How to make a slidecast
plugin by rob
On Tuesday I made a presentation in London called Learning and Knowldge Maturing at an information day for the EU Seventh Framework for Research. The previous Thursday the organisers had asked me for a copy of the presentation. I use a lot of pictures in my presentations and files are big – too big for email. So I uploaded it to Slideshare as a quick way of getting it to them. Friday, I had a message from AmitRanjan who said: “any chance this could be converted into a slidecast…the audio will add context.”
I groaned at the thought of the work but of course Amin was right: if you use mainly pictures and few words (and no bullet points) the audio is very important.
I have made a number of slidecasts before and the workflow was tricky. Send the slides to iPhoto, import into iMovie, record soundtrack in GarageBand. Import Soundtrack into iMovie, sync sound with slides, export to preferred format, upload to blib.tv, Google or utube. Phew. Takes a day to do it.
This time I thought I’d give Slidecast a try. Slidecast is on-line software developed by Slideshare. The workflow is relatuvely easy. the slides were already on Slideshare. I recorded the audio on Garageband (if you are on a PC you can use audacity) as before. Uploaded it to my blog Slideshare does not host audio. Gave Slidecast the url and then used an online tool to sync up the audio and the slide transitions. The whole process took about 2 hours to produce a 25 minute slidecast. That is pretty OK for me. And slidecasts do get watched – we’ve had some 600 views already – with only about 20 of them coming from this web site.
Steven says: “The way I make a Slidecast is to fire up Camtasia and then go through my slides, narrating as I present them.”
I have treid making screencasts like this before. It is certainly efficient in terms of time – but I stopped doing it because I found myself thinking about the recording whilst making the presentation. at the end of the day I think live presentations and slidecasts are – as the great AKA Specials said ‘equal but different’. Each requires different forms of presenting. And that is why I do them seperately.
Sounds great!
That is really a nice idea. It does adds great value to presentations.
And I did like the definition of learning and he fact that the most used system for learning is google. It is indeed part of my universe. I google everything these days and just get amazed with wealth of info I get – relevant and irrelevant info too!
Indeed Lurking is not that. I lurk till I get comfortable to take part in it. It takes time to get involved. But active participation is much more Fun!
Thanks for sharing!
Great post, Graham, and very timely for me. What is the online tool you use please, ie the one to sync slides and audio?
Cheers
Terry
Just letting you know that I enjoyed your presentation Graham and have blogged about it. I think you are so right about the role of communities of practice in how we learn. Kerrie
Hi Graham,
Those workflows sound pretty painful – have you thought about exporting from Keynote to Garageband – see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Keynote/4.0/en/c9kn36.html if you don’t have iWork this ounds like it would make the price worth it.
Phil
Phil – thanks for that workflow suggestion. I have previous version of iWork. This might tempt me to upgrade.
Terry – online tool is slidecast option in Slideshare. Not too obvious as to where it is. Select edit button on your slideshow page and then click on slidecast tab. To my mind, the software for timings is the easiest I have used – although t is not microsecond accurate. The only other issue is that slideshare does not host the audio. You have to upload audio somewhere and then provide an http address. However the audio streaming is very fast – none of teh long run buffering you get on some services.
I think ProfCast (http://www.profcast.com/) does what you are looking for.