Flashcomguru.com: Powerpoint to Image/Flash converter needed

Powerpoint to Image/Flash converter needed

Posted At : October 13, 2008 2:36 PM | Posted By : Stefan Richter | Related Categories: Tools

Can someone recommend a decent Powerpoint to JPG (or maybe SWF converter)? It does not need to have loads of features, I'd be quite happy with a simple one-JPG-per-slide conversion. I used to use Flashpaper, but that's now dead, plus I need something that works easily within a Flex app, so no AS2/AVM1 output please. It also needs to run server side on Windows.
Can you recommend a tool? I don't mind paying for it, nor do I mind if it strips Powerpoint gimmicks such as animations and sound (guess JPG would not support those anyway :-)

Please leave a comment if you have used such a tool and tell us your experience with it. Maybe we can come up with a definitive list here.

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I've spent quite a lot of time looking into Flash Paper replacements, or PPT to SWF converters, and I haven't found one that is nearly as reliable as FP. They always resize text or destory charts, etc...

But thankfully the best JPG solution is staring you in the face... PowerPoint.

PowerPoint converts slides to images using the "save as" feature. Let me save you some headaches using that feature...

1. Saving a normal slide as JPG does a pretty good job. DPI is 96, I think, so keep that in mind.
2. If your slide has a very light background, the JPG will look crappy. Even exporting PNGs will not look great. What I do at that point is screenshot each slide in fullscreen and create a JPG from there. The point... try to use darker colored backgrounds for slides. I can't tell you how important that is when using PPT.

From there I use Fireworks, or Photoshop, to batch dimensions, DPI and filenames.

Hope that helps!

# Posted By Joe Hakooz | 10/13/08 4:05 PM

Sorry Stefan... Didn't see the part about running on server-side, although there may be some PPT command line solution, if PPT is installed on the server...?

My bad!

# Posted By Joe Hakooz | 10/13/08 4:08 PM

thanks Joe, appreciate the tips.
My client however is already using a manual approach (screenshot etc) and we now need a more automated solution. Darn, I am sure someone mus have a workable app.

Out of interest, did any particular program you test come out on top, even with some faults?

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/13/08 4:13 PM

Hi Stefan,

coincidentally we just needed such a solution for a recent project where we sync videos to powerpoint slides. There's a lot of services out there that will do it for you and keep it onlie (sliderocket, slideboom), but it turns out that a lot of them use a server-side converter from iSpring:

http://www.ispringsolutions.com/

They have lots of solutions... one is a server-side SDK that lets you integrate it into your CMS in case you want people to upload their own PPS presentations. We didn't go with that since it's kind of pricey for a lincense.

Their other solutions, that are basically plugins for Powerpoint, are perfect. All tiers of their convertors will work to basically convert a PPS to Flash or images, but where you really get control is with the iSpring Ultra, which includes an Actionscript API you can hook into. I guess it all depends on what you're looking for. Hope that helps :)

-Nick

# Posted By Nicolas | 10/13/08 4:32 PM

Good timing Nick...
I just finished playing with the demo of ispring and it looks pretty nice. I quickly converted 70 slides to separate SWFs, a feature rather uncommon with ppt to swf converters, and even the fancy slides held together very well. And it maintians vectors a lot better than other tools out there.

Not sure when this version hit the market but it looks like a winner to me.

Also, as Nick mentioned, it has a command line tool and fairly extensive API which should do the trick for you. I would take a peak at the FAQs cause there was something about a Flex limitation...

Thanks

# Posted By Joe Hakooz | 10/13/08 4:39 PM

I'm not sure whether this is a supported use case, but here's what we do. We have a license for Breeze Presenter, which if you install it on a server, includes a very handy command-line interface which was easy to create a shell script against. Generates a nice set of SWFs, one per slide. much better compression than JPG and much better image quality. I find JPG output from something like SWFTools looks grey instead of white. I believe the output from Breeze Presenter is AS2 unfortunately but we have had no problems using SWFloaders to pull it into a Flex app. Again I am not sure whether this violates the license terms for Breeze - we do have Presenter licenses for all users that upload via this server-side conversion tool. It helps us get around issues where users have powerpoint but can't installl the plugin for Breeze due to desktop security restrictions.

Jim

# Posted By Jim Wrubel | 10/13/08 4:45 PM

If one wants to do this on the cheap, you could do a two step process... use OpenOffice to convert the PPT to PDF, and then use PDF2SWF to generate the SWF.

# Posted By Jay Charles | 10/13/08 5:20 PM

have you seen the ppt to flash implementation @ http://www.intelligere.info/demo.cfm

dis one is really cool. And kind a open source.

