The joys and frustrations of making video recordings in powerpoint

 I have recently been doing something that many of you are probably already doing thanks to online teaching in the pandemic: using PowerPoint to make a video recording of a slide presentation. Particularly for online courses that are not live this can make a lecture more engaging.

First, I will share a few helpful things I learned. To get the best quality video it is best not to use regular room lighting and the camera on your laptop or desktop monitor. It turns out, for reasons I still do not fully understand, that generally, the quality of the video from your phone is much better than from your laptop camera. So I am using my phone with free Irium software to do the recording. I have the phone mounted on a tripod that includes a ten-inch LED ring light. The picture quality really is a lot better.

Now, I come to the weird, frustrating, and random problems that I am having. At first, ppt would not do video recording on my regular MacBook, but it would on my old MacBook, even though they are basically running the same software. Then a few days later it did start to work on the regular laptop, but only for a few days. For the first few days, the recordings went fine, then I experienced the following random and unpredictable outcomes, even though I had not (knowingly) changed anything.

a. Video and sound recording is fine.

b. There is no recording.

c. Video records fine but there is no sound.

d. Video records fine but the sound only starts working at some random point in the video. Usually, it is out of sync with the video.

I have asked Dr. Google for solutions but found little that is relevant or effective. I have tried changing cameras and microphones but this never provides a lasting solution.

I welcome ideas and suggestions.

Here are two things that I have wondered about.

a. the ppt files are very large (half a gigabyte). Are the different components a bit slow talking to each other?

b. IT services at UQ now has remote control of our laptops and can force updates and restarts. Sometimes when I am not using my laptop it has shut down and rebooted.

Has anyone had similar experiences?

Comments

  1. Viðar GuðmundssonFebruary 1, 2022 at 4:12 AM

    To solve some of these problems when covid started I chose to use a screencast. I use an open software available for all operating system: vokoscreenNG. I use it to make a screencast in open webm format that I then post to the internet together with the notes. You can see an example. It is an introduction to the Lagrange formalism with notes: https://vidargudmundsson.org/Nam/Afl/09F.pdf
    and the screencast is at: https://vidargudmundsson.org/Nam/Afl/FUppt/F09-L1.webm
    I use a simple web-camera at the top of my screen. The screen delivers most of the lighting on my face. Yes, I did at some time switch to a good usb-microphone to improve the sound. If you use a mac there is an even more advanced opne source screencast software (also for all systems):OBS Studio. The reason I chose to use vokoscreenNG is that its configuration is very simple and fast to learn.
    I enjoy reading your blog, thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ross H. McKenzieFebruary 7, 2022 at 3:43 PM

      Hi Vidar, Thanks for the concrete suggestions. Glad you like my blog.

      Delete
  2. JFebruary 2, 2022 at 2:18 AM

    I gave up on powerpoint's built-in recording very early in the pandemic, as I had a number of the problems you report as well as jerky transitions between slides on playback.

    When I need to record now, I make a Zoom meeting and use Zoom's recording capabilities. It has the bonus of allowing my picture to be in the corner of the recording, which can be nice (and I leave a corner of the slides free to hold that image without overlap). That has worked for me every time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ross H. McKenzieFebruary 7, 2022 at 3:45 PM

      Thanks for this suggestion. I have followed it and it works well. I found it helpful to look at this

      https://www.ou.edu/cas-online/website/documents/Using%20Zoom%20to%20Record%20Presentations.pdf

      It explains precisely what settings you need to use. Without reading it, my first try had a few glitches.

      Delete

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