Configure presentation settings with Windows Mobility Center
Posted by Steve Wylie in Presentation IT on January 22, 2009
There are a number of changes you should make to your computer before your use it to give a presentation. These include changing your desktop wallpaper to something impersonal and inoffensive, disabling your screen-saver and power saving settings, and ensuring that your volume is either up (if you have sounds in your presentation) or down (to avoid any incidental sound effects from disrupting you). You’ll also want to disable pop-up notifications from Windows and third-party software.
As I’ve previously written, the best way to contain all of these settings is to either have a dedicated computer for presentations, or to create a separate user profile just for presentation settings.
However, Windows Vista and Windows 7 make configuring presentation settings easier.
Press the Windows Key 
+ X, or type ‘Mobility’ from the start menu (and press enter) to launch the Windows Mobility Center.
Windows Mobility Center
From here, if you have not already done so, you can choose ‘Connect Display’ in order for your computer to detect an attached monitor, plasma screen, projector, or television, and configure it for use.
Once you have set up your display device, from the Windows Mobility Center, select ‘Turn On’ under the ‘Presentation Settings’ section in order to have Windows automatically change some of those all-important options as discussed above.
Presentation Settings
Edge blending with single chip DLP projectors
Posted by Steve Wylie in Live vision systems on January 19, 2009
I recently visited the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and watched two presentations which looked to be Watchout or Wings content across three projectors each.
Australian War Memorial Projection Exhibit
The projectiondesign single chip DLP’s have a setting called ‘Color Boost’, which is designed to push the gamma curve settings to get the punchiest image from the projector – but at the cost of accurate colour and gradient representation.
This seriously affects an edge blend, as the gradient between projectors appears ‘stepped’ rather than smooth:
Smooth Blend
Steppend Blend
In my experience, when using a single chip DLP projector for edge blends, any colour boost or image/level management features should be disabled so the image appears ‘natural’ – even if this costs light output.
On the projectiondesign F30 units, I have found that setting the ‘Color Boost’ feature to ‘3’ will give an adequate balance between accuracy and intensity.
Grass Valley TURBO iDDR with Barco Encore or ScreenPRO II
Posted by Steve Wylie in Live vision systems on December 9, 2008
Grass Valley TURBO iDDR
Since the offset, the TURBO has output an unusual signal over DVI which tends to confuse a lot of pro video switchers and scalers – I’ve had issues interfacing the TURBO with Vista Systems Montage, Spyder, Barco Encore, ScreenPRO II, ImagePRO HD, and other Barco / Folsom switchers and scaling mixers.
Grass Valley did release a software revision for the TURBO in order to fix the issue, however, I’ve still experienced issues since – maybe because I’m in PAL land here in Australia.
I’ve found the composite and SDI outputs from the TURBO to be standard and reliable, however the SDI only outputs PAL/NTSC, not HD formats. The DVI output can output analog YUV/RGB with some success using a break-out cable, when running 1080i format, however for best results so far, I prefer to stick with setting the TURBO to output 1536×768 for HD material, and putting up with the slight effect on resolution, as, in my experience, this output format tends to work best with the switchers I’ve mentioned above.
You might notice that even when the TURBO is set to output 1536×768, various scalers and switchers might interpret the signal differently, however I have found that regardless, they will tend to lock onto the signal with success, with the expection of sometimes needing to manually set the aspect ratio to 16:9.
Use Windows Media Encoder to capture the Windows desktop
Posted by Steve Wylie in Online presentations, Presentation IT, Speaker support content, Video and motion graphics on December 7, 2008
Microsoft’s free Windows Media Encoder is capable of recording the Windows desktop or a specific application, which you can then use to demo an application, website, or process in a visual format – often known as screencasting.
A popular commercial software package, Camtasia, also performs this function, however Windows Media Encoder does a good job, at no cost.
You can download Windows Media Encoder from Microsoft’s website at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx.
Once installed, start Windows Media Encoder and choose ‘Capture Screen’. This will launch a wizard which will guide you through the process of choosing your capture settings, including the quality of the file you want to create, and the source to capture – the entire desktop, or a specific application window.
Windows Media Encoder, New Session
If you want more control over the quality and file format settings, you can select not to start the capture at the end of the wizard, which will allow you to customise the configuration further before capturing.
Note that Windows Media Encoder will only capture the screen to Windows Media Video format – which is fine if you want to upload it to the Internet, but you may need to convert it to another format if you need to later edit the capture, or incorporate with another video.
