Importing pictures of powerpoint slides into iMovie HD

[NCTRNL]

I have tried all different resolutions and I can't get anything to work. They all look dithered and distorted. I can't seem to figure it out. I am taking screen shots of a powerpoint slide and overlaying them on the video of the presentation. It shouldn't be hard but I can't figure it out. Anyone have any tips?

[johnnyjibbs]

When you say distorted, do you mean the wrong aspect ratio? How are you putting them in? I guess you'd have to take screenshots, add to iPhoto and then import using the photos pane of iMovie. Once you've made the movie, you can delete the "photos" from your iPhoto library. If you have Tiger, you could use Automator to, ahem, automate the process.

[yenko]

I have tried all different resolutions and I can't get anything to work. They all look dithered and distorted. I can't seem to figure it out. I am taking screen shots of a powerpoint slide and overlaying them on the video of the presentation. It shouldn't be hard but I can't figure it out. Anyone have any tips?
Maybe the fact that it's a ".png" image is why it won't work. Did you try to convert it??

[NCTRNL]

I have done it with .jpg files and psd files. I have tried all the different resolutions that should work with iMovie but I can't get it to work. They all look horrible...

[homerjward]

have you considered exporting the presentation as a .mov then editing?

[NCTRNL]

have you considered exporting the presentation as a .mov then editing?

Damnit...I can't believe I didn't think of that...

[homerjward]

Damnit...I can't believe I didn't think of that...
however, keep in mind the limitations mentioned in this thread (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=153031&highlight=powerpoint)

[johnnyjibbs]

Make sure you use Grab (screen capture) to 'capture' the images from PowerPoint. DON'T USE PowerPoint's crappy export function, which has low quality if I remember rightly.

Otherwise, consider making the movie in HD format, although the problem with this is that it's widescreen. Remember that the default DV video settings in iMovie are a low resolution - lower than your PowerPoint slideshow - because this the extent that most TVs can handle. iMovie is designed for TV movies, not anything more.

[NCTRNL]

Yeah, the .mov thing didn't work either. Maybe I should try the screen shot technique instead of the export thing in powerpoint. That's my next choice...

[dkeninitz]

I know you're using PowerPoint, but have you thought about trying Keynote? I work on both Mac and PC platforms, so I use usually use PowerPoint for presentations, but for stuff I want to put in a movie I use Keynote. The advantage of Keynote in this regard is that you can take a presentation and then use the Export feature to save the presentation in a number of different formats, including PDF and JPEG. If you choose JPEG, Keynote automatically creates a separate image for each slide in the presentation.

I just used this approach yesterday. I imported a couple of slides into Keynote from PowerPoint (opened the PP file in Keynote), then I used the Export feature to save them as individual JPEGS on my desktop. Finally, I imported them into FC.

I paid $79 to upgrade the trial version of iWorks that came with my latest Mac to a fully licensed version, and while I don't have any real use for Pages, there are a lot of things I like about Keynote compared to PowerPoint. The Export feature is one of them.