PowerFlashPoint

Introduction
About PowerFlashPoint
Download and Installation
Using PowerFlashPoint
How PowerFlashPoint Fared?
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

Introduction

With the plethora of options available for PowerPoint to Flash conversion, it's no longer an easy decision to decide upon one particular product. While some of these products are free, others cost anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred. Then there are products that do just simple conversion -- yet other create ready-to-use rich media output along with quiz features and LMS integration. And then there are products that allow you to do this conversion via full featured animation and video editing interfaces -- and finally you could do the entire conversion manually -- that will of course take a lot more time!

In the midst of this scenario, we were invited to review another product of this genre -- this one is called PowerFlashPoint -- let's see how it fares.

About PowerFlashPoint

PowerFlashPoint is from DigitalOfficePro, a software development company based in New York, USA. You can learn more about PowerFlashPoint and download the free trial version from their site.

My contact at DigitalOfficePro for this review was Andrew Hayden, thank you Andrew.

Download and Installation

Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine and follow the instructions. If you are using PowerPoint 2007, you'll end up with a PowerFlashPoint tab on the Ribbon as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: PowerFlashPoint tab on the Ribbon

All the options on the PowerFlashPoint tab are explained below:

Figure 2:PowerFlashPoint settings

Using PowerFlashPoint

At Indezine, we use an evaluation presentation as a benchmark to determine how any PowerPoint to Flash converter product works. Learn more about this benchmark presentation developed with our FlashPPT site here.

We'll share results of this benchmark later on this page -- first, let's explore how you do the actual Flash conversion using PowerFlashPoint.

1. Open any existing presentation inside PowerPoint. With the presentation open, select the PowerFlashPoint tab on the Ribbon, as shown in Figure 1 above.
2. Click the Convert button to bring up the dialog box that you can see in Figure 3.
3. 
   Figure 3: Convert
3. Click on the Convert button to start the conversion, the conversion might take a while depending upon the presentation size.
4. Once the conversion is completed, a window opens asking to choose the output format for the converted file. Click OK and choose either the Save as EXE or Save as SWF options, as shown in Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Save options
5. We chose the Save as SWF option -- this opens the FlashPlayer Options dialog box (see Figure 5), Choose any of the options based on your requirement, and click Continue.
6. 
   Figure 5: FlashPlayer Options
6. This brings up a message window asking Do you want to create an HTML file to host the converted Flash .SWF movie? " Choose Yes or No, as required.
7. Finally a message box shows up -- this lets you upload your presentation to SlideServe as hosting PowerPoint presentations on the web.
8. 
   Figure 6: Upload to SlideServe
8. You can choose whether you want to upload to SlideServe or not -- either way, PowerFlashPoint will save a local copy of the converted Flash SWF output on your system.

How PowerFlashPoint Fared?

This benchmark presentation had 20 slides with content of various types: pictures, clip art, shapes, narration, music, Flash movies, videos, etc. Each slide was given between 0 to 5 points each for a total of 100 points, and 50 extra points were allotted to the program interface, support options, output, PowerPoint 2007 compatibility, and pricing.

PowerFlashPoint scored a total of 104 points to get 69.3% ratings.

PowerFlashPoint fared very well with animation and pictures -- it also managed embedded Flash movies on slides and videos well. However, it provided zero support for transition sounds and narrations already inside PowerPoint slides -- also text and shapes moved a wee bit from their original positions.

In all other areas, PowerFlashPoint did a good job. You can see the individual scores for PowerFlashPoint on our FlashPPT site.

Pricing and Support

PowerFlashPoint costs US $ 199.00.

Support is by e-mail and phone.

Conclusion

PowerFlashPoint has its strong areas -- but it still needs to make two improvements: first, it needs to support more of PowerPoint's nuances in the conversion and they also need to take a look at their pricing -- $199 for a product with so many limitations is far too much.