Digital Workshop

Hi all

I need to produce a presentation which will auto-run from a CD-ROM without requiring any software installation. Having previously used PowerPoint, I thought the 2003 “Package for CD” would be suitable because, unlike previous versions, the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer doesn’t require any installation. However, my presentation includes a number of videos of on-screen activity recorded using HyperCAM which must be high quality and must start playing automatically in a slide as part of an auto-running presentation.

I’ve tried avi, wmv and mpeg files but in all cases the quality is not very good; text is blurred, colours are often blotchy and there are sometimes flashes during play-back. The original avi videos are fine when played in Windows Media Player but PowerPoint uses the Media Control Interface to play embedded videos.

I’ve thought of using Camtasia to produce a video of the complete PowerPoint presentation with videos, but the file size would be huge and we need the presentation to scale up to fill the screen at any resolution from 1024 x 768 upwards. PowerPoint slides handle this requirement well, acting as a nice background for the videos which are played at a fixed size below 1024 x 768.

Previously I’ve used a VB program which I developed to control and sequence the PowerPoint 97 Viewer and the Windows Media Player. This gives the required quality, but a number of users encountered difficulty in installing the three software components and they would much rather have a presentation which will just run from a CD without requiring any installation. When I discovered the PowerPoint 2003 “Package for CD” option I thought it would be the ideal solution. But now I think it might just be a solution which is close, but not close enough.

I’ve considered Macromedia Director but this would be expensive to buy and time consuming to learn. Also the Adobe takeover of Macromedia seems to be giving some cause for concern over the future of Macromedia Director.

Would Opus Pro 04 XE be a suitable solution? I’ve seen some issues raised in these forums which seem to suggest Opus users encounter similar problems with video as I currently have with PowerPoint. Is this the case?

Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Why not download the evaluation copy of Opus Pro and try it? Pro XE is not available as an evaluation. I'm guessing that most of what you want to do could be done in Pro, but without knowing exactly what your goals are I couldn't say for sure.

I have successfully made HyperCam videos and used them in Pro XE.

This should not be a problem. The default publish setting in Opus is to create a standalone executable with autorun.inf file which can be burned directly to CD and should autorun on any system without creating files on the user's hard disk.



The ChromaKey and On Top video modes in Opus Pro 04 use the Windows Media Player engine to process and display video content, so the video should look identical to the same file played directly in Windows Media Player.

Of course, if you are scaling the publication to fit any screen, you may find that the video becomes slightly blurry at higher resolutions (as the pixels in the video are effectively being stretched to fill this larger screen).



Camtasia screen captures offer an excellent balance of quality and file size. However, many users have found that AVI files do not stream effectively from CD-ROM and I would perhaps recommend converting the Camtasia videos to a dedicated streaming format such as MPEG or WMV to ensure reliable streaming from disc.



As previously stated, Opus creates standalone executables which run directly from CD and do not create files on the user's hard disk (unless you tell them to using Write to Disk File actions and such like).



Director also forces you to apply the Macromedia logo to your published project. Opus publications are entirely logo and royalty-free.



Opus is generally considered to be one of the easiest multimedia authoring packages to learn with a simple triggers and actions mechanism underpinning all elements of the program. However, Opus offers enormous depth with file and registry storage actions, database connectivity, scripting and web data controls allowing you to produce full-blown Windows applications for use on Intranets, web sites and CD-ROM. I therefore think Opus Pro 04 and Opus Pro XE 04 would be an ideal solution and would recommend downloading our 30-day evaluation of Opus Pro 04 from the following location to see how our product fits in with your workflow:

http://www.digitalworkshop.com/download ... g_eval.exe



The vast majority of issues regarding video are actually related to problems with codecs on the target machine. For example, Camtasia uses the Techsmith Screen Capture Codec (TSCC) to encode its AVI files. As this codec is installed on your system, you can play Camtasia videos in Windows Media Player, PowerPoint and other applications without problems. However, if you copy this AVI file to another computer which does not have Camtasia or the TSCC codec installed, the video will refuse to play. This is why Camtasia offer a Pack and Show Wizard which bundles the AVI video and codec into an executable file for playback on other machines.

Similarly, videos produced in MPEG-2 format will only play on systems which have a software MPEG-2 decoder (such as Cyberlink PowerDVD or Intervideo WinDVD) installed.

To ensure maximum compatibility, we always recommend encoding videos to MPEG-1 format as the Microsoft MPEG-1 Decoder has been installed with all versions of Windows since Windows 95.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,