aware that these notes in their entirety aren't likely to be suitable for videos. Many educational webinars contain pages of notes. Pacing of the audio is not hurried because the emphasis is on learning. The audio of the finished webinar is a great resource for the video creation, but organizations will want to trim this audio first. Furthermore, if the webinar audio wasn't professionally recorded, the sound quality may not be adequate. Good audio is vital for a successful video.
4. Provide a roadmap. Especially when transitioning a webinar to an educational video (for use in an education library), companies should either provide chaptering so that viewers can easily find the content they want or consider creating multiple, smaller videos.

More collateral for less cost
By planning for both webinars and videos when creating PowerPoint presentations, companies can reduce production costs by leveraging elements in both versions. The result is an integrated, cohesive set of materials that can be used for a variety of purposes, from educational to promotional.

Increase Interest with Video Brochures

Integrated marketing has taken over the communications landscape. Online technologies, Web video and direct-response marketing are increasingly interconnected. This trend allows producers to communicate a message in multiple ways and increase audience interactions through a variety of touch points.

How can organizations make the most of the online bandwagon? One way that successful marketers are extending their message is by embedding video into their other marketing collateral, creating interactive video brochures.

Create compelling stories
Video brochures combine text and static graphics with embedded video to create a story that pulls in readers. These brochures — or other integrated collateral, such as white papers, data sheets and case studies — go beyond a static description of a product or success story.

• After reading about a new product or service, customers can click to watch a quick demo.
• Instead of just viewing quotes from a satisfied client, readers can watch a testimonial — from within the case study.
• Interest in learning more about a service or product can be immediately satisfied through embedded video.

Brochures that integrate video encourage viewer interaction and response, making it easier to capture and measure information about viewer activity and response.

The business benefits of this type of brochure are numerous. Incorporating video allows you to

• Highlight important features and benefits of your product or service;
• Illustrate how and why your product or company is superior to the competition;
• Enhance the image and credibility of your brand; and
• Motivate the audience to take action.

Learn more about your readers
At the same time that video brochures offer a more satisfying reading experience, they can help companies learn more about readers. Video brochures are versatile tools:

• They can be distributed through email, websites, blogs or social media.
• Video brochures generate higher response rates than traditional email.
• They provide an actionable, interactive message through audio/visual content and direct calls to action.
• They can be pushed to target viewers.
• Embedded mechanisms can collect viewer activity and response data.

Furthermore, the audio/visual content in the brochures works in a variety of materials, saving marketing dollars and tying together a cohesive messaging strategy.

How Can Video Be Embedded in a Brochure?

Typically, marketing collateral are created and distributed in PDF format. Adobe’s Acrobat software can embed Flash video directly into a PDF file. However, given that video makes PDF files very large, an alternative would be to host your video on a special page on your site, so the video can be played back via a browser. Added benefits would be that website analytics can track the video playbacks and changes can be made to the video page without having to change the PDF.

What you need
To be effective, the audio/visual elements of your brochures must include some interactive elements. For example, you can give readers some level of playback control. The format of these elements should, of course, be compatible with multiple platforms and devices so that the brochure can be distributed online and will have maximum portability.

It is also important that reader action can be measured in a meaningful way. Successful video brochures feature a means to capture and store viewer interactions. These data can then be used for analysis, feedback or sales purposes.

Five factors are required to create an effective video brochure:

• Engaging content
• Portability and universal accessibility
• Intuitive viewer controls
• Viral capabilities
• Ease of use and modification for marketers

You can maximize your return on investment (ROI) by using professional content development. Doing so reduces the strain on in-house graphic- and content-creation resources, and working with a single provider to create multiple elements of your marketing collateral ensures a consistent message throughout.

At Digital Dazzle, our experts can create both the collateral and the video for powerful presentations that will inspire audiences to take action! Contact us for a no-cost consultation on what makes videos work. Call us at 415.937.1791.

Video Stat of the Week: Video Marketing Usage Increases Rapidly in 2012

According to a new report released by Social Media Examiner last month, YouTube and video marketing top all other social media for investments this year.

