Publishing PowerPoint/Articulate to DVD

Since we’re developing materials for people working in power plants, we have a fair number of the people in our audience do not have easy access to a PC. ( Imagine the guy driving a bull dozer in a coal yard for instance.)  It’s much easier for them to find a TV/DVD player than a computer, so we often make DVD versions of our Articulate classes to make it easier for them to access certain courses.

One important thing to remember is that just because you save your project onto a DVD does NOT mean that it will play on a TV/DVD player.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. PowerPoint slides (duh!)
2. Audio files/Narration (I use Audacity)
3. Your favorite screen capture tool (optional – I use SnagIt)
4. A video editing program (I use Windows Movie Maker)
5. A DVD authoring tool (I use DVD Flick)

Here is the process we use:

Step 1. Save your PowerPoint slides as “PNG”,”JPG” images.

There are different ways to capture your slides as images. The easiest way is to do a “Save as…” from PowerPoint and choose one of the image formats.

However I’ve found that the best way is to take screen shots. This has two benefits. First I get better image quality by taking my screenshots of the slides with SnagIt in .PNG format. And secondly, you can “fake” animations by incrementally capturing slides with bullet lists, etc.  For example a slide with 3 bullet points would be captured with three screenshots – one for each bullet. This gives the appearance of animation in the video.

Step 2. Import the pictures into Windows Movie Maker

Step 3. Select all the imported images and add them to Storyboard

Step 4. Import the audio/narration into Movie Maker

Step 5. Add the imported audio files to the Storyboard and sync them with the images

(Optional) You can add titles, transitions, call outs and video effects to the slides if you like.

Step 6. Save the slide show as Movie File

When you save videos to DVD for viewing on television, it is important to be familiar with the various standard media formats for televisions, because most of the formats are mutually incompatible. In the US you’ll want to select the High quality video (NTSC) option.

The format used in America and Canada is NTSC (National Television System Committee). Western Europe and Australia use PAL (Phase Alternating Line) formatting, and Eastern Europe and France use SECAM (Sequential Color with Memory) formatting. Most DVD authoring software , including DVD Flick, gives you the choice of saving your video to either NTSC or PAL formatting for television.

NOTE: If you save your file for viewing on a television, the resolution may appear blurry on the computer.

Step 7. Burn the resulting .avi video file using your DVD authoring software.  See the DVD Flick help guide for details.

Depending on your content, you might want to consider creating a menu that allows viewers to navigate various sections of your DVD.

ADDED BONUS: If you want or need to get your PowerPoint/Articulate content into a format compatiable with the iPad you could use this same method and publish to an iPad compatible format instead of DVD format.

Another option that I’ve used in the past is to simply play your published Articulate course and use a screen recording program, (I use Camtasia) to capture it as a video file, then burn that using your DVD authoring software.  This option also works well and might be a little bit quicker if you don’t need to add or tweak anything in the video version of your course.