5 tips for displaying PowerPoint slides on a television monitor
Posted by Steve Wylie in Live vision systems, Speaker support content on December 6, 2008
Most laptops now have a TV out function, which allows a computer’s desktop to be displayed on a regular TV. This can be a convenient way of displaying a PowerPoint presentation to a group of people where a data projector or large monitor cannot be obtained.
However, the TV out feature provides a fairly low quality option for display of a PowerPoint presentation, and it may be difficult to view a presentation clearly. Here are a few tips for ensuring that your presentation will show up as well as possible on a television monitor:
1. Use a TV-safe template
Designers of graphics content for television and broadcast use the term ‘TV safe’ to describe an area that’s about 10% inside the edge of the ‘screen’ (slide) in which content should be placed. Some television displays will ‘overscan’ and crop the edges off the image, so it’s worth staying inside this boundary. Here’s a TV safe PowerPoint template to download: TV Safe PowerPoint Example.
2. Use large fonts
Small fonts and fine detail simply won’t show up on a TV monitor. Text should be 16 point and above, and you should avoid using any fine lines for content like shapes, graphs and charts
3. Bold colours and high contrast
A TV monitor won’t interpret the colours you use on your slides as accurately as a computer monitor will, so try and use bold, clearly unique colours – for instance, if you have a bar graph, using different primary colours is better than using shades of the same colour for each bar.
Graph - Poor Contrast
Graph - High Contrast
4. Avoid light backgrounds (especially white)
You might notice that very few TV ads use a white background – this is because ‘white’ requires the TV to fire all colours on screen at once, and can create a visible ‘flicker’, as well as being bright and hard to look at for long periods of time – dark backgrounds like dark shades of blue are a good idea.
5. Keep it simple
Where possible, avoid any fine detail – use simple icons rather than detailed photos; use 1 or 2 words rather than sentences; and avoid tables or spreadsheets. If you do need to show photographs, use one slide for each photo, and ensure the photo fills the slide.
Complex Slide
Simple Slide
On a technical note, where possible, find a progressive scan television like a plasma or LCD screen. Many plasma and LCD displays have a VGA, DVI, or HDMI input which should be capable of accepting at least a low resolution computer signal. If they do not have a computer input, they are still a better option than traditional CRT TV’s, as they are higher resolution and not interlaced – a process that significantly reduces the clarity and ability to read static text.
If you do use the TV out function rather than a normal computer signal, where you have the choice, use component video (YUV) if your computer supports it, otherwise use S-Video. If you have no other option, composite signal will give you the lowest quality results.
Create drawing guides in PowerPoint
Posted by Steve Wylie in Speaker support content on November 24, 2008
One of the most important aspects for good design of PowerPoint slides is consistency. Always use the same fonts, same font sizes, and same colour scheme for objects.
Another important consideration is placement of content on your slides. You can create ‘drawing guides’ which allow you to consistently line up your content in the same position on each slide.
1. Right-click on the background of a slide in your presentation, and choose ‘Grid and Guides…’
Right-click slide background
2. From the ‘Grid and Guides’ dialog box, tick ‘Display drawing guides on screen’ and click ‘OK’
PowerPoint Grid and Guides dialog box
3. You will now see that your slide has two default guide lines – one in the horizontal center and one in the vertical. You can click on either of these lines and drag it with your mouse pointer to position it anywhere.
To return a line to the center, right-click on the slide background again and select ‘Ruler’ to view a ruler, then line up the guide line with ‘0’ on the ruler (zero represents the horizontal and vertical centers of the slide).
4. If you want to create another guide line, hold down the ‘Ctrl’ key, and then click and drag a guide line – this will leave the existing line where it is, but create a new one.
PowerPoint Slide with guide lines
In this example, I have created 2 extra guide lines and repositioned the center lines in order to position my text boxes in the same position. The guide lines will be displayed on all slides in this presentation.
5. To remove a guide line, click on it and drag it past the edge of the slide.
Blu-ray with Encore or other scaling mixers and switchers
Posted by Steve Wylie in Live vision systems, Video and motion graphics on November 19, 2008
Blu-ray is fast becoming widely adopted in the home environment, and before long people will have Blu-ray burners on their desktop computers. This inevitably means that producers of presentation content will start using Blu-ray to supply HD content just as we saw when DVD came about.