Why Online Video?

There are several reasons why online video's popularity has increased:

1. Access to audiences is much easier, esp. via YouTube
2. Online video creation has come down in cost, although professional creation is still very important
3. Video helps improve SEO rankings and searchability of marketeers' content

Given these facts there is no reason why you should not utilize online video as part of your Marketing mix.

Easily present your Powerpoint presentation on an iPad

Moving your Powerpoint presentation to an iPad is not an easy feat, since Microsoft never released a Powerpoint viewer for the iPad. But Slideshark has - and it's surprisingly useful.

Upload your presentation to your iPad

Uploading your presentation is very straight-forward:

1. Create an account on Slideshark.
2. Upload your presentation.
3. If you have not done so yet, download the free iPad app from the AppStore.
4. Log into the iPad app and download the presentation from the Slideshark's website.

That's it - you are ready to present.

Presenting from your iPad

On your iPad, use AirPlay or Apple's HDMI adapter to connect to your screen and present directly from your iPad. Even better, Slideshark supports a special presentation mode where your audience sees your presentation, but you see the slides, your notes, the prior and next slides. There's also a timer that allows you to keep track of the elapsed presentation time.

All of this works straight out of the box - we did not have to fiddle with fonts, colors, images or animations. Everything was preserved.

What's not supported

There are a number of Powerpoint features that are not supported:

• We could not play back any embedded videos.
• slide transitions did not work, either.
• According to Slideshark, advanced animations might not work fully either. Neither will hyperlinks or any 3rd-party components.

Verdict

Slideshark has instantly become our favorite Powerpoint presentation tool on the iPad. If we need video, we use Keynote. We don't miss the lack of transition support - less is often more when it comes to presenting. And everything else Slideshark handled well.

Highly recommended!

Powerpoint in Motion

Click on the image above to download the sample PowerPoint presentation.

Many people have seen presentations that incorporate animations. But if it has been a while since you explored Microsoft PowerPoint’s animation capabilities — either because you think they are too complicated or because you have experienced a less-than-professional animated presentation — take another look. Professional, well-executed animations can bring a presentation to life and keep viewers’ attention.

Easy as 1, 2, 3

PowerPoint provides built-in animation capabilities. Some visual effects are easy to implement:

• Entrances and exits of graphic elements and bullets
• Changes in size, color or rotation of text or objects
• Movement of elements You can hide items to focus viewer attention precisely where and when you need it. In short, animation allows you greater control over your information.

Advanced animations

Suppose you want to explain to your audience what is involved to get a new version of a product launched, including all the various tasks that your company, its suppliers and third parties have to perform. It’s not trivial to explain this succinctly, so that your audience will be able to follow along.

Rather than creating pages of pages of text bullets, an animation might be a much better way to tell the story. Just take a look at the image sequence above. Do you want to see the full animation in PowerPoint? Simply download the presentation from our website.

Of course, quality graphics and text are the basis of a well-animated presentation. Professional content development is the first step and can take the pressure off internal resources.

At Digital Dazzle, our experts can create and package powerful presentations that will inspire audiences to take action! Contact Digital Dazzle for a no-cost consultation and to learn how our talented presentation specialists consistently deliver excellent corporate presentations, cost-effectively and on tight deadlines. Call us at 415.937.1791.

Why to use Video for Social Media Marketing

The Social Media Examiner recently conducted a survey of over 3,800 marketers with the goal of understanding how they are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. The information derived from the survey was summarized in the Examiner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Report.

Here are two of the report’s primary findings:

• Marketers still place high value on social media: A significant 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.

• Video marketing holds the top spot for future plans: A significant 76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of Youtube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2012.

Based on these findings, here are tips to help you effectively include videos in your social marketing campaign and keep up with your marketing peers:

1. Increase your 2012 budget for videos.
2. Add links to videos in your social media communications. These links should lead to an appealing landing page, where the video is embedded.
3. People want to access social media wherever they are. So, make sure your videos can be viewed on any device (desktop, notebook, mobile device) without losing production quality. This also means they should be optimized for small screens.
4. To draw customers from Youtube to your site, embed a link and a call to action in your video.
5. Add a sharing function to your video so that prospects can pass it along to colleagues and other decision makers via social media and other channels.

