PowerPoint and Keynote integration: what do you want?

It's possible to integrate PowerPoint and Keynote presentations in several ways:

1) Images. This is the safest/most-portable way, where your PPT/Key presentation is exported to a sequence of images that Proclaim imports. This avoids any formatting problems and ensures cross-platform compatibility, even if you import a presentation from one platform and present on another. Negative: You can't get animated builds, point by point reveals, etc.

2) Content import. Proclaim reads PPT/Key presentation and extracts text and images, putting them into its own format. This is likely to increase formatting errors on complex slides, and doesn't bring in transitions/builds, etc., but would work for simple text based slides and make them editable in Proclaim.

3) Shelling out. We can control -- or shell out to -- PowerPoint or Keynote at a certain point in the presentation. Complicated, and possibly a source of UI conflicts / problems, but would allow full featured use of the other products in the middle of a Proclaim presentation.

What do you think Proclaim should do/prefer?

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Steve Hultquist

It seems like you could read the XML from Keynote and PowerPoint including the transitions, couldn't you? I know that it's possible for Keynote to export to PowerPoint format and include those transitions that PowerPoint supports. Not possible for Proclaim?

Graham Criddle

Hi Bob

Thanks for asking the question.

Thinking about our standard usage of presentation tools, the ability to support builds and "point by point reveals" is essential. Also, having the ability to edit slides containing such features just before a service starts is important.

So, if the only way of really supporting this is option 3 that is the one I would go for.

However, we don't have a huge investment in such slides (we generate new ones for each service) and so if it were possible to have these features (build of text slides) in Proclaim then our requirement for an import feature at all would be significantly reduced. (I know that others have very different requirements here).

Hope this helps

Graham

BillS

Hi Bob,

Speaking only for Power Point, I'd vote for all 3 with the default being option 1. I can see times when each would be preferable.

Images - would enable quick use with Proclaim controls. Useful when no special transitions, linkages, etc., exist in the Power Point.
Import - Handy when we want to convert to proclaim & toss the power point.
Shelling Out - handy when we want to show someone else's power point & they have lots of links, transitions, etc. built in.

Mark Barnes

Option 1 seems the easiest and "lightest" option. For our uses we would not suffer from loss of transitions or animations in PowerPoint. Our current software uses Option 3, which can be buggy and tends to have a lot of lag.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/256564#Comment_256564

It seems like you could read the XML from Keynote and PowerPoint including the transitions, couldn't you? I know that it's possible for Keynote to export to PowerPoint format and include those transitions that PowerPoint supports. Not possible for Proclaim?

Steve -

This is essentially Bob's second "solution." The problem with this solution is that anytime you move from one system to another [This could be Keynote to Powerpoint, this could also be from one version of Powerpoint to another] there are frequently changes made in how the program renders the slide.

Andrew Phillips

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/257866#Comment_257866

Hmmm

that is a tough one I guess option 3 ( but like option 1) This will probably cause problems. The main reason is I use animations, if I have multiple points on one ppt slide so they don't all appear at one time I animate them to appear 1 at a time. I might just have to change how I do things

Jim From North Bend

Option 1 is likely the easiest, and most reliable.

Reading the XML is technically more difficult, but if you set the standard on a specific version, say PPT 97-2003, then that should mitigate some of the issues with versioning.

Actually, If you went with the OpenDocument format, which PowerPoint can save in, it would also open up the opportunity for using "OpenOffice", an open-source tool, and other tools that can save in the standardized format. That should eliminate changing XML formats also.

As for transitions using Option 1, its not REAL hard to make separate slides that sets up a 'reveal' for point-by-point presenations...

BillS

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/258016#Comment_258016

As for transitions using Option 1, its not REAL hard to make separate slides that sets up a 'reveal' for point-by-point presenations...

Hi Jim,

If we implement Proclaim, we won't be developing Power Points (our implementation of a competitor's projection software has already stopped PP development). Therefore, the only time it'll be an issue is if a guest brings a Power Point. presentation that has transitions, animations, or internal links. If Option 1 were the only option, our AV person would likely ditch Proclaim, start Power Point for the presentation, & come back to Prolcaim afterwards. It just isn't possible to re-implement someone else's presentation into separate slides in Proclaim just before worship, just so we can show it in Proclaim.

