This is a little over the top, but should help you understand ...
Is there a way to make sure that my presentation looks the same on the
road as it does on the computer it was created?
In short, no.
PowerPoint Shows are not 'recorded' on the creation computer, the show's
instructions and some ingredients are. That is to say ...
The objects are placed (and sometimes embedded)
Their locations and sizes marked
Animation types, speeds and effects are noted
Links are generated to non-embedded items
The order and breaks are determined and included
When a show is distributed, the show that you actually see is built,
pixel-by-pixel, frame-by-frame, on that computer that is playing it.
Because of this, the minor differences from 'creation system' to
'destination system', create differences in the appearances of the displayed
show. A slightly different font, will look or space differently. If the
font does not exist on the destination computer, PowerPoint guesses at a
substitute (rarely with good judgment). If the font exists, but is
different, then the result will be also. Likewise for other elements in the
show. If an animation/transition does not exist on the version of
PowerPoint at the destination computer, it will be skipped. If a Movie
decoder is not present, the movie will not play. If a linked object is not
where it is expected to be, it will not be included.
The best analogy would be a midi file. A Midi file is recorded on one
computer, but it is not the sound output that is recorded, just the
instructions for how to create it. When another user goes to play the Midi
file, his computer reads the instructions and rebuilds the steps taken to
create the sound output. For this reason, Midi files may sound different on
various computers. A WAV file, on the other hand, is an exact recording of
the sound output and for this reason will sound exactly the same from one
computer to another (some exceptions, of course). Wav files are several
magnitudes larger than Midi files, because the sound output is recorded.
The advantage of a mid is its small size AND that it's instructions can be
modified to create new/different sounds. A Trumpet sound can be substituted
for a Clarinet sound by changing just one code in a midi, while it would be
almost impossible to do the same change in a WAV file.
So to extend this comparison -- PowerPoint is like a Visual Midi. While an
AVI movie file is like a Visual WAV
Like midi files, PowerPoint files have the advantage of being relatively
small. I know you are screaming, "My file is 6 Megabytes, what do you mean
small?" If you add up all the embedded contents, fonts, links, animation
and transition instructions; I think you'll see that the PPT file is not
that much bigger than the sum of it's many parts. A quality PowerPoint show
(of this 6 Megabyte range) may run for an hour or more. Now, lets compare
this to an AVI file that would last for the same length of time. The movie
file records the output at the creation computer, PowerPoint recreates the
output at the destination computer. An AVI Movie file to run this same
length of time may be over 300 Megabytes. Then, what if you want to change
one of the actors in this movie. You are out of luck, you have to re-film
any scene they were in. I suppose with modern technology, we could use CGI
to paste his face in where the others was, but I don't run the Cray
computers that Computer-Hollywood does.
None of this helps you, of course. But there is a small kernel of
truth/hope. Make the destination computer as much like the creation
computer as you can. Embed a font in the presentation, so that there are no
differences between the two. Make sure both systems use the same printer
driver default and have the same options selected from within PowerPoint.
Make sure both systems have the same movie file decodes and players, the
same speed, Ram and capacity. The closer the two systems are in installed
hardware, software and configuration, the closer the two versions of the
show will be.
--
Bill Dilworth, Microsoft PPT MVP
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Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out
www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.
Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
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