The experts at Digital Dazzle are very familiar with optimizing video for social media. If you would like help, contact us by email or at 415.937.1791.

Video Stat of the Week: Video Viewership

Mark Hosbein, a vice president with Nielsen, recently presented a series of video-focused stats and observations in a meeting with marketers from the greater Los Angeles area.

To nobody's surprise, video viewership has increased over the last years and will certainly continue to do so this year as well. The surprising statistic was the rapid increase in mobile video viewing, by more than 200% in the last 3 years. Corresponding with that number was a decrease in desktop viewership.

This has implications for video marketeers:

• Serve up your video as HTML5 video, not Flash.
• Make sure that your web design allows for viewing of videos on small screens.
• Optimize for small screens - use lightbox overlays that support different sizes for your videos based on the device that a video is viewed on.
• Similarly, ensure that your video content doesn't break down when the video is viewed at Half Size.
• Embed analytics that differentiate between mobile and desktop/notebook viewing.

If you follow these guidelines, you can be assured that your intended audience will be able to watch your videos, not matter what devices they are on.

Why we will adopt Adobe Creative Cloud

As part of its Creative Suite 6 announcement, Adobe also confirmed pricing for its new Creative Cloud service, which allows you to use all Creative Suite applications, plus some other features, for a monthly fee - initially, $29.99 for the first 12 months, then $49.99 thereafter.

Within our digital agency, all of our employees mainly use five different adobe products - Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects and Premiere. The most affordable way to acquire these licenses for these five programs is by purchasing the Creative Suite Master Collection.

As of today, the Creative Suite Master Collection upgrade from CS5 to CS6 cost $1,399 and can be purchased from Amazon for as low as $1,145.  Since Adobe typically upgrades its Creative Suite every 18 months, the Creative Cloud Service will cost us $900 per user for 18 months, or as much as the Educational version of the Master Collection would cost us, if we would qualify (which we don't).  So to us, it is a no-brainer that we will sign up for the Creative Cloud service.

Make Your Presentations Unforgettable

In the hit film Memento, the protagonist uses an intricate series of tattoos to keep track of his progress in hunting down the criminals who attacked him, robbing him of his short-term memory. You might not be fighting crime, but by understanding how short-term memory functions, you can create killer Microsoft PowerPoint presentations that will stick with viewers.

Forget me not
Short-term memory — also called working memory — actively holds information in our minds so that we can perform verbal and nonverbal tasks such as reasoning and comprehension. Our working memory also makes this information available for further processing.

In general, this short-term working memory has a limited capacity. By breaking information into chunks, we can improve the chances that our message will be remembered. Keep it simple:

• seven digits
• six letters
• five words
• three phrases

Less is more
What does this mean for your presentation? Format your slides with small chunks in mind, and viewers are much more likely to retain the information you present. For best understanding and retention, Digital Dazzle suggests that you limit each PowerPoint slide to these maximums:

• Five bullets of one word each
• Three bullets, each consisting of one phrase or sentence that does not exceed one line

Need to put more bullets on a slide? Use animation to build the list. Just be sure to reveal no more than these recommended maximums at each step.

Presenting: PowerPoint Done Right

A great presentation can do many things: Reinforce your brand. Enhance credibility. Motivate your audience to action. Improve audience understanding.

Unfortunately, great presentations tend to be few and far between. Presenters often try to explain concepts by using Microsoft PowerPoint slides packed with words and bulleted lists. What these presentations miss is the opportunity to do what PowerPoint does best: show your audience your message.

From awful to amazing
Fortunately, Digital Dazzle can rescue your presentations from PowerPoint purgatory. The key is to remember that your audience isn’t interested in your PowerPoint prowess. They’re interested in your message.

Digital Dazzle creates optimized screen mockups that clearly illustrate the concepts you want to communicate.

