Sounds

[Bob Phillips]

I want to send a slide show with recorded sounds to a number of people who may not have Open Office, or Powerpoint.

In Powerpoint, I can save a .PPS file, which executes as a slide show (with down-arrow to change slides and the sounds triggered by clicking on an icon). No software other than Windows is needed by the recipient of the message. I am new to Open Office, but I read that to play a sound file in an Impress presentation it is necessary to have Media Playback installed.

Is there any way of sending a slide show with recorded sounds to be read by someone who does not have Media Playback?

[sybille]

Will the eVoice extension help?
http://extensions.services.openoffice.o ... ect/eVoice

[acknak]

You can embed sounds in the presentation, but the recipient would still have to have Impress installed to view the show.

Note that even for Powerpoint's pps shows, you still have to have Powerpoint installed (or at least the Powerpoint viewer software). You can make a "Pack and Go" file (or some clever name like that) which packages the PPT viewer and the presentation together, but the resulting show is still completely dependent on Windows.

The real answer to this is to convert the show to a video, or Flash, file. Unfortunately, OOo can't do that: no video formats at all, and the Flash export is limited to still pictures only, no sound, video or animations.

I know there are commercial converters for PPT; I don't know if there are any that support ODF (Impress) files.

[sybille]

It looks like the JODConverter can do ODP to SWF (flash):
http://www.artofsolving.com/opensource/jodconverter

It's free software, too - licensed under the GPL and LGPL.

There's also an online converter at the JODConverter site:
http://www.artofsolving.com/online-document-converter

I just tried the online converter with a sample ODP file and it worked fine. I could play the resulting SWF in Firefox with no problems. The file didn't include any sounds, though, so that's something to test.

(Corrected, thanks acknak.)

[acknak]

Nice! Thanks for the links.

Note: ".ods" is the Open Document Format spreadsheet file extension, not the presentation document which is .odp. It's wrongly listed as "ODS" on the linked site as well.

[sybille]

What was I thinking with the ODS? I did actually convert a presentation file, and of course you're right, acknak, the file's extension is .odp.

[Bob Phillips]

Thank you both. It is clear that the title "beginners" on this Board has a wide interpretation, but the tips you have given me are clear enough. It will just take me a little while to explore them.

If you are interested - the end result is to be an invitation to a celebration of our 40th anniversary, with a clip of Peter Sellers singing "My Old Dutch" ("We've been together now for forty years, and it don't seem a day too long ...."). A very varied bunch of recipients, including many who will not have PPT, very very few who will have OpenOffice, and at least one who doesn't have a computer at all. I want as many as possible to open the show and hear it all immediately. I do not want anyone to receive a seminar in how to install software.

So.. I will go and play with all your helpful suggestions. Thank you so much for your time.

[Bob Phillips]

... and I do understand that sending a simply executable file to the person who does not have a computer will require an extension of the known universe, not just OpenOffice. The aim is to reach as many of them as possible.