KB105: Working with Articulate Presenter

Articulate Presenter is a popular way to convert a Powerpoint presentation for playback on the web. With Character Builder you can let a character present your slides for you. Here are some best-practice notes for working with Articulate Presenter.

To create a Flash SWF file that integrates into the Presenter timeline, you will create a new Character Builder project with the Flash Animation output format. This setting is found on the Project panel:

On the same panel, make sure that you have the correct Frame Rate and Flash Version settings.

The Frame Rate should be set to match that of Articulate, normally 30 frames per second. Your Flash Version and ActionScript settings should also normally match the Articulate settings, normally Flash 8, ActionScript 2.

In Powerpoint, go to each slide where you would like a character to appear. Choose Articulate > Insert Flash Movie. In Step 1, choose "Display in slide". (You can also display a movie in the Articulate sidebar area, if present.) In Step 2, Navigate to your My Documents\Character Builder Projects directory, then to your project directory, and finally to the Output subdirectory to select your Flash file. In Step 3, choose the default value for Synchronization: "Play Flash movie and slide in sync", and select "Move to next slide automatically when movie finishes".

The default time for "Buffer 5 seconds of the movie before playing" should be adequate. When you press Finish, Articulate will insert a picture (actually a shockwave flash object) into Powerpoint that represents the first frame of the Flash movie. You can then move the picture anywhere on the scene, so as not to obscure the content. (Note that the background of this picture may be solid white in Powerpoint, but it will become transparent when you publish to Flash. It helps to make the Character Builder stage has small as possible while still accommodating the character and its range of motions.)

Finally, use the Articulate > Publish menu option, as normal, to create a resulting Flash file set.

Some further notes:





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