For example, the screen shot below shows how our partner, Lithium, intends to combine an externally-facing community conversation (shown in the right column of the screen) within Brainpark, an internal collaboration tool (shown in the left column of the screen). This integration will allow employees of their joint customers to internally discuss support issues while seeing in context what users are saying publicly.

Note that the functionality shown does not yet exist. But instead of trying to explain how the integration would work, Lithium used our mockup to show to their customers how the integration would work.

You can expend a lot of effort and thousands of words trying to explain an emerging concept — and still fail to communicate your idea to your audience. Instead, Digital Dazzle creates a visual example of the concept as if it already exists, so that your audience can see how the result will actually appear.

Digital Dazzle typically creates between four and six mockups that clients can then use to visually demonstrate complex concepts or proposed solutions that don’t yet exist. We can also create infographics and animations to help you tell your story.

By letting your audience see your ideas as they will look when complete, you can create a shorter, more focused presentation and make an immediate impact on your listeners.

Contact us for a no-cost consultation and learn how to give your presentations real power.

Keep trying new software - the only way to find the gems

Do you try new software? Often, occasionally or never?

We try new software all the time, since we keep looking for great tools to improve what we are doing or to add them to our arsenal.

But often, it takes more than one glance to figure out the power of a software app.  Or even one glance.

Case in point: Flexibits' Fantastical.

Our initial take was predictable: Yet-another taskbar app that allows a user to schedule calendar appointments.  We already have two free ones, we don't use them, so why even bother evaluating a new app, especially if it is not free?

So we did not bother.  Until I ran into Michael Simmons, one of Fantastical's creators, at Macworld.

He gave me a demo. I threw my objections at him, one at a time, and he showed me how to address them. 15 minutes later, I was sold - at home at night, I downloaded the app, tried it for 15 more minutes and then bought a license. And the next day I went back to Macworld to thank Michael for selling me on it.

So what's so special about Fantastical? It's the only taskbar calendaring app I've used that allows me to do everything without taking my hands off the keyboard. Hit a hotkey to bring it up and start typing your appointment in natural language. It knows how to interpret location and date information, plus recurring appointments.  There's even a shortcut for assigning the appointment to a specific calendar.  I'm done in seconds and can move on to my next task.

And that productivity boost is worth the cost of Fantastical, and then some. Thanks, Michael, for convincing me to give it a try!

Keynote a good tool for animation prototyping

Apple's Keynote has long been known as an excellent presentation tool on the Mac. But did you know that it can be used for much more?

The ESPI At Work blog outlined how they use Keynote as a rapid prototyping tool to quickly develop and test designs of new websites and apps. They are not alone. We also use Keynote extensively to develop storyboards and even concept video animations for client approval before polishing these concepts into final motion animations.

Of course, we could (and also do) use Powerpoint for storyboarding, but not for creating concept video animations.  The main reason for choosing Keynote is its advanced animation set, which allow not only for more different types of animations, but also for alpha-key'ed video exports, which you cannot do in Powerpoint.

You don't have to always use high-end or professional tools to develop assets and concepts, although we typically revert to these during the later stages of the development process.  But during the initial, creative phase, when speed is more important than refinement, we use prosumer or consumer applications rather than professional tools to get the job done quickly.

If you have a Mac and don't use Keynote, maybe you should check it out to see how it can allow you to quickly prototype animations and designs?  It is available from the Mac App Store.

iMovie on the iPad - good for casual videos only

Now that the New iPad has been out for a bit more than a week, how good is iMovie on the iPad with regards to producing videos?  Can it replace iMovie on the Mac?

The folks at ArsTechnica posted a review of iMovie on the new iPad. Their answer is similar to what we saw - while it supports 1080p, it's a good enough video editor for casual video to be posted to Facebook or YouTube, but not good enough for any serious work.  Apart from the fact that it is tricky to import and edit footage not shot on the iPad, the editing tools are still a bit limited, lacking features such as basic color and contrast controls, plus more advanced titling.

For now, while it's great fun to crank out some home videos quickly, we will not iMovie on the iPad for anything else.