# Posted By tino Klumpen | 10/13/08 5:56 PM

Two questions:

1. How much would you be willing to pay.
2. Would a REST API that accepts the PPT and returns the content (whether it's SWF or JPG) be acceptable?

Disclosure: I created SlideSix.com. Just curious as to whether or not there is a viable market for my conversion engine.

# Posted By todd sharp | 10/13/08 6:28 PM

We looked into this, and we also wanted to preserve transitions between slides. We found that ISpring had a good solution because it has a comprehensive client-side API for managing the converted files. Scroll to the bottom of this page and check out the Flex demo in action:

http://www.ispringsolutions.com/kb/docs/sdk/3.5/as...

# Posted By Harry B. Garland | 10/13/08 6:49 PM

thanks everyone.
intelligere: looks interesting but not well maintained. I haven't found details on their conversion engine and my uploaded PPT seemed to have gone into a black hole (no converted slides appeared).

ispring: looks good, I have requested a price for the SDK. Shame that it needs the AS2/AS3 bridge.

Breeze approach: nice idea, this may work for us but something like ispring would be preferable.

todd: since I already run CF this would be interesting. But you say I couldn't do the conversion on my server? A web API may be ok, but that would also mean a subscription charge (one-off wouldn't work in such a setup). Then there's a risk of you disappearing (not that I think you would but you see the problem). I still think the web API for such a thing would be neat for other purposes. I will drop you an email.

As far as one off fees go for an SDK type product, I think hundreds of dollars per license are easily achievable. How many hundreds I am not sure. If it gets too expensive then it may be cheaper to just go back to Flashpaper, even though it's no longer officially supported.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/13/08 7:18 PM

playing around with ispring - so far this looks very promising. Waiting for a price.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/13/08 8:42 PM

When we looked at pricing for iSpring their default was based on server, number of developers and also named users (meaning the individuals who convert the powerpoint to flash). We were unable to work with those restrictions in our model - we'd be buying new licenses all the time. As a courtesy to the vendor I won't post pricing in public but if you want to know, feel free to email me.

# Posted By Jim Wrubel | 10/13/08 10:08 PM

I just received the ispring SDK quote and I almost choked... shame since it looks like the deal.

Haven't tried this one, and the site looks kinda shady, but this product claims to do everything you need and the price is MUCH lower... http://www.verypdf.com/ppt-flash/index.html

I didn't download the trial yet but thought I'd pass it on.

# Posted By Joe Hakooz | 10/13/08 10:30 PM

Well, you are able to save you PowerPoint presentation to JPG. Also, you are able to convert your PowerPoint presentation to Flash manually. Here is an useful tutorial for you with step-by-step illustrations.
http://www.sameshow.com/ppt2flash/convert-powerpoi...

Hope it helps.

Best wishes.

# Posted By Sunny | 10/14/08 2:54 AM

Thanks everyone, I'm still waiting for an iSpring quote but the fact that they seem to have unrealistic expectations is a bummer. I too would not buy a license that's user based.

I will try verypdf next.

BTW feel free to post prices for iSpring's SDK here unless they are covered by some sort of non disclosure. I certainly don't mind and it may save others some time.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/14/08 9:50 AM

had a play with verypdf - not as slick or fast as ispring but the result is not too different. I think this could work. Price is realistic too.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/14/08 10:30 AM

hi Stefan,
we managed to use openoffice and other opensource tools to convert ppt files...
we were able to always solve the problem... but what a pain!
It's a disaster when new powerpoint release comes out, non standard ppt files, tons of animations, video, embedded media...
OS tools we tried were only suited if you aimed to obtain a list of JPG files which is similar (non equal) to the original ppt.

Then we tried ispring. It's costy, has weird licensing... but what a result!
It's by far the best conversion tool we had the chance to test. It converts everything is a perfect way and allows you to control how the output has to be used. A-WE-SO-ME .

No, i'm not paid by them :)

# Posted By Dario | 10/14/08 12:51 PM

interesting Dario. Did ispring offer you a one-fee-per-server license?

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/14/08 12:55 PM

not really... if i remember correctly you have a limitation on how many users/processes use the sdk... and i think there was also some kind of limitations about how many applications can use the sdk. I didn't manage it directly so i have to go dig more info with my colleagues if you need them

# Posted By Dario | 10/14/08 12:59 PM

I hope ispring doesn't mind, but maybe this info will help get them sales...!

Here are the two flavors of quotes I received:
1. 1 server / 1 developer / 10 users will cost $3990.
2. 1 server / 1 developer / 1000 users costs $4990.