Jim From North Bend

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/258019#Comment_258019

True... with external/guest folks, we do the same thing with a competing product now, also. We leave the presentation software on a 'landing' slide for the transition to and from PowerPoint.

Our pastors use Powerpoint, but they're "trained" to use successive slides, rather than use in-slide transitions, because it can cause instability with the presentaiton tool we use.

Paul Gisbourne

It's possible to integrate PowerPoint and Keynote presentations in several ways:

1) Images. This is the safest/most-portable way, where your PPT/Key presentation is exported to a sequence of images that Proclaim imports. This avoids any formatting problems and ensures cross-platform compatibility, even if you import a presentation from one platform and present on another. Negative: You can't get animated builds, point by point reveals, etc.

2) Content import. Proclaim reads PPT/Key presentation and extracts text and images, putting them into its own format. This is likely to increase formatting errors on complex slides, and doesn't bring in transitions/builds, etc., but would work for simple text based slides and make them editable in Proclaim.

3) Shelling out. We can control -- or shell out to -- PowerPoint or Keynote at a certain point in the presentation. Complicated, and possibly a source of UI conflicts / problems, but would allow full featured use of the other products in the middle of a Proclaim presentation.

What do you think Proclaim should do/prefer?

hmmmmm....... In previous years at my church we had different programs for song lyric projection, powerpoints and videos, and found that more often than not we would have issues with computer crashes and not to mention complications as we would have a couple of powerpoints, one for notices one for sermon.

As an ultimate preference I would go for an all in one solution with proclaim handling the powerpoint/keynote presentations.

As a mac user, there is however issues we face in taking our presentations into other projection software in that they handle powerpoints and don't read keynote files, so in converting we lose much of the coolness of keynote. What I often do is export a powerpoint version and a quicktime movie. Will proclaim be able to handle quicktime movie files, and other ones too, as for a mac user this would help immensely????

Ken Bussell

We use PowerPoint extensively, and our presentations are fairly complicated... lots of animations, transitions, movement, etc. I would prefer to see #3. The first two options are not really integration... more like workarounds.

Aaron Baldridge

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/258402#Comment_258402

I think I would prefer option 3 as well. In addition to Proclaim, we are also testing out Easy Worship and have used it the past couple of weeks in our worship services. I keep in mind that Proclaim is new and in the alpha stage, EW has been around for quite awhile so it is not fair to expect everything you can do with EW at this stage, but when it goes "live" unless it does at least most of what EW can do we will definately have to go with EW. The ability to use power point and edit slides and layouts has proven to be absolutely essential in us using presentation software.

Jai Reid

It depends on how good Proclaim is for creating sermon slides. If proclaim has all the outline, chart/table-creation, animation features of a Powerpoint/Keynote program, then I would #1 might suffice, because the staff would just learn Proclaim instead of Powerpoint, and the only use for powerpoint would be when a guest comes with a pptx file.

If proclaim is only going to have the basic slide editing features needed for song projection/video playback, etc, then it will be completely inadequate for the pastor, and it will likely be inconvenient to always be using more than one program for projection, so #3 would be necessary, but again, unless it works REALLY well and is completely stable, we'll end up hating Proclaim for it. Better not to have a feature than to have a buggy feature.

So if #3 isn't going to work well, then I'd say you just need to make sure using the two programs at the same time is as user-friendly as possible (for instance, ProPresenter has a feature that keeps it on top of the projection screen, but it had a switch to turn this off - crucial if we're going to show PowerPoint presentations seperately -- it would be even better if it could "allow only Powerpoint/Keynote" and not other things to pop up). Having a way to open up Powerpoint Presenter View while still keeping Proclaim visible and only a click away on the control screen would be best in my view (ie. a window within a window).

#2 can be ocassionally handy, but I think for the most part it requires so much re-formatting work that it won't be useful. When we wanted to stick all the names of our volunteers in a PowerPoint presention, I did an excel export from our database, then converted to word outline format, then imported into PowerPoint to avoid typing in several hundred names, but that's about the only time we use an import feature on PowerPoint.

Rich DeRuiter

We're not using Proclaim, since we don't have internet access at the display computer.