Adobe Lightroom for Videographers

If you are a photographer, you know about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.  You might even use it on a daily basis - it's one of the best tools out there for managing lots of photos.

As a Videographer, though, you might not have cared about Lightroom too much.  But you should. With the newly released version 4 of Lightroom, Adobe not only cut the price by 50%, but it significantly beefed up support for video.

Most importantly, you can quickly apply changes to the look of your videos - change the white balance, adjust exposure, contrast, blacks and whites and make your videos more vibrant.  While you might already have other tools to do any of these adjustments, if you asset-manage your videos via Lightroom, as we do, why not also use its capabilities to make derivatives with specific adjustments?

Overall, we already upgraded and integrated Lightroom into our video production process.

Solve the Partner Catch-22 Problem

Did you know that 70 percent of all new corporate partnerships fail to drive revenue? This is because of the notorious “Partner Catch-22” problem: Neither partner wants to invest its own money and resources in developing joint partner solutions until the partner relationship has generated a pipeline of leads. Yet, building such a pipeline is traditionally impossible without first making the aforementioned investment.

Luckily, a Partner Enablement Video can offer an end to this vicious cycle in several important ways:

• Bring integration solutions to life for sales teams and clients, even when those solutions are still in the planning stages.
• Demonstrate key partner differentiators and benefits — cost-effectively.
• Start pre-selling offerings in as few as two to three weeks.

A video will demonstrate your partnership, its offerings and its benefits — even before the joint solution(s) has been created. What’s more, creating a video can decrease work for engineering and design teams and enhance innovation as many video concepts and designs are incorporated into the final specification.

One plus one equals more than two
It’s often difficult for one company’s clients to visualize how a new partnership will benefit them. After all, they’re used to using the current solution in one way — by itself.

By creating a video that demonstrates the benefits of nascent partner offerings, you can create an actionable vision that will generate enthusiasm among your sales team members and your clientele. Both gain an immediate understanding of the joint solution’s benefits and experience a deeper level of engagement.

Better yet, you can use video to customize your message. For example, you can produce separate versions of your video for different customer verticals so that customers can understand how the partnership applies specifically to them. You can even target a video to your own and your partner’s sales forces so that they have a true understanding of how to adapt their selling strategies.

A successful Partnership Enablement Video accomplishes several essential goals:

• Exhibits how the companies’ combined efforts will work
• Clearly demonstrates the solution’s benefit to viewers
• Clarifies the strengths and boundaries of the partnership
• Differentiates products and services
• Educates viewers about the other partner’s technology or reputation
• Increases brand awareness for both companies

Having this information upfront will save time and money.

Take the example of two tech companies that decide to integrate their software products. Posting a laundry list of the benefits of each partner’s products doesn’t actually show customers the true benefit of both partners’ software components working together. Instead, the companies can use video to bring the integration to life and actually walk users through use cases and demonstrate how the new integration will work — in a way that makes the benefits immediately apparent.

Create compelling stories to strengthen your brands — and your partnership
The key to putting together a great video that will boost your partnership is making sure that your selected video producer truly understands both companies, their particular industry or industries, the benefits of the new partnership and its offering, and what it takes to capture viewers’ interest and clarify the message for them.

A quality video producer has not only specific skills and knowledge about video but also these qualities:

• A thorough understanding of your company and your industry
• A tried and consistent method for researching others
• A strong foundation of communication for finalizing details

Put these pieces together, and you end up with the story of your partnership and its benefits. And compelling storytelling is the quickest way to strengthen your brand and connect with your existing — and future — clients.

 

A Case in Point
Lithium Technologies worked with Digital Dazzle to establish a systematic approach for using its partners’ distribution channels and eliciting leads from partner accounts.

The solution included creating Partner Enablement Videos, which were used, first, to train each partner’s sales teams and, secondly to present to prospective customers. According to Henry Bruckstein, then Lithium’s director of partner alliances, Lithium enjoyed a dramatic increase in qualified leads from its partners, a significant acceleration in the sales process and an upsurge in the number of sales.