The difficulty is that Blu-ray uses HDCP copy protection for any commercially manufactured discs. It’s very important that you instruct your content producers to create Blu-ray discs which are free of HDCP and region encoding.
However, when you do come across a need to play a disc which has been authored with HDCP, there are a couple of options available:
Analog
Most Blu-ray players are capable of outputting 1920x1080i over analog component (YUV) signal. While undersirable as the signal is being converted from its native digital state, analog HD is still HD, and it still looks great.
The down side to this method, is that it’s possible for some discs which use HDCP to be authored in such a way that any analog output from the Blu-ray player will be at ¼ resolution, rather than the full 1080i – this is a copy protection method, as it’s otherwise difficult to restrict the use of analog signal.
HD-SDI output
It is possible to buy modifications for Blu-ray players, or buy pre-modified players from companies like JVB Digital (http://www.jvbdigital.nl/). These players will output a true HD-SDI signal, and will not carry HDCP copy protection signal.
HDCP Stripper
There have been some devices around that are capable of ‘stripping’ HDCP from a signal – however the HDCP standard is designed to update a blacklist of such devices on players whenever the player connects to the Internet, or whenever you insert a new commercial Blu-ray disc – the black list is carried on commercially made Blu-ray discs and uploaded to your Blu-ray player when you insert the disc.
So while HDCP stripper devices may work now, they won’t last forever. You can find such devices through Google.
Optimise your projector for a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation
Posted by Steve Wylie in Live vision systems, Speaker support content on November 17, 2008
Auto setup
Every projector you’ll come across will have an automatic input set-up function – sometimes there’s a button on the remote or projector chassis, and other times it’ll be hidden in the menu. Auto setup is the simplest, but most beneficial thing you can do to make the projector you’re using interpret the signal from your laptop correctly.
Auto setup will ensure that none of your image is “overscanning” (or being cut off on the sides, top or bottom), and will ensure that settings like brightness, contrast, pixel phase, and colour are set to match the signal that you’re sending. The auto setup process usually takes about 5-10 seconds, so there’s no reason not to use it.
DVI or HDMI or quality analog cable
DVI Connector
While analog signals are susceptible to interference from other devices, bad quality power sources, and even just degrade over distance, digital signal remains perfect constantly, and under any condition – so it’s the best idea to use digital wherever possible. It doesn’t matter if you have an HDMI output on your laptop and a DVI input on your projector, or a DVI output on your laptop and an HDMI input on your projector – the two standards were built to be cross-compatible – so you can buy adapters and cables that will connect the two together.
HDMI Plug
Match resolution of projector
Different brands and models of projectors will vary in quality – one very important measure of a projector’s image quality is the native resolution that it displays – while most projectors will be able to display a high definition image, they will almost always scale it down to match the lower resolution chip that the projector uses to generate the image on screen.
Common projector resolutions might include 1024×768, 1400×1050, and 1280×720.
If at all possible, you should aim to output the presentation from your laptop at the native resolution of your projector – this is fairly simple – just choose the output resolution on your computer to match.
Avoid keystone correction
Keystone correction functions on a projector are designed to allow you to mount your projector at extreme angles to the screen, and correct the image shape so it doesn’t appear distorted.
Unfortunately, due to the processing that the projector has to perform to achieve this, the image is always distorted – just in a less obvious way. Keystone correction will squash the pixels in at the top or bottom of the image in order to compensate for angle – but in doing this, you will lose clarity and pixel information on the screen – you will notice this most where you have fine detail on your slides like graphs and charts.
It’s best to avoid using keystone correction functions, and simply try to get your projector roughly level to the screen you’re using instead.
Clear navigation icons from PowerPoint presentation in show mode
Posted by Steve Wylie in Speaker support content on November 8, 2008
PowerPoint Options
If you want to permanently prevent the navigational icons from appearing in your PowerPoint presentation during show mode, open the Options menu (either ‘Tools’, ‘Options’ in PowerPoint 2003, or the ‘Office button’ then ‘PowerPoint Options’ in PowerPoint 2007), and under ‘Advanced Settings’, deselect ‘Show menu on right-mouse click’, and ‘Show popup toolbar’.
You might also want to stop that annoying black slide from appearing at the end of your presentation – deselect ‘End with black slide’ from the same menu. Your presentation will then finish with the final slide, without going to a black slide if you keep clicking.