However, as I've looked at other worship presentation software, running PowerPoint by calling the PowerPoint program from the presentation interface seems to be the industry standard. Those that don't (e.g. OpenSong) are often by-passed by churches that have used PowerPoint as their primary means of projecting songs, message notes, announcements, etc.

IMHO, option 3 would be less complicated than option 2, which would require you to be on top of every iteration of PowerPoint in use today, plus every future iteration.

Option 1 doesn't sound like anything I'd want, and it's not close to being competitive in this market, IMHO.

Chris Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/268684#Comment_268684

I'd be perfectly fine with Proclaim shelling out to Keynote or Powerpoint.

When I build a PowerPoint presentation (or more likely a Keynote presentation), I hate to see it losing transitions and effects. I don't use them heavily, but when I use them I have a reason. Because there doesn't seem to be a good solution to offering 100% perfect playback of .ppts in Proclaim (or any other product I've tried up to this point), and I know that there isn't really any method to playback a Keynote file in anything other than Keynote, I'd want to see it call up Keynote and/or PowerPoint to play back the appropriate files and then close them out when the presentation comes to a conclusion.

First Reformed Harrisburg

As it stands, I'm not certain I understand the product well enough to respond without LOTS of preconceptions that may or may NOT be true.

However, I AM aware that my answer, to this point, is about as helpful as a football-bat.

SO, I'll qualify my answer some as I go. I assume the software will be the presentation development tool. That is it will have features that handle transitions and placement of text, fonts, videos, etc. This said, I would LOVE to be able to have my PPTs imported maintaining ALL relevant features (images/transitions/fonts/EVERYTHING) from a PPT or Keynote file. Even IF I opt to use this to make my presentations (which stops me from being able to leverage folks that make templates for me) I may have folks that come to visit with a PowerPoint. I'd like to stick with (this) as my native mode of presenting and NOT pop up an external method for visitors not familiar with our new fangled dot come machine.

Grace and peace,

John Weathersby

Harrisburg PA -

www.transcendchurch.org

First Reformed Harrisburg

Also, does it offer functionality in the presentation that I DON'T get nativly from PowerPoint like Prezi http://prezi.com/index/ I'd LOVE LOVE LOVE that!!

Randy Allen

I realize I am coming in late to the show, but I have just started messing around with Proclaim. I would think all three options would be useful at different times based on the circumstance.

One issue I just noticed as I was trying to add PP slides to Proclaim is the amount of time it takes for each slide to upload before it can be viewed. If we have a guest that comes in with a PP presentation, we often do not have an abundance of time to prepare the slide show. Uploading each slide and waiting would become very tedious. I would probably just have video person drop Proclaim and open PP.

Anton E Brown

Honestly, all three options should be available. Most of the current presentation market provides this already.

Tim

I'd prefer to use option 3. Option 1 is pretty much already availble in Proclaim (it just needs multiple picture uploads to make it less painful). We are currently moving from a PC to a Mac and have both setup. On the PC we use EasyWorship and that shells out to PowerPoint with some lag issues on getting the first slide up (after that it goes fine, does all the transitions and embedded movies with no hangups). I've tried several programs on the Mac and none do this. They all do some form of option 1 or 2 and I've found it very time-consuming to set up, not something I want to put onto my volunteers (or myself for that matter!) I'm not sure if this is an issue with the Mac platform.

I have noticed that both PowerPoint and Keynote on the Mac insist on taking over both screens of a dualscreen system when displaying a presentation. You can't turn the Presenter display off on PowerPoint. On Keynote you can, but it blacks the control screen! This makes using Proclaim and Keynote/PowerPoint at the same time a slightly less viable alternative to what you get on the PC, where you can have Proclaim or whatever software visible and ready to go on the control screen.

I've done extensive searches and have found no solution to this. Its pretty much a dealbreaker using the Mac for church presentations, which is frustrating as the platform is so much better in just about every other way. If you could implement option 3 in a workable way on a Mac I would be most impressed and grateful.

Tim

John Oh

Hi,

I was wondering if it can be build in with MS powerpoint and can have a drop box system. as in can be just drop into proclaim and it will be able to read and present it.

As it will be running with MS powerpoint and chinese wording won't be any problem.