 

Help Yourself
So you’ve decided to create a Partnership Enablement Video. There are few things that you can do to make the process easier and more successful:

• Be committed to the partnership. Don’t get possessive about which company is the “stronger” partner;
• Know your selling points and communicate them to the video experts;
• List the benefits and differentiators of your joint partner solution; and
• State what problems your joint partner solution solves.

 

How to mirror your iPad / iPhone screen on your Mac

Have you ever wanted to use your Mac to record the action on your iPhone or iPad screen? It used to be that you used to have quite an elaborate setup to do so.

Not any longer.  The new Reflection App allows you to do so via AirPlay.  And at $14.99 for a single license ($39.99 for a 5 pack), it is much less expensive than any other means we've used or seen.

What you get for your money is full iPhone / iPad (running iOS 5) mirroring, including audio, with orientation updates and video optimization features, similar to what you would get with the Xcode iOS simulator. In our tests, our iPad screen looked crisp and snappy on our iMac and audio sounded fantastic.  In test recordings via Screenflow, we saw no frame-slipping, but had some audio recording issues that we're digging into right now.

If you have a need to display your iPad screen on your Mac, esp. for screen recording purposes, Reflection is an app you need to have in your arsenal.

Presentation Fail

We've all seen them, sometimes even done it ourselves.  Horrible presenters, horrible presentations. Doing the things you are not supposed to do. Habitudes for Communicators has put together a video for a glimpse of the dark side of presenting, highlighting many of the snafus we are encountering whenever we present or get presented to.

Does it have to be this way? No. But as long as we don't put the proper preparation and care in our presentations, the title continues to ring true: Every Presentation Ever.

vlc - Even better in Version 2

Here at Digital Dazzle, the free vlc media player has long been our major work-horse for video playback. QuicktimeX is way too limited and Quicktime 7, while pretty good, is still no match for vlc.

With the release of version 2, vlc has even gotten better. Most importantly to us, we can now use Apple's Magic Trackpad as a secondary input device for vlc (we've long used a wired mouse as the main pointing device to the right of the keyboard and the trackpad as a secondary device to the left of the keypad.)  It requires a change deep down in vlc's preference settings (Preferences -> Show All -> Interface -> Hotkey Settings -> Hotkeys, then set Mouse Wheel to "Position Control"), but once it is set, you can use the vertical two-finger swipe to scrub through a video.  Even better, it is touch-sensitive - the faster you swipe, the faster you scrub through the video. Awesome!

The only downside so far - when starting a new video, it resizes the interface to the native video size without taking anamorphic settings into account.  A quick press of cmd-1 fixes this, but it would be great, if that wouldn't be required, like it wasn't in version 1.  I'm sure there's some settings buried deep down in the preferences to turn off this behavior, so if you know what the setting is, we'd appreciate a quick note.

Overall, though - a great program has gotten better.  We're happy!

Mountain Lion is coming - do you care?

Apple just revealed in private briefings to select journalists and bloggers that it is updating OSX from Lion to Mountain Lion in the summer and that going forward, it will support an annual upgrade cycle similar to what they do on iOS.

So what?

We're still on Snow Leopard and, according to our own published software upgrade policies, will start evaluating the Lion upgrade in the spring.  A summer release of Mountain Lion does not make a difference, except that we might wait until the end of the year and go straight to Mountain Lion.  We'll see how Mountain Lion will handle legacy software in our production environment before we decide when we will upgrade.

To us, the upcoming Adobe Creative Suite 6 upgrade is much more important than Lion vs. Mountain Lion.

p.s.

I'm sure, Corporate IT managers were less than thrilled when they heard the news given that these guys are typically on 3-year upgrade cycles.

How Long Should Your Videos Be?

As soon as viewers click Play, the race is on. If your video takes too long to capture viewers’ interest or doesn’t know when to call it quits, you could lose more than viewers’ attention — you could lose their business.

Telestream’s blog, The Screening Room, points out that the length of your video should depend on your target viewer’s place in the buying cycle.

• 30-second videos have the greatest likelihood of being watched in their entirety. Shoot for this length when viewers are unfamiliar with your company or message.

