OT: Q: Combining PowerPoint and Presenter Video

Guys,

I'm teaching a class where I have students do two things:

1) Make a homepage (no problem here, I've instructed as many as 26 beginners simultaneously).

2) Make a video of an English language presentation and put the Google video link on the homepages. Here is the problem: I have videos of the students doing their presentation, but it is impossible to get a clear shot of both the students and their Powerpoint. So I probably need to convert the Powerpoint to images and then make it into a video. Then, put the student's video into a lower corner of the Powerpoint video and save them as one video.

Just wondering if there are any video buffs out there who know good ways of combining (overlaying?) videos of a presenter and the presenter's PowerPoint slide presentation? Is there any free software or limited time shareware out there? I have Adobe premier elements 3.0, but it doesn't appear to offer video overlay.

Also open to any other suggestions in terms of techniques of getting both PowerPoint and Presenter in the same place. One method I have considered is putting the PowerPoint slides in the homepages as .jps images, then splitting the students videos into parts which correspond with each PowerPoint slide and putting each  video plugin on the homepage beside its Powerpoint image. Those viewing the homepage could scroll down to the PowerPoint image and click on the video link beside it to hear the accompanying presentation segment.

Still I would prefer to put one video on top of the other and just have a single video link in each page.

Thanks in advance.

Kind Regards,

Dave

Try going here and searching. I have had remarkable luck finding things.

http://sourceforge.net/ It is the open source site.

Thanks, Snickle!  (or is it Fritz?),

I'll check both of those links out. It just occured to me that since I instructed my students to make PowerPoint without any motion or sounds effects (wanted them to focus on their speaking instead of playing with that - PowerPoint can become one hell of one distracting toy!), that the slides can be saved as .jpg and then inserted into the video time line. All I need to do is keep the students' sound and show the person part of the time, the PowerPoint, less of the time. (trade off between one and the other).

Overlay would be ideal though. I really want to try that.

Best Wishes,

Dave

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for your help. Is Final Cut Pro available for Windows? I know most really serious multimedia people use Macs, but I don't have one. I'm determined to try overlay.

Tell Russ he's probably confusing non-elite Japanese kids with elite students in other Asian countries (elite = willing to study hard to succeed - funny how it got that definition that way in Asia!?). My kids know their cellphone, texting and digital camera functions really well, but I'm considered the Yoda of computers here, even with my minimal skills.

The other part is, Japan chose to be influenced by the west for so long that they don't really consider themselves "Asians," although there are definitely big cultural differences. Westerners tend to lump all of the Asian countries together, probably from lack of exposure to the cultures, but Japan is quite different and like the west in that it has problems motivating a large percentage of its youth.

Thanks again for your help.

Best Wishes,

Dave

You can try searching here also for software

http://www.opensourcewindows.org/