Xibo

Fixing PowerPoint presentations once and for all

Asked by Dale E. Martin

I have been struggling trying to get native PowerPoint working on and off for a year. I've hit every issue in the knowledge base. It's a very confusing landscape as all of the registry settings, file associations, etc. depend on the version of PowerPoint you are using and the OS you are using. When we finally got it all worked out with Windows 7 and PowerPoint 2007, suddenly we started having PowerPoint randomly crash at the end of the presentation, which is another documented problem. At the end of the launchpad answer for that, it basically says "render to video instead". This works, but it has a problem. The video files are much bigger than the PowerPoint files and now you face new challenges with file upload sizes, timeouts, etc.

So my suggestion for solving this problem "once and for all" is to support OpenOffice Impress instead:
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=2842

They have an API for controlling the presentation, so it should be reliable unlike the PowerPoint solution, requiring all of kinds registry tweaks and the Internet Explorer gods to be smiling on you every time you want to show some content. OpenOffice supports PowerPoint formats - even on Linux, so there is a chance to be able to support PowerPoint (or native Impress slideshows) on Linux clients as well.

Is this something that you can consider? I'm guessing I'm not the only one who would like a reliable solution for displaying PowerPoint through Xibo. Thanks!

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Alex Harrington (alexharrington) said : 		#1

If someone wanted to write it and contribute it maybe, but the lack of a sensible way of doing this cross-platform and the fact that the conversion between PowerPoint and Impress is horrible (as in you need to rework most simple presentations after conversion) means I don't think it'll get any attention from the core team.

Rendering to video really does give the best results, and it really isn't hard to setup a server correctly so it allows large uploads. Forthcoming versions of Xibo will likely have a much improved uploader which may negate the need even to do that setup.

Alex

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Mike (mikehudson8) said : 		#2

Dealing with PowerPoint problems has been quite a journey, especially with all the confusing settings and versions. It's frustrating to have resolved issues on Windows 7 with PowerPoint 2007, only to run into random crashes at the end of presentations. The suggested fix of turning presentations into videos creates a new headache with larger files, leading to upload size issues and timeouts.

In this maze of problems, consider exploring wordstotime.net. It's a website that focuses on how long it takes to speak a script. Given the challenges with native PowerPoint, platforms like https://wordstotime.net It might offer a simpler way to share presentations.

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