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Table of Contents » Linktivity WebDemo » PowerPoint Presentation Facilities
PowerPoint Presentation Facilities
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Linktivity WebDemo has no specific slideshow presentation facilities, but a meeting presenter may broadcast PowerPoint presentations to all invited meeting participants by leveraging WebDemo's core desktop and application sharing capabilities.
Review Overview
This review discusses the following aspects of running PowerPoint Presentations using WebDemo:
Starting a Presentation
To start a PowerPoint presentation the meeting presenter needs to activate the WebDemo viewport (a framed portion of the presenter's screen) by clicking on the left-most button in the toolbar at the top of the host control panel. It enables the desktop sharing feature. Whatever is surrounded by the dashed lines of the viewport frame is being broadcast to the meeting attendees. The viewport size and position can be adjusted by the meeting presenter. Of course the PowerPoint slideshow needs to be ready to run as well on the presenter's computer.
Live Narration
To broadcast a PowerPoint presentation with live narration, the meeting presenter turns on WebDemo's voice chat feature by clicking on the button with the loudspeaker icon in the toolbar at the top of the host control panel. The presenter may now use the microphone to accompany the slideshow with live voice comments.
If desired the meeting presenter may turn on WebDemo's video conferencing feature, hence adding live images from a video camera to the broadcast.
Recorded Narration
The meeting presenter may also broadcast an already narrated PowerPoint presentation by changing the audio input channel of the WebDemo voice chat feature from MIC to WAV. Any narrative voice that was saved with the PowerPoint presentation will be played back and broadcast to the meeting attendees.
Annotations
WebDemo's whiteboard allows both the meeting presenter and the participants to annotate any ongoing PowerPoint presentation. These facilities are discussed in a separate review in this Guide.
Performance Considerations
The WebDemo viewport performs quite well for the purpose of broadcasting a slideshow, because the presenter can adjust various parameters to make sure everybody has a good viewing experience, for example by monitoring the screen resolution of all participants. The presenter can also control the color depth (number of colors) being sent out to all participants between 8-bit (256 colors), 16-bit (high color = 65,536 colors) and 24-bit color (true color = 16 million color).
Cons
- WebDemo contains no specific components that support the delivery of PowerPoint presentations, thus forcing the meeting presenter to follow a rather complex, multi-step approach to deliver a narrated PowerPoint presentation.
- Linktivity has no specific online documentation on this topic, except for a knowledge base article that explains how to run a PowerPoint slideshow while at the same time having the WebDemo host control panel on the screen.
Conclusion
Linktivity WebDemo offers no components specifically designed to support the delivery of a PowerPoint presentation, such as the ones described into detail in this Guide's Facilities, Functionalities and Terminology page about PowerPoint presentation facilities, summarized:
Specific components that support a PowerPoint presentation facility may include a control to upload .PPT file while converting them to another format (e.g.: .JPG, .GIF, or other formats), a slide list, a thumbnail previewing facility, controls to move to the next and previous slide, ability to preview a slide before "broadcasting" it, full screen display mode, preservation of transition and animations and the provision to use whiteboard and annotation tools on top of the slides being presented.
Advanced features may also include the ability to select a presentation to be run in the reception area of your virtual conference room or before the meeting starts and the provision for running presentations in a continuous loop.
Consequently WebDemo scores low on these aspects in the PowerPoint Presentations Facility Comparison Table.
Nonetheless, once a WebDemo presenter has set up the presentation and has configured WebDemo correctly, the slideshow broadcast runs smooth and without any problems.
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Posted on June 20, 2003 at 09:25 PM
Updated on December 14, 2004 at 02:03 PM
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Facilities
