Nov 13 2007
Geek Frustration
So far, I have not found an effective way to import PowerPoint slides into iMovie / FCP. After much trial-and-error, I have still found that taking a screen shot, pasting into Photoshop, and saving as a PNG seems to produce the best (of the worst) results — and even that produces substandard images, in my opinion.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
1. From PowerPoint, export to JPG. Produces a crappy-looking JPG file for each slide.
2. From PowerPoint, “make movie.” Produces a crappy-looking MOV file that mimics your presentation’s settings.
3. From Keynote ‘06 and ‘08, export to movie (DV/DVCPRO - NTSC). Produces a slightly less crappy, but still unsatisfactory result.
The presentation that I’m trying to bring in to my video has quite a few “spreadsheet” slides with lots of small text as well as charts with lots of data and lines all over the place. Those slides are pretty much completely unreadable using all of the methods indicated above. When making a screen shot, I notice that image gets all funky when you import it into iMovie, and although it’s readable, it looks blurry, like the camera went out of focus. Distracting and annoying to say the least.
I can’t believe that there isn’t an easier way to do this. Anyone out there making graphic slides for your iMovie/FCP videos? If so, how the heck do you do it?
Day 13 of 30
A 30-something Christian girl, blissfully wedded to her perfect match (the yang to her yin) of 14 years. Living life in Hawaii, less than 5 miles from her hometown, a slave to her mortgage payment, but seeking balance in her pursuit of family, faith, recreation, and rest.
Not quite the same situation as yours; I wanted to do a slideshow in PowerPoint for a graduation party, then import that into iMovie. The conversion to QuickTime was terrible and none of the transitions or moving pictures or text made it in; I had to use SnapZ Pro to capture the screen as a movie, then import that into iMovie.
I’ll try to work on this a bit for you and see what I can come up with but given that I teach Tuesdays and Wednesdays, time is a bit short.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93002
I think that explains it best; I now recall the issue, but I didn’t have things I needed to look absolutely great either.