15-Minute Reviews :: DVD Presenter v4.0.0

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the 15-Minute Review system! Today’s application is DVD Presenter version 4.0.0 by Wondershare Software – An application to take your PowerPoint presentation files and convert them into DVD or MPEG-1/2 files for later encoding to SVCD or DVD.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“DVD Presenter is the very thing you’re after, as it gives an innovative way to convert PowerPoint files to video formats, and enables you to make a DVD copy directly.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is very easy to get up and running
• Does not overwhelm you with options
• Resulting DVD is very good quality – Menus are nice
• Menu-editing options including an end-menu

Quick Cons

• Video file conversions result with a difficult-to-use file directly on computer
• Could use other video options such as AVI, but may take away from ease-of-use
• No way to add audio within this application

Expansion

Many students and professionals alike are always looking for a good presentation to throw at their instructors, bosses or the similar. While many people have access to a computer to project a presentation, there are many cases, especially with professionals where a DVD on a 27” television may make more sense compared to being viewed on their 14” laptop screen. This application attempts to fit into the market of alternative presentation methods with the ability to port to DVDs as well as MPEG-1/2.

I found the interface is very easy to use; There isn’t a lot of settings to get confused at; There is even options to help remove confusion. No idea what television format you need to burn at? (NTSC/PAL?) No worries – Just select your country and it will fill that in for you. The steps are mostly straighforward with no real place to get hung up on for those who may be a little less experienced at DVD and video formats.

I found with the DVD conversion, the control over menus and end-menus was nice, as well as scaling the video so that it doesn’t lose data from standard television bleed-over (The ‘safe’ zone.) So many applications overlook this aspect and give you a full-screen DVD, with a good portion of your information/text off the side of the screen. You can either have it placed directly to DVD, or set up an ISO if you by some chance want to alter the ISO (or save a backup for repeated copies.)

A few issues I had though. When I attempted to copy to MPEG-1 (And I’m assuming MPEG-2 option would be about the same,) is that there is no settings for frame time for the videos (You don’t get to the same screen to set the automatic timing as you do with the DVD,) and the ‘Maximal Slide Time’ is only useful if you have an automatic advancing feature already in the PowerPoint presentation. Essentially, you get an unusable video that flies through the slides at break-neck speeds unless you’ve done some more legwork in advance – A shame to say the least.

Also, there is no way to record your voice or other audio to the presentation using this application. This is a feature I’ve seen in other applications but appears to be overlooked here. I would like to be able to annotate the slides and control the timing manually before the record happens; It would be really nice if there was the ability to have a DVD with two different options on playback too from the DVD menu; One option would have the automatic timing you’ve put in as well as your voice to it, and the other option would revert back to manual mode where you can be there in person to do your little speech.

Final Verdict

All-in-all, if you’re looking to create a DVD that you’re going to speak to or simply want an auto-advancing slideshow, this application is dead-simple to use and provides good quality support. If you were looking to use it to create video files, I’d steer clear for the time being. For free, it is a great find for students especially who may not have the ability to shell out $99.95 today. As for paying $99.95, the application is good, but doesn’t feel full-featured (Specifically being able to record audio directly and manually control timing before recording) and lack of decent output of usable MPEG-1/2 files (without having to take it over to an authoring package.) With the features that are present, I would say it’d be better around $49.99 to $69.99. This is an application in my opinion that could really benefit from creating a more affordable ‘Student’ version with features more aligned to students (including price,) and a ‘Professional’ version with more features and the above-noted audio-recording functionality.

Posted by BladedThoth on Sunday, June 10, 2007