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Using images within your Presentation

Using media clips within your presentation

Using Animation within your presentation

Fonts

Formatting

Slide Master

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Your Presentation.

Be considerate of the other speakers and the audience by staying within your allotted time. The allotted time for your presentation includes 5 minutes for discussion and changeover to the next speaker. Session presiders will hold you to the allotted time. This is essential to ensure adequate time for questions and discussion and adherence to schedule.

Please discuss the same material as reported in the abstract

Prepare your presentation in advance so that your ideas are logically organized and your points clear. At the very least, write a detailed outline of your presentation. Address the essential points and leave the details for publication.

Take the time to rehearse your presentation. Give your talk to one or more colleagues and ask them for suggestions for improvement. If your presentation runs longer than the allotted time, eliminate the least essential material and rehearse again.

Give an opening statement to acquaint the audience with the nature and purpose of the study. Speak slowly and clearly. Word choice should be simple: use active words and short sentences. Words should reinforce your visual material.

Use the public address system and be sure to speak into the microphone and toward the audience. When using the microphone clipped to your lapel, it may be difficult for the audience to hear you if you turn your head away from the microphone. If you need to see what is being shown on the screen, have pictures or copies at the podium.

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Preparation of your Presentation.

Graphics must be well designed, simple, and readable by everyone in the audience. It is worthwhile to use professional preparation services, if possible.

Use as few graphics as needed that can be discussed in the time allotted. As a general rule, use one graphic for each one or two minutes of presentation time.

Devote each graphic to a single fact, idea, or finding. Illustrate major points or trends, not detailed data.

Do not show long or complicated formulas or equations. Each graphic should remain on the screen at least 20 seconds.

Use the absolute minimum number of words in the title, subtitle, and captions. Remember that standard abbreviations are acceptable.

Use bold characters not fancy serifs.

Table preparation: Do not use more than three or four vertical columns and six to eight horizontal rows. If there are any more columns or rows, the information will not be readable. Do not use ruled vertical or horizontal lines; they distract the eye and clutter the graphic. Whenever possible, present data using bar charts or graphs instead of tables.

Graph preparation: Generally, do not use more than one or two curves on one diagram; a maximum of three to four curves may be shown, but only if well separated. Label each curve; do not use symbols and a legend. Do not show data points unless scatter is important.

Colored graphs are very effective. Color adds attractiveness, interest and clarity to slide and viewgraph illustrations and should be used whenever possible. If you use color, remember that contrasting colors are easier to see.

Critically examine every graphic and view them under adverse light conditions before presenting at a meeting. It is sometimes impossible to provide excellent light conditions at meetings.

An introductory and concluding graphic can greatly improve the focus of your talk.

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Common Pitfalls for Presentations.

Unix Users must have HTML files or PDF files in Adobe Acrobat 6.

PowerPoint is designed to display pictures and text generated within the program or inserted from other sources. If the outside source is a sound file over 5kb or any video file, the original file is not saved within the presentation. Source files meeting these criteria must be available on the computer where the presentation is going to run. Please copy any source video and sound files to the media with your presentation. If in doubt, bring the file along.

Imbedded charts, graphs, and object-oriented graphic files are often difficult to work with. These file types usually are influenced by the version of the program used to create them, often making them translate strangely on a different computer system. It is recommended that charts or graphics be inserted into your presentation as a bitmap format graphic. (Examples of bitmap formats are: .gif, .jpg, and .tiff) If you embed charts and object graphics in your presentation, it is advisable to have the bitmap format graphics available on your media. While there are problems with these file types, it is a small percentage that have difficulties. However, a little preparation can prevent time consuming resolutions on site.

Acrobat Reader. Your are welcome to bring your files in Acrobat’s PDF format; however, editing these files at the meeting will not be possible.

HTML presentations. Make sure that your files are portable. Data will be copied from your media to the networks hard drive. If files are not portable, you could lose links between pages.

Web Server. A Web Server is not on the network so please plan accordingly.