• 1 to 2-minute videos work best when viewers know your company but need more information to pique interest. Tip: Create concise, focused overviews or high-level demos.

• 3 to 10-minute videos should be saved for viewers who are already aware of and interested in you or your product. At this point, you are either aiming to create a desire to act or promoting the action itself. Tip: Offer valuable content and make it easy for viewers to act (e.g., by embedding links, buttons or contact info) while viewing that content.

Narrow your focus — and your video’s length — and watch viewer engagement rise.

How Long Is Too Long?

Here are some general guidelines for length, depending on the type of video:

• Advertisement: 30 seconds to 1 minute
• Landing or intro page: 1 to 2 minutes
• Demo or Promo: 4 to 5 minutes (6 minutes at the absolute maximum)
• Training: 20 minutes per segment

As an agency, we will skip iBooks Author

Apart from the big EULA hubbub that broke out yesterday over Apple's restrictive End-User License Agreement terms for their newly released iBooks Author software, there's another reason why we cannot use it in our creative process.

From Darrell Etherington's post on GigaOm:

iBooks Author won’t be as appealing to those users since it creates a file that is not quite epub2, not quite epub3, and not quite XHTML5, according to Vook’s blog which makes it “one channel only,” or essentially proprietary.

Our customers always want our work in standard formats (PDF or epub), since they never know what their customers need.  Thus, they will have to cover their bases and make our work available on more than just Apple devices.  And that's the reason why, no matter how slick iBooks Author is, we cannot use it in our creative process.

Which Tool To Use?

Do you need to create something on your computer? Write a paper? Or do you want to edit gantt chart, but you don't know what software to use?

Why don't use ask your fellow computer users?

 

BestVendor.com keeps a list of the most popular software tools. Once you go there, simply name your top three software tools, then access their database to find out what others are using.  While their results might reflect certain biases, they will at least give you some starting point when picking a good tool for the job.

 

13 Technical Challenges for Enterprise Video

The following 13 technical issues related to the implementation of video were identified by enterprise-class corporations in a 2011 study conducted by Interactive Media Strategies. Below are their rankings in order of importance:

1. Network security
2. Content security
3. Ability to embed video
4. Search and discovery
5. LDAP Integration
6. Content workflow management
7. Transcoding to multiple devices
8. Ability to track viewership
9. Ability to edit content
10. Enable upload of self-produced videos
11. Ability to distribute to mobile devices
12. Automate search engine submissions
13. Social media integration

While the responsibility of addressing many of these rest squarely on the shoulders of the Enterprise, a good agency can help address some of these challenges during the video creation process.  The agency can:

• Transcode videos for you or set up profiles for video transcoding to different mobile devices;
• Include subsequent edits as part of the initial package;
• Setup automated search engine submissions; and
• Track viewership, depending on the hosting arrangement.

When you engage with an agency, inquire about these additional benefits during the initial agency selection process.

2011 Enterprise Video Statistics

A few quick statistics on Enterprise video: According to the 2011 Enterprise Web Communications Survey conducted by Interactive Media Strategies:

• One-third of all corporations polled said they produce at least one video per week.
• Two-thirds of the firms surveyed plan to increase their video production in the coming year.
• The number of companies with online video budgets of $500,000 or more increased by 20 percent since their 2010 survey.

Add Video Power to Your PowerPoint Presentations

A truly great presentation keeps viewers engaged by showing them your ideas. A fantastic way to do this is to embed video in your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. Using video can serve a wealth of purposes — if it’s done right.

Action speaks louder than pictures

How does your organization use PowerPoint? Many organizations design presentations for multiple situations:

Just So You Know ...

According to Microsoft, Adobe Flash has some limitations in PowerPoint 2010 and cannot be played in PowerPoint 2011 on a Mac at all. You can’t use certain special effects (such as shadows or 3-D rotation) with Flash content, and you’ll lose the ability to compress these files for distribution. Thus, we don’t recommend using Flash for video playback in PowerPoint.

