Hear and Now (May 19, 2008)

Sounds are often overlooked as a great way to reinforce your point. That’s because we often think about the projector (or whatever you use to enlarge your visuals), as a more sexy presentation tool than the sound system (or whatever you use to enlarge your music, effects, and sound stories).

National Public Radio does a great job using sound to tell a story. After all, they are radio! You’ll be listening to air hiss out of a pipe and a clanging sound, then some people talking in a language you’ve never spoken, highlighted by clucking chickens. When the narrator says something about the low-wage worker in the outback of Cali, Colombia and his family’s struggle to keep the mill running… you’ve got a vivid picture of the place in your mind.

That’s why we’ve built easy to load and play sound tools into Freepath. When you’re looking at the PowerPoint slide of the galaxy, then show a flash animation of orbital trajectory between here and the moon, how cool to play the famous Apollo 11 “one small step for man…” mp3 that you can download for free from www.freeinfosociety.com.

Oddly, sounds work best in Freepath in the Dual Screen display. That’s because you can DJ your music and effects while your audience is riveted to your smashing projected visuals.

Freepath lets you play music for example, and span it across all your sequence of media. In fact you can also tee up multiple music cues and trigger them one after another, as you need them, without disrupting your visuals. We’ve all tried to jump back and forth between iTunes and PowerPoint to run the sound playlist under the PowerPoint deck. Not fun. Well, you don’t have to anymore. That’s all done in one application, Freepath. Sounds play uninterrupted under all visuals, and if it’s video you’re playing, you can actually mix audio in real time.

You can even drag files from iTunes right into Freepath. The sound controller will run all the music you have in a playlist in a loop until you tell it to stop. The forward and back arrows allow you to override the playback and will move to the next song through a nice dissolve.

So the next time you want to inspire your sales team, drop in the audio of Aragorn’s battle speech from the Return of the King, or create a whole set of playlists in your library with soothing music for the break periods during your training sessions. You probably can’t afford to have an orchestra follow you to speaking engagements. Might as well use what’s free to download, Freepath. (You will, of course pay royalties and give due credit where required for content you play, won’t you…!)

Coming up: Why in the world you’d want to navigate the web with your audience…

Presenting Video the Easy Way (May 12, 2008)

You know how it goes. You’ve got this video you want to show your audience. PowerPoint does a pretty fair job of encrusting that Windows format video into one of its slides. Usually, you insert it and then grab a corner to resize it to however large you want… Or, of course you can clumsily alt-tab to some minimized video player and try to make it full screen without your audience noticing.

There are lots of ways to use video in your digital storytelling. It’s amazing how many places, in many different sizes and lengths video comes in these days. They usually contain more material than your audience should be expected to consume in one sitting. We’ve always wanted a fast way to just show the most fetching part of any video.

That explains a little about Freepath’s video prep tool:

This should give you a picture of our priorities. You see only a few simply presented functions. You can bring in any video you like, yes even QuickTime, and start wherever you want in the clip, as well as stop wherever you want. Just one button click to set each of those. Then you can set play volume, the playlist thumbnail and an option to replay the clip in a loop. Again, one click on each choice.

Freepath plays all videos as a full screen experience. Uh… because you have a screen that matches your audience’s viewing preference. That said, here’s a bonus, you can still encrust that video in a PowerPoint slide if you want to play it old school.

Freepath gives you two ways to play your videos in full screen. If you take advantage of the dual display feature, you’ll have access to the AV rack while video is playing. Check this out (shown here as playing alongside an audio cue):

As you can tell, when using dual display, you can pause, jog and adjust volume while playing your video. Just one more way Freepath puts you in control of your content, rather than the other way round.

Next time: You’ve got sound effects or a whole audio track to run while you present? No problem in Freepath.

Sharing Your Content Live (May 05, 2008)

For years PC users have made good use of extending the Windows desktop beyond a single monitor. Most people do this so they can create more space on which to work. That’s because the “dualview", as Microsoft calls it, allows you to move easily back and forth between the two, which translates into more viewable documents and applications simultaneously. If this is new to you, there is more information and set up steps available for XP from the Microsoft Expert Zone. Instructions are also found in your Windows Help (both Vista and XP).

If that second monitor is your data projector, Freepath takes advantage of the extra real estate by displaying only what you’ve double-clicked. Kind of a remote control. Freepath also has two other live display modes in case you’re not connected to a second monitor.

Sharing options: Prep, Full Screen, Dual Screen, Export

Freepath, by default, assumes you will want to work with your playlist before going live to your audience. So you always start in what is called “Prep". That means you’ll be able to see your media in the “Preview Window", (the smaller monitor in the upper right hand corner of the interface). This is great for quick sequencing and rehearsals.

The next is “Full Screen". Any double-clicked media in your playlist can be displayed as a full screen experience. This is a good way to go through your content one-on-one from your laptop. It’s also not a bad way of working from a podium with a cloned view of your desktop and a remote clicker. To get the Freepath interface back when running full screen, simply swipe the mouse along any of the four sides of the screen, or hit the escape key.

And of course, “Dual Screen". Use this when you’re presenting your content to an audience that may benefit from spontaneity. Because the Freepath playlist is on your laptop screen while your audience is viewing the content you’ve selected on the projector, you have the freedom to rearrange your sequence, check your email, respond to IM’s coming in, all while you’re presenting. OK, so that’s a little far flung, but, suffice to say that you’ve just protected your audience from those new email alerts that pop up while you’re sharing your cloned screen. Dual screen keeps all the primary stuff on your laptop’s display, so your audience can focus on what you want them to. Consider Freepath the next time you’re running a web conference on GoToMeeting or WebEx. Once you’ve had that kind of command of your media, you’ll never go back.

Next time we’ll look at how movies work in Freepath.