Powerpoint with an animated host? Done before?

After being introduced to the super cool www.xtranormal.com (basically, it makes CG animated scenes using text to speech) and playing around with Wondershare PPT2Video (which, shockingly, outputs Powerpoint files as videos) I thought about redoing my lecture notes into videos with a host talking the kids through them. This wouldn't be for my classroom but instead for my website for review and for kids who missed class.

I currently have all my notes there in google doc format but that loses all animations and I'm finding the kids aren't getting much out of it except a ton of writing. They are missing the story-telling part of the lecture which is really what makes it work.

So, my vision is to put the notes into video format and have a picture-in-picture view of the narrator in the corner telling the story as the video plays.

My question is has anyone seen or done anything like this before? In playing around with it this week I'm loving the results but not loving the amount of work going into it (setting all my ppts to timers and writing the scripts mostly). If this has been done before I'd like to see the results. If not, I'll chug on ahead. I simply can't deal with my lecture notes being lifeless when the rest of my site is animated and interactive...

Tags: avatar, powerpoint, xtranormal

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Neyenhouse on December 29, 2008 at 2:56am

Are you familiar with Voxy Proxy? As described on their website, Vox Proxy is an add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint from Right Seat Software, Inc. - a company based in Golden, Colorado, United States. Vox Proxy works within PowerPoint to bring lively interactive talking characters to the presentation media. It may be a viable option for you. For more information use the following link: http://www.voxproxy.com/. You're idea sounds like it would be an excellent way to engage your students.

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Permalink Reply by Kev on December 29, 2008 at 8:27am

That's exactly what I'm trying to do with xtranormal. Unfortunately, it looks like it only runs on XP or lower right now I'm running Vista. I'll give it a shot on one of my laptops at some point and see if it works better than my current multiprogram solution.

So far, I've very happy with the results. I'll be posting the next section of my Reformation lecture today at some point. Again, I think this will help a ton with kids who miss my lectures but now I'm trying to figure out what else it might be used for to justify the time I'm spending :p

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Permalink Reply by Ian Grove-Stephensen on December 29, 2008 at 3:17pm

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Permalink Reply by Amber on December 29, 2008 at 9:36pm

wow! I watched your work. that was very impressive. I would love to do something like that. I got lost in all the steps that you went through to create it. I am not sure that I have all the computer software that I would need. I could see this being a big help, as you said with the students that miss a lecture. you could even do this for a sub plan! (burn it out to a DVD) I could have taught my whole maternity leave like this and my kids would have been so much better off!
I am sure it takes a bunch of time.
If you are able can you write out some more detailed directions of how you did this? I am going to have to try it.

Again...Kuddos on your great work and efforts! That was fun to watch.

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Permalink Reply by Kev on December 30, 2008 at 10:48am

I'm starting my next vid now so here's everything I'll have to do.

1. Go through the ppt (which I already have made) and write the "script" for each slide. I just put it in the "notes" box at the bottom of the page.
2. Set up each slide with automatic timing for both animations and slide transitions. I've found that 7 seconds per animation and 40 seconds per slide (assuming only text) leaves the least amount of edits needed.
3. Use Wondershare PPT to Video to convert the powerpoint file into an avi.
4. Use Xtranormal.com to create the narrator. For simplest use, don't bother with the green screen.
5. Use the firefox plugin Download Helper to download the xtranormal file (you can use any FLV downloader, anything you'd use to save from youtube.)
6. Use Pazera Free FLV to AVI to turn the xtranormal file into an avi.
7. Use Adobe Premier or pinnacle studio to put the 2 video files (one from powerpoint, one from pazera) into one video using the picture-in-picture feature of either program.

I know it seems complicated but really it is just a combination of three things I do all the time (rip from youtube, make ppts, and do video edits) with the xtranormal layer thrown on top.

I've also thought of giving it a shot with a sub. The only thing I'd need to do is either A) assume the sub knows how to work a pause button or B) slow the transitions down. When I am running a presentation myself I can pace it as needed. The video format doesn't lend itself quite so easily to that.

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Permalink Reply by Amber on December 29, 2008 at 11:08pm

how about http://www.tvnima.com/
After I saw what you had done I was looking around and found a video on it on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk7ojcVeV2w

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Permalink Reply by Kev on December 30, 2008 at 10:50am

Oh boy, more toys! I'll have to play around with this one too. I have to admit though, I really like that the narrator using xtranormal isn't me. It kind of adds a weird feeling of life to it.

What is really exciting to me is to see that all this stuff is out there. Given a few more years I think our lectures will look vastly different than they do today and I think that's a great thing!

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Permalink Reply by SunnyY on December 30, 2008 at 10:44pm

Happy New Year!

I have a look at www.xtranormal.com, do you want to design an animated presentation with presenter' s video and narration? Such as this traning demo:
http://www.sameshow.com/samples/video-narration/presentation-with-p...

You could add animations and transitions to the PowerPoint presentation, also record narration is very easy to use through PowerPoint, at the same time, it's easy to make the video and narration along with PowerPoint presenation if you convert your presentation to Flash and insert the video to the output Flash presentation. The demo above is created by PPT2Flash, you also could choose other tools to help you, such as Adobe Presenter and articulate presenter.

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Permalink Reply by pete whitfield on February 5, 2009 at 9:11am

Late as usual! I've just come across xtranormal in the last couple of weeks. I very impressed with it as a presentation tool. Here's my first attempt.