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Microsoft's PowerPoint 2002 may not be at the top of your list of video production tools, but media artists needing to make a point have always kept it around because it is amazingly easy to use and rather robust in terms of effects. You can show stills, animate different elements, embed video, and tons more these days with the latest version. (PowerPoint 2003 is currently in beta. For a sneak peek, check out www.microsoft.com/office/preview.) PowerPoint has come a long way from its standard white-collar role as a slideshow creator. Now it's a true media presentation program.
One of the trickiest parts of using PowerPoint is synchronizing video clips with graphics and animations inside the presentation. The program does not work in a timeline fashion; rather, you create triggers to activate events, such as the playing of a video or the display of an image. Mircosoft has solved part of the problem with its new Producer 2003 plug-in for PowerPoint, which indeed works on a timeline, so you can synch up slides and video clips. (The beta is a free download at the URL above.)
But what if you want to record video commentary as you are presenting the show? And then save it and replay it later? That's where Anystream's Agility Presenter comes in. While it's got some great features, essentially it does one thing amazingly well: It allows you to run through a PowerPoint presentation and record audio and video as you go. In addition, your mouse clicks are recorded, so your final presentation changes pages as you do it in the video. The final presentation can be displayed on the Web or burned to CD-ROM. It's a pretty cool tool and fairly powerful with the right project.
Installation begins with a system check to ensure that Windows Media components, .NET Framework, DirectX 8.1, and Windows Media Player 9 series are all installed or upgraded as needed. After that Agility Presenter is installed within a few seconds. Once installed, launch PowerPoint and you will notice there's a new pulldown menu called Presenter.
The first step is to configure your recording equipment. For audio I used a Labtec AK5370 USB desktop microphone. The microphone is decent but seems very sensitive to wind. For...