Customizing RealPresenter 8
Contents
Introduction
Templates
Saving the Slides
Producing the Audio Only Show
Producing the Video Show
In this paper I will discuss the use of RealPresenter 8 to produced customized, audio or video narrated, slide shows that provide for random access of slides through a table of contents. While users versed in writing RealPix (RP), RealText (RT), and SMIL (SMI) markup can produce narrated slide shows without using RealPresenter, RealPresenter streamlines the most difficult step which is recording the show timeline.
The demo shows created for this paper were produced on a PC running Windows 2000, using PowerPoint 2000 and RealPresenter 8 Basic. I will assume that the reader is already familiar with PowerPoint and RealPresenter. This short article will focus on show customization.
By default, RealPresenter 8 produces a show with a 440x330 slide window, a short, scrolling table of contents window, an e-mail window containing the author's e-mail address, a video window (appearing only when video narration is used), and start and exit slides which advertise RealNetworks. The graphic file type of all images is JPG. I do not find the RealPresenter defaults appealing.
In what follows, I will show how to design a show with the following features.
RealPresenter 8 comes with a personal version of the RealServer which can be used to stream presentations from the desktop. The root directory for the RealServer installation is C:\Program Files\Real\RealServer. The following subdirectory contains the RealPresenter templates: Content\RealPresenter\XML Templates. I edited some of the RP, RT, and SMI files to partially automate the production of customized shows. To handle the change in graphics file type and size, I created three PowerPoint macros: savegif, savejpg, savepng. Whether made by the PowerPoint export command or using the macro savejpg, the resulting JPG slides appear to have a hardwired quality parameter set to 75.
Here is my version of the template AoPix.smi which is the SMIL template for a show narrated by audio only. The show windows are defined between the layout tags. The background window is 845x490 and contains three subwindows: slides (id="images"), table of content (id="TOCWindow"), and author window (id="photoWindow"). The slide window is 640x480 and its upper left corner is 200 pixels from the left edge of the background window and 5 pixels from the top edge of the background window. The color of the background is specified with a hex code for dark gray. There is a 5 pixel boarder around the three subwindows. The fit="scroll" attribute value pair was removed from the table of contents window specification but can be added back if you want scrolling in that window.
Here is my version of the template AvPix.smi which is the SMIL template for a show narrated by video. The author window id has been changed to "VideoWindow" and the photo of the author has been replaced by a video of the author.
Here is my version of the template Pix.rp which is the slide window RealPix template for both audio only and audio/video narration. The width and height values are the only changes from the default.
Here is my version of the template toc.rt which is the table of contents window RealText template for both audio only and audio/video narration. Several changes were made here. The height value was hardwired and the width and underline_hyperlinks attributes were added. The word "Contents" was added at the top of the window and font colors, sizes, and faces were changed from the default.
If you want to create your own custom layout, first draw it on paper and determine the pixel dimensions of your background window and each subwindow. Also note the location of the upper left corner of each subwindow.
I created an author photo image (author.gif) of size 176x144 to use with audio only shows. I created a start image (start_slide.gif) to advertise the College of Engineering and Science, Clemson University and an exit image (exit_slide.gif) to advertise the NSF SUCCEED coalition that our college is a member of. The templates I have produced are set up for the GIF graphics type. If you use other graphics file types, you will have to edit the templates AoPix.smi and Pix.rp. I borrowed a video clip from John Royer of Northern Lights College, British Columbia, Canada.
For this paper I created a audio only (28.8K modem) demo show with title "Moss Audio Test." My username is bmoss. RealPresenter saved the audio show in the following subdirectory of the RealServer content directory: RealPresenter\bmoss\Moss_Audio_Test. I will refer to this directory as the audio show directory.
There does not appear to be any way in RealPresenter to specify a user preference for slide graphic file type or for slide size. Slides are always saved in the show directory with graphic type JPG and size 440x330. The PowerPoint macros mentioned above were written to allow user specification of the graphics file type (JPG, GIF, PNG) and image size. You will need to install these macros in PowerPoint to use them.
For slides containing only text, the GIF file type produces sharp images and small file sizes and was used in my demo audio show. One of the advantages of customization is that you can use the graphics file type that is best for your slides. Here is a table showing slide file sizes in KB for the slides automatically produced by RealPresenter 8 and for the slides produced with the PowerPoint macro savegif.
|
slide
|
default JPG 440x330
|
GIF 640x480
|
|
slide1
|
17
|
5
|
|
slide2
|
19
|
5
|
|
slide3
|
20
|
6
|
|
slide4
|
29
|
8
|
Since the GIF file sizes are smaller than the default JPG file sizes, the default image stream bitrate of 13000, which is written into the show's RP file by RealPresenter 8, is more than adequate. Producers of customized shows need to pay attention to slide file sizes. If your custom image size and graphics type choices produce slide file sizes that are much larger than those produced by RealPresenter 8, your show may not stream properly at the target bitrate.
The audio only demo show is archived in mossaudiotest.zip. Download this archive, unzip, double click on trainer.smi, and the show will play in RealPlayer. To see the show streamed from a RealServer, go to the URL
http://webct-test.ces.clemson.edu:7070/ramgen/bmoss/mossaudiotest/trainer.smi
Here are the five steps used to produce this show.
The file trainer.ra contains the audio narration. The "trainer" file names are created by RealPresenter.
My video demo show has the title "Royer Video Test" and was produced by editing a show that John Royer sent me. I edited the files trainer.smi, trainer_pix.rp, and trainer_toc0.rt to bring them in line with my templates. I used the first three slides of my audio only show. This video show is archived in royervideotest.zip. Download this archive, unzip, double click on trainer.smi, and the show will play in RealPlayer. If you have 210 Kbps of bandwidth to our RealServer, you can play the show by going to the URL
http://webct-test.ces.clemson.edu:7070/ramgen/bmoss/royervideotest/trainer.smi
Acknowledgment
This study was sponsored by the Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED) and the Pilot Laptop Program, College of Engineering and Science, Clemson University.
1 William F. Moss, Department of Mathematical Sciences, College of Engineering and Science, Clemson University.