Before You Create a Movie from PowerPoint

There are things that should concern you even before you create a movie from your PowerPoint presentation. Do give these topics more than a passing thought or cursory glance:

1. Make sure you use the right backgrounds. Don't use a background with many gradients or a design that contains all the colors in the rainbow. That's because movies are compressed with codecs that cannot cope up with these issues all the time.
   
   
2. Keep the content reasonably uncomplicated. Don't put in too much stuff on your slides. A few text lines and a visual or two is the right formula. Twenty animations happening at once and objects that appear and disappear all the time won't be a great starting point to convert as a movie.
   
   
3. Use larger size text. Yes, make sure you take care of this one -- use nothing smaller than 24 point text size.
   
   
4. Decide what type of output you need: regular or wide screen. If you need a wide screen movie, start with a wide screen PowerPoint presentation. You'll find several wide screen PowerPoint templates at ppted.com
   
   
5. Use a simple template. Yes, it's really best to start with an understated design. If you are converting your PowerPoint to a movie format to post on YouTube or another video sharing site, do remember that the movies are shown in a small window. If you use a very ornamental design, that small size might drown all your other slide objects, including text!
   
   
6. Use automatic slide timings. This is even more important if you are using a recording product like TechSmith Camtasia Studio to record your PowerPoint to a movie format.
   
   
7. Use basic (or no) transitions. And if you are using a movie editing tool later in the editing stage, you can always add the transitions there!
   
   
8. What about narration or music? That's a difficult question to answer. It all depends on which tool you are using to create a movie from your PowerPoint.