As it is now not really working well with chinese input

Kyle Ward

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/296809#Comment_296809

Personally, I prefer option 2 because if you develop Proclaim as a slide builder (multiple text/image/... objects on each slide) then we will probably stop using PowerPoint (, Keynote, Impress...) to build our slides. Then the only reason we would need to use this feature is if a guest speaker or regular church member brings us a presentation for select services.

Molly Crocker

Why worry about importing at all? Unless you have Just Plain Slides and Really, Really want them in your Proclaim video feed, why not just launch PowerPoint or Keynote and RUN that? There are remote control options from your iPhone/iPad as well (well, at least for Keynote, through a common wifi connection) that lets the speaker see his/her notes.

Molly Crocker

Ethan Boles

I would love to see option 3 but if you can get #1 right now and then come out with #3 later i would love that. I would be using Proclaim for my Christian College's chapel. We have so many visitor speakers and without any integration we simply cannot use proclaim. So if number 1 would be a quick solution that you would just like to improve that would be great.

Mark Vojtasek

Based on the replies so far, it would appear that there is a need for all three, although perhaps not as much for #2. In our case, we could probably get away from ppt for sermon slides, as our pastor is an enthusiastic Logos user, and I expect the interface between Logos and Proclaim to take advantage of that. However, it would not be a complete solution for us if we could not show a native ppt(x), which we often receive from guest preachers and speakers. Even if we allowed time to import/convert into Proclaim, animations & transition would likely be lost.

Another issue that I have not seen get much discussion here is the need to upload all files to the cloud. Again, this is not practical for the late-arriving ppt or video (i.e., large) files. If storage space is not a concern then I would be all for uploading all content. This would obviously support the core philosophy of Proclaim, allowing anyone to collaborate from anywhere. But, I think there are a number of situations where due to time or bandwidth constraints, or unstable Internet connectivity, it would be advantageous, once the presentation is ready, to run a service from a locally downloaded copy. For any large media elements, you could provide an option for "streamed" or "local". With the latter, there probably would need to be some way of ensuring that the file actually exists on the presentation pc, or at least a warning that someone needs to verify that.

That said, I love the 'feel' of the interface, and how quickly I was up and running with it. I would not have taken the time to post my $.02 if I wasn't hopeful that it could become a viable solution for us!

Philip Taylor

Bob

After some initial testing for us the real need is the first one for both Powerpoint (Mac/PC Versions). Keynote would be very helpful but this is more difficult due to API issues. Our church (just over 100 per Sunday) used to be PC and we are moving toward Mac so making sure that imports work for the Mac versions of Office is key.

GNF_Ferndale

Option 1 for sure. Would like all three to be a possibility.

Kevin M. Shaw

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/296479#Comment_296479

I think the best thing is for a feature whereby anything in the slide master gets converted to a background ... then each slide grabs the text and font style and size ... and then proclaim converts everything to individual slides in Proclaim!!

James Walton

From the usage and migration scenario we'd be in, I think all 3 options are valid.

I'd prefer option 2 for migrating our existing PowerPoint song slides into Proclaim. Personally, we don't use transitions or list reveals, as we primarily project worship songs and videos. So, really all I would want would be the ability to gimport the text, background images, and optionally the font formatting (size/style/color) from a presentation.

For handling guest speaker presentations and such, I could see arguments for either option 1 or 3. However, I think it probably would be easiest to simply hand-off to PowerPoint/Keynote if you wanted to be able to incorporate that content but not import/migrate it.

Clay Brisbois

I am just starting to work with Proclaim, testing it out, but it seems to me that once you fully commit to it that you would use it to create your presentations instead of PowerPoint. I guess if you have a guest speaker who brings in some slides you would need this functionality. But I would like to be able to export a Proclaim presentation into PowerPoint to archive it. Since it would be for reference, and not presentation, you wouldn't need to worry about putting in transition effects and so forth.

For those times that we would need to incorporate an existing PowerPoint presentation, I would prefer option 3. A lot of thought and work goes into the animations, when they are utilized, and it would be a shame to lose them - or have to re-create them in Proclaim.