• To propose a partnership or make a sale in client meetings.
• To introduce work concepts in internal meetings.
• To demonstrate products in the company kiosk at trade shows.
• To educate staff about a new product.

In each instance, a well-placed video clip is worth considering. Imagine how much more potent viewers’ experience — and your calls to action — could be if you use the full potential of PowerPoint.

• Add a demo or screencast that shows users interacting with the product.
• Present a clip that demonstrates what to do (or not to do) when implementing a new work policy or meeting with a client.
• Provide testimonials from satisfied customers.

Fortunately, the current version of PowerPoint provides support for incorporating video.

	PowerPoint 2010 (Windows)	PowerPoint 2011 (Mac)
Windows Media (WMV)	Yes	Needs Flip4Mac player
Quicktime or h.264	Needs Quicktime player	yes
AVI	Needs AVI player	Needs AVI player

To see what video formats you are able to play on your computer, download our PowerPoint Test Page.

Easier embedding — and linking

PowerPoint 2010 supports embedded video as QuickTime, Windows Media or AVI files (.mov, .mp4, .wmv or .avi file formats). On Windows, you’ll need to have the appropriate QuickTime and AVI players installed (64-bit versions if you run PowerPoint 2010 64-bit). On Macs, you need Flip4Mac or an AVI player. Embedding the video allows you to keep the media file with the presentation.

However, if you’re concerned about the size of your presentation files or have video content that might be changed or updated, PowerPoint 2010 also allows you to link to an external video file or a website. (Of course, you’ll need to be sure that viewers will have access to an Internet connection in the latter case.)

The process of embedding or linking a video from within a PowerPoint presentation is fairly straightforward:

• Embed a file — Go to the Insert tab in the Media Group, click Video, click Video from file, choose a file, and then click Insert.
• Link to a file — Follow the same steps as to embed a video, but instead of clicking Insert as a final step, click the down arrow on the Insert button and choose Link to file.
• Link to a video on a website — On the Insert tab, click Video, click Video from website, and paste the embed code (which you must retrieve from the website) into the Video from website dialog box. Click Insert.

Know Your Limits

Video can punch up a PowerPoint presentation, but beware of going overboard. Use only quality clips that serve a purpose. And if you’re sending the presentation as a packaged file, be sure that the recipient has the necessary devices or software to support multimedia elements.

Embedding or linking a video is simple but doesn’t, of course, guarantee the quality of the clip, its appropriateness for the task at hand, or the quality of the playback.

Start the show

When you’re ready to distribute your presentation, PowerPoint 2010 gives you numerous options. Before deciding which one to use, you need to ask two questions:

• Which systems will the finished product run on and what are their technological specifications?
• Will the presentation be given manually (with a live person running the show) or automatically (self-running).

Depending on your answers, you can decide which delivery approach to take:

• Broadcast the presentation over the Internet to a remote audience.
• Burn the presentation to CD or DVD.
• Set up a self-running package.
• Publish the presentation online.
• Convert the entire presentation to Windows Media Video or Quicktime.

Space Savers

Worried about video increasing the size of your presentations? Optimizing your media files for best compression without loss of quality can help. Plus, newer versions of PowerPoint offer the option to link to a video, rather than embedding it.

Each type of distribution requires its own preparations — anything from compressing files to burning disks to configuring automatic slide forwarding and locking down user controls. As with every aspect of successful PowerPoint design, it’s best to have at the helm someone who understands the ins and outs of the application.

A polished presentation, every time

Creating presentations that include video elements can be an amazingly effective way to generate excitement and persuade viewers to take action. (For more information about using the power of video to create energy and spur action, read the Communications and Connections article in this issue of News and Views.) Talented presentation specialists know how to create crisp, vivid and smooth-running packages that can deliver the promised punch.

Just be aware that — aside from the thought that should go into effective content — expertise is often a prerequisite for creating a high-quality, easily distributable presentation.

At Digital Dazzle, our experts can create and package powerful presentations that will inspire audiences to take action! Contact us for a no-cost consultation and to learn how our talented presentation specialists consistently deliver excellent corporate presentations, cost-effectively and on tight deadlines.