PowerPoint to video engine moves a step ahead: Now supports video conversion of ‘On-Click’ presentations

We recently pulled the trigger on the latest improvements in our PowerPoint to video engine and we’re excited to add and introduce another amazing new feature- conversion of ‘on-click’ presentations to video.

‘On-Click’ presentation means slides which do not have rehearsed timings or they are not set to play automatically. With this new advancement, you can convert even your ‘on-click’ presentation to video.

Earlier, we asked you to add rehearse timings to the presentations you wanted to convert to video. But we understood all this while that you had to work harder to make your presentations video compatible.

With this improvement, you will easily be able to convert your presentations to video. Now, video conversion of any presentation (whether on-click or not) is at your fingertips. With just a few clicks, you can quickly create a high-quality video of your work and share it with your clients or colleagues.

How to convert an ‘On-Click’ presentation to video

It’s easy. Just follow these simple steps:

• Upload a presentation to your authorSTREAM account
• Go to My Presentations link under My Stuff
• Look for the presentation which you want to convert to video
• Under Video drop-down menu, click Convert to video option

• A Convert presentation to video window appears on the screen. Select the video format and zoom video size (which allows the video to be bigger in size to enjoy it on a DVD), then click Next'

• Enter the fixed time (seconds) to spend on each slide and click Convert Now

Your presentation will be converted into a video in a short while and you’ll receive a confirmation email as soon as it’s ready.

Now you don’t have to spend time on setting your presentation slides to play automatically. With just a few clicks, enjoy sharing your presentation videos with anyone, anywhere.  

Upload your presentation now, convert it into a video and share it on YouTube or play it on your mobile.

Want to create a ROCKSTAR presentation? Learn quick tricks from Yancey

A ROCKSTAR presentation should have a great design complemented with high-quality visuals, and should be narrated like a story. Yancey, the Founder and President at Empowered Presentations, in a FREE one-hour webinar on authorSTREAM teaches you tips and tricks to create a great presentation that can go viral.

As the founder of Empowered Presentations, an award-winning presentation design firm with clients across the world, Yancey has been training professionals to create and deliver great presentations.

In this webinar through real life stories and samples, she will teach you strategies that Empowered Presentations implement while creating presentations and how you can also do. You’ll learn to create impressive presentations that can go viral.

Yancey and her company has received accolades for their work from various news daily’s across the United States. Pacific Business News recognized them as Innovative Company of the Year finalist, Hawaii Business Magazine nominated them for Best in Business and Innovative Business and they were finalists in Best New Business in Pacific Edge Magazine.

The much awaited webinar will be on:

Day: Thursday, May 17, 2012
Time: 9:00 PM HST  (Hawaii Time) 
          (18th May, 12:30 PM  IST or 12:00 AM PDT)
Duration: 1 hour

Get an in-depth insight into:

• Visuals to enhance the presenter’s message and his performance
• Apply innovative design techniques to create empowering slides
• Create slides with meaningful visuals without using cluttered templates
• Learn how simply expressed ideas can increase a viewer’s understanding
• Structure an audience-friendly presentation

 
Reserve your seat now!

P.S. Visit www.authorstream.com/webinars/ for upcoming sessions.

How to avoid copyright infringement while creating presentations?

Do you worry about infringing someone’s copyrights while using images, videos or music in your presentation? You’d also want to protect your own copyrights while sharing presentations with the world via online slide-sharing platforms.

In this blog post, let’s walk through:

• What is Copyright
• Dealing with Creative Commons
• How to avoid copyright infringement while using images, videos or music on your own presentation slides
• How to protect your own copyrights while sharing presentations with the world via online slide-sharing platforms.

What is copyright?
Copyright is a protection provided to the authors for their original work. It protects an original and specific expression of ideas. This expression can be in various forms like pictures, music, videos, cartoons, audiotapes, literary works, drawings, speeches, and slides. The act of creating an original work creates the Copyright and it’s not required to register for Copyright. Even if the copyright symbol (©) is not present, the copyright law still applies to an original piece of work.

This clearly means that you can’t use someone’s original piece of work without acknowledging the source by giving credit to the author or citing the source. If the work is in the public domain like on the web, you can give a URL link to the copyrighted material.

Creative Commons Licensing
If you’ve surfed Internet long enough, you know that most websites have Creative Commons badge or similar integrations of their licenses. It is a popularly used licensing system among authors to give others permission to use their creations under a certain set of circumstances. With this license, an artist’s work continues to be a copyrighted one but it grants additional permissions to others to share, distribute, adapt or sell under the conditions specified by the artist.

Under Creative Commons, it’s not sufficient to give a URL source of an image or video used in your presentation. You need to at least include the following:

• Name of the author
• Title of the work (if any)
• Mention the Creative Commons license under which the original work is available
• Reproduce copyright notices (if any) as included by the creator
• An identification that your work is derivative which is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work

How to avoid copyright infringement while using images, videos or music on your own presentation slides?

Images: You’ll find a huge collection of free and paid images on the Internet. If you are looking to buy images, some of well-known sites are iStock , fotolia and Corbis. Flickr too, has a huge collection, some are offered for free while others are available under a Creative Commons license. Then there are free images, which you can find using Google’s advanced image search. One of the ways that can help you minimize copyright infringements is to have the URL and attribution of the image pasted at the bottom of the slide. We recommend you to use authorSTREAM Desktop for searching and inserting images from Flickr or Bing. authorSTREAM Desktop is a free PowerPoint plugin which lets you search images from Flickr and Bing from within the PowerPoint and even takes care of insertion of attribution.

