Choosing a rich media production tool
 

A colleague of mine has been brought in by the bid winner to produce drug company presentations for Internet distribution. The projects are geographically diverse and are currently planned as two camera shoots with a sound person. One camera stays on the presenter, the other shoots the powerpoint screen. In post, using Microsoft Producer with Powerpoint 2003 or higher, the actual PP presentation will be incorporated into the screen area, using the shoot only as a visual reference to sync the entry and exit of slides. I understand that this could be done without much if any post work using the portable version of Media Site from Sonic Foundry, and I know there are other tools, perhaps Serious Magic's Ultra among them. Each has a different price point and different features. Does anyone have enough experience with the options to offer an opinion on the optimum choice for the kind of work I've described?

David Hurdon

You might also consider Serious Magic's Visual Communicator. It supports PowerPoint slides as input sources--you can simply drag and drop the entire slide show into the Action Area and then position them on the timeline. In VC Studio, the top-of-the-line version, the program maintains a dynamic link to the PPT project, updating the VC project if the slides change. If you want to learn more, go to http://www.seriousmagic.com/newvcdemo.cfm. I'd also be happy to answer any questions you might have on this workflow.

Thanks for the input, Mark. I will take a look at Visual Communicator.

Any other experienced voices?


David Hurdon

If you are a Macromedia person, their Breeze product provides a great video/data integration/distribution toolset. But all your editing must be done prior to sync in Breeze.