Narrated Slide shows...FCP-Powerpt?

Hello:

I have a project that is audio interviews with still photographs. The clients want have the final product accessible for visitors to view in their small museum. The audio (no video) consists of interviews and stories told by elders with some photographs, which are on cds.
They want something easy (accessible) for anyone to view and I want something easy to output to with good quality (for the photographs) and easy to understand menu selections. The client suggested Powerpoint for the final output.
Has anyone had experience outputting 'movies' from FCP to Powerpoint? Or any other suggestions? I am about to install DVD Studio Pro along with the upgrade to Final Cut Studio....and think that might be the way to go.
My biggest concern is making the photos look their best without too much photoshop intervention.
Any suggestions or articles to read would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Di

if its going to be navigated, i wouldnt even bother with fcp. sure you could do the whole thing as a dvd, but dvd's arent exactly the best medium for non-linear navigation.

you could do the whole thing in powerpoint, but it might be kinda clunky.

id suggest that flash would be, by far the best tool for the job.

Pardon me for saying, but it sounds to me like this isn't thought through all the way.

I'd be looking at this project from the back forwards - meaning, what and how will this be presented? What type of experience do you want the viewer to have? On what type of equipment, etc? That would drive what I did.

If you are planning to use a computer kiosk, then either DVD or Powerpoint might give you what you need, but they are 2 vastly different experiences and workflows and outputs. For example, I find Powerpoint rather easy to use, but when the show is playing, if there is embedded media (audio or video) it takes time to load. Media can be preloaded, but you have to allow time for this. Accurate timings in PP are out of the question. It generally looks like crap, too, and anyone with Powerpoint experience can usually spot something made in it a mile away.

In the past, I have played Powerpoint presentations through one computer into FCP and recorded the output, then edited in FCP. But that was as far as that interaction went.

Personally, I think it sounds like, for a museum experience (where curators and artists always seem to want viewer participation), that a kiosk might work best. But ideally, that means touch screen with DVD and such. At least, that's what I'd be investigating.

Alternatively to Powerpoint, have you used Keynote? It's Apple's presentations software. I have version 1, although V 2 is now out. I like the output; much better than Powerpoint. Keynote also does a good job interacting with PC-created Powerpoint files, too. And one can output those presentations to .mov Quicktime files as well. It might be worth investigating.

But in the end, I think the easiest thing may be to edit sections in FCP (much easier to edit timings than in PP) and then output on DVD.



HarryD

Hi, Diane, Thanks for the e-mail.

yeah, I have experience making things in PP for university web servers. Can be very much not fun.

Since you say there's a chance this will likely be viewed via internet/website, my advice would again be to edit in FCP and output to Quicktime, selecting H.264 as the Codec. Assuming the pics are decent quality, it should look great, and Quicktime self-streams (no realplayer server nor metafile http streaming nonsense).

good luck.



HarryD