Music: You can collect songs or musical works from ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). It’s one of the main organizations which grants (and polices) music usage rights. For free music, you need to search open-source music sites like Internet Archive. These are internet libraries that collect public domain work and have frequently negotiated for rights. Free music download services are also available like Apple’s iTunes or We7. Select from a vast library of music available online but ensure to give credit to the author. You can alter the music to suit your needs but cannot change its “fundamental character”, according to The National Association for Music Education. Before you purchase an image or use a picture freely available, you should always read copyright terms and conditions of these images or sites where they are available.

Videos or movies: To use a production company’s video in your slides, you need to directly get in touch with the company. They might just let you use their work, on the condition that you give them credit. YouTube and Vimeo has a good collection of publicly available videos. Although most people use them without seeking author’s permission, it’s advisable to first seek permission from the author. A prominent blogger lists points you should mention while seeking the author’s permission to use the video.

Quotes or Written Works: Using quotes of experts always add authenticity and value to your own views during the presentation delivery. Select short lines from an author’s work and cite the source to give proper recognition to the author’s work. To use longer portion of the work, you need to directly seek permission from the author. The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) helps you to locate the author or get permission to use a written work.  

It doesn’t matter if you are using videos, images, quotes or music, it is always a good practice to get in touch with the author and seek permission.

How can you protect your own presentations online under copyright laws?
You’ve figured out ways to avoid copyright infringement. What about protecting your own content? authorSTREAM provides copyright licenses to let others distribute, edit, copy, remix or build upon your presentations, all within the boundaries of copyright laws. You just need to specify the copyright license you’d like to choose while uploading a presentation on authorSTREAM and confidently share it with the world.

Enjoy using valuable content on your slides but always follow the fair practice to give credit to the author and expect the same from others when they use your presentation for their works.

By: Daisy Kumar
Writer at authorSTREAM

Disclaimer: The content provided in this blog post is for information purpose only. The author or the owner of the content makes no representatives as the accuracy or completeness of any information provided in this blog post. The owner will also not be liable for any errors or omissions in the information nor the availability of this information. The  author or the owner will also not be liable for any damages or losses from the display or use of this information.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010: Explore the features and unleash its potential

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 has brought to us a lot of versatile features so that we can express ourselves in the most impressive way. This software was introduced way back in 2009 but till today not many people are aware of its potential. You can manage your content with 2010 version like never before. Collaboration with co-workers have become a matter of click. You can even bring your content to the web and share with the remote audience. Embedded videos, audio, and inserted animations enrich your content.

Here’s a quick guide to advanced features of Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 that you can use to your advantage:

Create, organize, and collaborate with other people:
Collaborate with your colleagues easily, edit content with them and meet deadlines quickly. Have quick access to common tasks like setting view/edit permissions or printing presentations. Organize the slides into manageable and different sections for quick navigation from one slide to another.

Enrich your presentations with videos, impressive pictures, sound and animations:
Enrich your presentations by embedding a  video or inserting melodious music. Use transitions and animations that are smoother to access and implement and richer in effect.

Add voice narration to your slides:
Record and add your own voice to the slides, prepare an online tutorial for educating your listeners or to just brainstorm your ideas accompanied by visuals. Here’s how to add voice narration in PowerPoint 2010.

Explore these and more features here and learn to use the latest version effectively:

Earth Day 2012- Mobilize the Earth

Yes, you are right. This is the theme of Earth Day in 2012.

Every year we celebrate Earth Day, but do we really understand its importance in our lives?

It’s a struggle to spread awareness about clean and green environment. This day is celebrated to fight back the ravages of climate change, tons of toxic waste dumped by industries, rampant oil spillage, and felling of trees witnessed everywhere. 

April 1970 Earth Day was a blazing success that made history when nearly 20 million people took brisk steps forward. These heroic people had a common aim- save the world marred by wars, industry smoke and diseases. 

Let’s peep into the history of first Earth Day that inspire us to turn our efforts at present into yet another history and be a hero.

Do you know you can earn with your awesome presentations? Here’s how

Congratulations! Your presentation has reached 100 views, got 10 likes and 39 comments. 

A message like this surely makes your day. 

Sharing creative and impressive presentations with the world via online sharing sites is really fun. And, it feels great when you get so many views, likes and comments. 

How about getting more than just this? How about earning some money with your presentations?

How can you generate money with your presentations?

There are a bunch of options for you to try your hands on. Create high quality presentations on different topics and sell them via your own website or some content marketplace. If you are good at presentations, you can provide professional services to individuals or companies by creating presentation according to their requirements and add some extra cash to your kitty. 

authorSTREAM provides an easy-to-use option which lets you earn by simply placing your own ads on your presentations pages by using Google AdSense. When someone clicks your ad, you earn money. It’s as simple as that. 

How can your authorSTREAM presentations earn for you?

It’s simple. Become authorSTREAM’s privileged business member and follow these easy steps:

• Go to 'My Stuff', click 'Premium Account' link
• Click 'Settings' option in the left, under 'Google AdSense' on presentation page, select 'Enable Google AdSense' option
• Paste your 'Google AdSense' Publisher ID in text box under' Enable Google AdSense' option

Select options where you want your advertisement to display, below or on the right side of the presentation player. Save the changes you’ve made, and you are good to go. 

Remember, to earn from Google Ads, you need to have rich content in your presentations with catchy title, vivid description, and tags so that presentations are well indexed in search engines and quality traffic. 

Upload impressive presentations on authorSTREAM on the subjects popular among your target audience and upgrade to business membership to pump more potential and revenue from your presentations.