Redistribution of your application requires royalty fees.

If I were building a brainshark type app, this would be no problem. It's the smaller projects that aren't so lucky.

Thanks

# Posted By Joe Hakooz | 10/14/08 2:05 PM

That's the pricing I got from iSpring too. A nonstarter for applications where you can't determine the number of named users ahead of time.

VeryPDF looks promising - I'm going to get the trial and will post any findings back here.

# Posted By Jim Wrubel | 10/14/08 2:41 PM

Yeah, we steered clear of the SDK because of the licensing costs. We ended up using iSpring Ultra because its exported presentations include their API (which uses the oh-so-obnoxious AS2-to-AS3 bridge) and it's way cheaper.

Our setup for this project:
- client has to buy 1+ license of iSpring Ultra
- We give them presets/settings, and they export the presentation. You get a zip file with a "master" SWF file, an XML file, and each slide as an SWF file (should you want that)
- Through our CMS, they upload the zip file and we handle moving it around and unzipping
- They use our CMS to sync the slides to a video

One disclaimer: If you plan on using this and will be working with dynamic presentations in different locations... one HUGE HUGE HUGE pain in the ass that I'm currently dealing with is the fact that the presentation needs the XML file. It's an importatnt file, which contains the number of slides, descriptions, animation steps, etc. However, if you'll have one Flash app loading presentations from different directories, your flash app is going to want to load the presentation.xml from the ROOT of the site for every. single. presentation. Normally you could use the embed BASE tag to change that, but I can't figure out how to get that presentation file to load the XML from somewhere else. I'm pulling my hair out. (Anyone have suggestions?)

Other than that, it works well :)

# Posted By Nicolas | 10/14/08 3:41 PM

thanks Nicolas. I'm not sure what the problem with the XML file is - why can't you load this like any other file from any URL (crossdomain permissions permitting)?

I don't think a clientside conversion will work for us. We need to be able to have any users - and there could be hundreds - able to convert their PPTs.

Maybe a simple PPT to image conversion is the way forward. Yes we may lose effects etc, but I think we can live with that. Shame that there is not one clearly superior solution. Adobe should release such a product. Heck they had one, it was called Flashpaper...

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/14/08 3:54 PM

Sorry that that won't work out for you, if we were in your situation we would definitely consider another option.

The generated presentation SWF file just loads presentation.xml without any path options, so by default Flash will try to load it from where the player is embedded, or where the base URL is. If I had any control over that SWF file I would obviously attach a path to the beginning of the XML file, but I don't :( Damn you iSpring, damn you!!!!

# Posted By Nicolas | 10/14/08 4:20 PM

oh I get it.
What I would have done (in my case this works) was to load each slide SWF one by one. So maybe I wouldn't have this problem. But ispring seems to expensive anyhow...

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 10/14/08 4:58 PM

We've made pretty good experiences with the iSpring SDK, the conversions work well except in some extreme cases and the team is approachable for any issues that may arise.

Two other solutions I suggest you have a look at:

PPT Converter with animations
http://www.authorgen.com/flash-sdk/powerpoint-to-f...

Flash Paper type application
http://www.print2flash.com
(And have a look at this link for a bit of behind the scenes info of where FlashPaper came from in the first place http://www.blue-pacific.com/products/flashprinter/...)

Cheers,
Robert

# Posted By Robert Strobl | 10/14/08 6:20 PM

Stefan, since you may be fine with JPGs instead of SWFs, which is similar to my situation, I just found PPT to Image Converter Pro V2.0...
http://www.pdf-convert.com/ppt2img/ppt2img_pro.htm...

Supports command line which I assume could be used on a server and doesn't appear to have any other licensing issues (don't quote me on that). Now I haven't tried it, and the site is again kinda sketchy, but may be a nice $60 solution/experiment.

# Posted By Joe Hakooz | 10/14/08 6:24 PM

Dear Adobe,

Open Source FlashPaper!

http://www.dearadobe.com

# Posted By James Wrubel | 10/16/08 3:26 AM

We have a license for FlashSpring and it works great.

# Posted By Steve | 10/16/08 8:25 PM

Many (most?) sites providing document embedding on the web use some flavour of open source PDF2SWF on their servers to do the conversion
http://www.swftools.org/references.html
This means you have to save the ppt as pdf first.

# Posted By Petri L | 2/8/09 1:13 PM

Stefan,
Can you share what converter you ended up using? And would you recommend it?

Thanks

# Posted By Joe Hakooz | 5/9/09 2:20 PM

Hi Joe,
I'm now using a custom product that's based on Print2Flash.

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 5/11/09 8:40 AM

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