PowerPoint to DVD Software

I discussed whether and why you should create a DVD from your PowerPoint presentation a while ago...

And now let's take this to the next logical level: do you need a separate PowerPoint to DVD conversion software? The answer is not yes or no, it depends on your expertise level.

For starters, I haven't found a foolproof program that does it very well. And if you search for a PowerPoint to DVD program, it looks like the results are engineered by people who just want to sell their products! (they seem to be outsmarting Google for now). So I'm not going to recommend any of those programs. But to be fair -- most of them have trial versions, do check them out for yourself, and they might even work for you.

Essentially, creating a DVD from PowerPoint is a two step process:

Creating a movie from your PowerPoint
Creating a DVD from that movie

There are many good programs for the second process, and one of them may have been bundled with your DVD writer. As for converting your PowerPoint to a movie is concerned, you can follow my PowerPoint to YouTube tutorial (just skip the step where I ask you to upload the movie to YouTube).

This is not my last post on this subject -- expect to hear much more!

Labels: dvd, movie, powerpoint

Why Should You Create a DVD from PowerPoint?

Yes, it's the next big thing, and hordes of people want to do this. And since we live in a world with the mentality of a herd, everyone else wants to do this. But why? Ask them and many are confused. They might answer that there must be advantages using this approach since so many others want to do it!

So am I asking you to abandon the very idea of creating a shining DVD disc from your PowerPoint presentation that you can play on your TV via the DVD player? Not really. So why I am putting up such a layer of skepticism right at the beginning of this article? Well, actually this is not skepticism for the idea, it's more related to not being aware of how to do it, and of learning if better solutions exist for you.

I'll certainly go into the finer details of this issue, but for now let us look at the advantages and disadvantages of this approach:

Advantages:

Since I don't want you feeling gloomy, let's first list the advantages of creating these DVDs:

DVDs are easily played by anyone -- even by great grandmothers who don't know how they can use a computer. Did you notice I did not say grandmothers? That's because today's grandmothers are smarter!
DVDs containing PowerPoint presentations don't contain the actual presentation, just a movie of the presentation -- that means no one can copy your slides and pass them as their own, or even edit them to change a spelling (even if you made a typo).
Creating your own DVD sounds much more impressive than creating a mere PowerPoint presentation.

Disadvantages:

It's not too easy an task -- and you need the right software and hardware (and that's not always cheap).
It's not easy to email a DVD! It's so much simpler to send a PowerPoint presentation by email.
Editing DVDs can be time-consuming and expensive.

That's for now -- I'll discuss more PowerPoint-DVD nuances sometime soon.

Labels: dvd, powerpoint