The video linked above is my attempt to address several different requirements:
- To follow up some ideas about the list of priorities I mentioned previously, tentatively named “The Humanity+ Agenda”;
- To find an interesting new way to help publicise the forthcoming (April 24th) “Humanity+ UK2010” event;
- To experiment with creating videos, to use for communications purposes, as a complement to textual blog posts.
As you can see, it’s based on Powerpoint – a tool I know well.
What I didn’t appreciate about Powerpoint, before, is the fact that you can embed an audio narrative, to playback automatically as the slides and animations progress. So that’s what I decided to do.
First time round, I tried to ad lib remarks, as I progressed through the slides, but that didn’t work well. Next, I wrote down an entire script, and read from that. The result is a bit flat and jaded in places, and there are a few too many verbal fluffs for my liking. When I try this again, I’ll set aside more time, and make myself re-do the narration for a slide each time I fluff a few words.
I also hit some bugs (and quirks) when using the “Record narration” features of PowerPoint. Some of these seem to be known features, but not all:
- A few seconds of the narration often gets truncated from the end of each slide. The workaround is to wait three seconds after finishing speaking, before advancing to the next slide;
- The audio quality for the first slide was very crackly every time, not matter what I tried. The workaround is to insert an extra “dummy” slide at the beginning, and to discard that slide before publishing;
- There’s a pair of loud audible cracks at the start of each slide. I don’t know any workaround for that;
- Some of the timing, during playback, is slightly out of synch with what I recorded: animations on screen sometimes happen a few seconds before the accompanying audio stream is ready for them.
I used authorSTREAM as the site to store the presentation. They offer the following features:
- Support for playback of presentations containing audio narration;
- Support for converting the presentation into video format.
The authorSTREAM service looks promising – I expect to use it again!
Footnote: I’ll update this posting shortly, with a copy of the video embedded, rather than linked. (I still find video embedding to be a bit of a hit-or-miss process…)
dw2 
Interesting. I think this form of presentation can be more engaging than the equivalent prose – once the reader has been persuaded to view it there is less likelyhood of skimming. Keep up the good work! Like any presentation I’m sure that practice at delivery will pay off.
The volume was slightly low on my machine.
I’m sorry I won’t be able to attend the conference – unfortunately it conflicts with the Open Knowledge Foundation conference which I’ve already signed up to attend (and possibly assist in a presentation) but I will follow the ongoing threads with interest.
Comment by Peter Jackson — 28 March 2010 @ 1:12 pm