Have you ever wanted to quickly create a video presentation? That was my situation a week ago when my genealogy calendar and my family calendar developed a conflict. Instead of cancelling a presentation, I wanted to turn my presentation into a video that could be used instead of a live presentation.
When I was teaching there was a web site that I used quite frequently to take a sequence of images and add narration. That web site no longer exists. However, the ability to narrate slides has been added to PowerPoint. Even though I had never used this aspect of PowerPoint, I was able to quickly figure out how to add narration to my existing presentation.
Once the narration was added, I simply used the export function to create a video. I then uploaded that video to YouTube. Since I wanted the Wichita Genealogy Society to be the first to view this video, I did not make it public. Instead I uploaded it to YouTube and made it unlisted. That way, I could share the link to the video with the society.
After learning how to create videos from PowerPoint, I then applied that new skill to creating a couple of videos for my family. Below is an abbreviated version of her obituary video.
Now that I have reacquired this skill, I’m sure I will be putting it to use for other projects.
Well done! I’ve been considering using Zoom to narrate my presentations and memorial videos like the one you did for your mother. I haven’t done it yet. I use LibreOffice for my presentations, and I don’t think it has the narration option that PowerPoint has.
I considered Zoom when I needed to get my presentation into video. However, when I discovered that I could just narrate my existing PowerPoint, that was what I decided to do. I also created a video of pictures for the memorial service. For that one, I put each picture on a slide and then used music behind it.
One of the recent computer SIGs sponsored by the Topeka Genealogy Society had a presentation using Animoto (free online) to do the same thing. The presenter added text to her images and just used music provided by Animoto for the background. Animoto is one of the tools we taught students to use when I was teaching. (There is a subscription side to Animoto that offers more bells and whistles.)
The tool I used to use to narrate my powerpoints was called BrainShark. I don’t think that free feature is available any more. Since Microsoft has added the narration capability, there probably isn’t the need for BrainShark. When I uploaded the RM video, I discovered all of my how to videos still sitting on my YouTube channel. I’ve been out of the education technology realm too long to know if there are any other free tools that might do the same thing.
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