Other Plug-Ins or Active X controls. These cannot be installed into the network. If your presentation takes advantage of a function not built into Internet Explorer 6 or the Plug-Ins mentioned above, you may have difficulties on site.

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Using images within your Presentation.

If you plan on using images in your PowerPoint Presentation, it is important to follow the following guidelines to ensure that your presentation will run quickly and transfer properly to other machines.

PowerPoint will display your presentation in slide show mode at 1024x768 resolution. The PC has a native display of 96DPI (Dots Per Inch). You should consider these factors, when inserting images into your presentation. If your image file is scanned, or from a digital camera, it is likely to be much larger than the screen resolution (1024x768 96dpi) An image size larger than 1024x768 will not translate into a sharper image, when displayed on screen. It will only increase the size of your PowerPoint file and slow down the playback of your presentation. Reduce the image size in an image editing program (like Adobe Photoshop®) prior to inserting the image into your presentation.

There are many different image file formats available. After you have made sure that your image size is appropriate, you should save your image as either a Bitmap (BMP), GIF or a JPEG (JPG) file prior to inserting it into your presentation. Generally we find the JPEG format provides high quality, small file size and portability to other machines.

If the image file is the output of a mathematical program (such as MATLAB®) please make sure that you save the image as a JPEG and not as a Metafile. The latter file depends upon the software program being installed, to properly display the image.

Once you have the images properly sized and saved, choose Insert Picture from the Insert menu. (to put the image onto the slide) Do not copy and paste the image,or drag and drop it into your presentation. Doing that may look fine on your machine, but it will not display properly, when you transfer the presentation to another machine.

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Using media clips within your presentation.

PowerPoint allows for playback of a wide variety of Media within your presentation. Unfortunately Apple® and Microsoft® disagree on appropriate media formats, so there are only a few formats that are portable between the two platforms. What format you choose to use should depend on the ultimate playback platform. Please keep in mind that we cannot support every codec available on the market. If you do not see your codec listed here, please re-encode your file.

For movies created on and played back on the PC, there are a large number of codec’s available. We recommend the Windows media 9 codec’s for video, as well as the following: Cinepak®, MPEG-1 and Indeo® 5.1 AVI

For movies created on and played back on the Mac, there are a large number of codec’s available. We recommend the QuickTime® 6 MPEG4 for Video, as well as the following: Cinepack®, and MPEG-1.

For movies created on the Mac and played back on the PC, the offerings are more limited. If you only have a Mac available, then Cinepak®, MPEG-1 are your best choices. If you have access to a PC, you can use QuickTime® Pro on the PC to re-encode the movie to an Indeo® 5.1 AVI which will provide a high quality transfer.

If you have specific questions regarding codecs and your presentation, please contact us at projectionnet@projection.com

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Using animation within your presentation.

Animated builds, moves, highlights and transitions can help visually reinforce your message. However, these are often overused by presenters and can detract from the message you are trying to convey. Different versions of PowerPoint have different sets of animation features that are not always backwards compatible, it is best to use as little animation as possible to keep your audience focused on your content, and minimize problems in portability.

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Fonts.

The presentation systems will be loaded with Standard System Fonts. If your presentation contains any special fonts, you must provide a copy of the font, to be loaded on the presentation system. To be safe, use Arial, or Times New Roman to create your presentation. Please pay special attention to fonts, if you use scientific notation within your presentation, as this is often written using a non-standard font.

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Formatting.

Presentations are most readable when using a dark background (Blue, for example) and bright lettering (Yellow or White). It is often helpful to step 8-10 feet back from your computer screen and make sure that your slides are readable. Stay away from small fonts which will be illegible from the back of the room, and break up a complex slide into a series of slides, to make it more intelligible.

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Slide Master.

Make use of the Slide Master capability of PowerPoint, to standardize the look of your presentation. That way, if you need to change the bullets or fonts, they can be changed globally. (You won’t have to edit each slide individually)

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