Tim

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/304082#Comment_304082

What I want out of Proclaim - or the Presentation software I use - is to be able to pull together all the different multimedia requirements of a service into one package - video, slides, songs, audio... I only want to have one program open on a Sunday morning, not have to flick back and forth between many programs.

I don't really see it as content creation software - except for the songs (which by the way, I think Proclaim has the best SongSelect integration so far).

I plan to still use PowerPoint or Keynote to create slides because they do that well. I wouldn't expect Proclaim to edit my videos! (except some basic trimming options).

As such option 3 is the only real option for true PowerPoint/Keynote integration. You wouldn't be able to keep up with newer versions with the others.

That's what I currently have in EasyWorship and that's one of the things I'd need to have before considering switching to Proclaim.

Village Baptist Church

I think you should offer both the ability to point to a PowerPoint presentation and import it in and put it in a Proclaim format and allow Proclaim to seamlessly run a PP presentation as it is, giving the user the choice of which way they want to go. The biggest issue is that Pastor's will want to keep their presentations separate from the Worship software so that they have it with their sermon notes. Therefore, pastors aren't going to want to create their portion of the service in Proclaim unless there is a way to get just their sermon portion out in a format they can edit for the next time they need to use that sermon.

Village Baptist Church

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/304497#Comment_304497

you definately need to allow the user to upload multiple images at once. I had to upload the announcements one image at a time, which was painful.

Scott Alexander

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/304652#Comment_304652

you definately need to allow the user to upload multiple images at once.

This feature is coming soon.

Mark Schimmel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/304684#Comment_304684

There are far too many presentations and sub-presentations that we will need to keep the capability to run ppt/key/odp files (see the Voice of the Martyrs ppt presentation today regarding the International Day of Prayer as a for instance). What would be best IMO, would be the ability to drag a ppt into a slot in proclaim at the point in the service we want it to play and simply have it play as designed.

Thomas VanderPloeg

Images are the cleanest way to keep formatting exact. Keynote lets users create a separate slide for each animation build. However, the entire procedure is completely undesireable because Proclaim only lets users upload ONE SLIDE AT A TIME! This makes Proclaim more hassle than it's worth. I'll keep an eye on the updates and stay with MediaShout for the time being.

John D. White

Another option is to actually improve the ability to make robust and complex formatting and transitions within the "custimize" section of Proclaim...

John D. White

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/309924#Comment_309924

It seems you can upload more than one slide at a time if you use the 'account' section to upload multiple files.Make sure you get a preview icon for each file or it will freeze up.

Simon Crosland

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/334747#Comment_334747

Another option is to actually improve the ability to make robust and complex formatting and transitions within the "custimize" section of Proclaim...

Whilst that would be useful anyway, it would not solve our need for PowerPoint integration.

Visiting speakers and missionaries often come with ppt or pptx presentations that need to be displayed. Without full integration the workflow would be to take the presentation, export slide images, import to Proclaim, re-insert all the transitions that the speaker wanted, and that's too error prone to be practical! With integration we would simply import the presentation and be ready to go.

Cheers,
Simon

Hunter Clagett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/334748#Comment_334748

It seems you can upload more than one slide at a time if you use the 'account' section to upload multiple files.Make sure you get a preview icon for each file or it will freeze up.

John, I have been unable to reproduce this behavior. I will follow up with you offline.

Thanks,

stan

well - what's the word? if i am going to go through the trouble of building a complicated/animated PP, I want it to show as I designed. I'm tired of inferior presentation products that hiccup on this integration. I would also think as others have shared that outside presenters want their stuff shown as is - not dumbed down.

i also see that no one has address the post on Prezi. this is the future or presentation (controlled flash animation) and I would hate to see you aim at the wrong target. Prezi also offers online and desktop building and would seem to be a natural fit.

I say Shell but work out the kinks with UI and make sure the shell has room for prezi to fit in the glove.

if you don't people will eventually outgrow your product as they seek more customization and functionality.

Chris Martin

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/353597#Comment_353597

Hey Stan,

I used Prezi in our church a couple weeks ago. I just embedded the presentation as a web item in the service order and controlled it using remote desktop from a laptop at the podium. It actually worked without a hitch for two services. Not a completely integrated solution, but it does provide an option.

I too look forward to Proclaim taking the wraps off their Powerpoint / Keynote integration.

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