The Presto project window

The title bar at the top of the project window shows the Presto project file name. An asterisk at the end of the title indicates that there are unsaved changes.

The wizard panel has a tab for each step in the process of creating a presentation video.  You can navigate the wizard using the Next and Previous buttons on each panel, or by clicking on a tab button at the top of the panel.

• Step 1: Assign Roles - defines the role for each track in your sequence: Screen, Presenter, or Other
• Step 2: Add Slides - imports into Presto the slide images that you have exported from an Apple Keynote or Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation; PNG is the recommended format for these images
• Step 3: Process - controls the automatic processing of your presentation; you can disable any processing that you would prefer to do manually (see below for further details on manual slide placement and manual presenter tracking)
• Step 4: Edit
  • The Layout tab provides a variety of layouts that you can use in your presentation; with a layout selected, the Show Layout Options button reveals additional options (see below for further details on editing the layout sequence)
  • The Project Options tab provides additional layout options, and render options
  • The Render Movie... button renders your project as a Quicktime movie
  • FCP users only: Use the Send to FCP button to send your completed Presto presentation back to Final Cut Pro (Note: this button is not visible for a project imported from anFCP XML file)

The view panel presents three tabs that provide different views of your project, and a set of playback controls: play from start; previous frame / slow down; play / pause; next frame / speed up; and play around (which pre-renders a 6 second region of video around the playhead for smoother playback, and then loops over that video).

• The Output Preview tab shows you how your video will appear 

• The Screen & Slides tab shows a two-up display with both the screen video track and the slide track, making it easy to check and solve slide synchronization issues

• The Presenter tab shows the presenter video track, and allows you to adjust or manually place the tracking boxs

The timeline shows the tracks and clips in your sequence in a manner similar to FCP. 

• Move and scrub the playhead by clicking and dragging on the ruler.  The View menu lists additional timeline commands and their keyboard shortcuts.

• Zoom in with the "+" button on the lower left.  Zoom out with the "–" button.  Zoom-to-fit with the Fit button.

• The icons above the ruler show the layout sequence, and the green bar below each icon shows the extent of the timeline that the layout applies to. Click on a layout icon or its green bar to select it.  Modify the selection by choosing a different layout from the wizard's Edit tab, Layout sub-tab. To delete the selected layout press the Delete button.  To insert a layout, place the playhead where you want the layout to change, select the desired layout, and press the Insert button.  Drag a transition marker (inverted triangle) to adjust the layout transition point, and right click on a layout transition marker to select whether the transition is a cut or is animated.

• You can edit the in or out point of any clip by dragging one end of the clip. Where there is no gap between clips, you can drag the clip transition point (which simultaneously adjusts the out point of the left clip and in point of the right clip). Note: you cannot move or delete clips that are not on the slide track; see here for help on creating your sequence in FCP so that it is ready for use in Presto.

• You can move or delete selected slide clips. Click on a clip to select it.  Shift click on another clip to extend the selection.  For manual slide placement, select one or more slides in the slide viewer and drag them to the slide track.  Hold hown Option while dragging for fit-to-fill.

• Set in and out points for rendering using Mark In and Mark Out from the Edit menu. The timeline ruler shows the selected region in light grey, and the remainder of the ruler is dark grey.

• Right click on the timeline for a menu of additional options:

  • Apply Default Layout: re-applies the default layout to your presentation

  • Refresh Layout: refreshes the layout key frames that are generated based on the layout sequence; try this if your layout appears messed up

  • Show Layout Key Frames: shows the location of the layout key frames (which become motion key frames in the sequence exported to Final Cut Pro)

  • Exclude From Processing: when checked, excludes the selected presenter or screen clip from Presto's automatic processing

The status bar at the bottom of the project window displays progress information when importing or exporting projects.

You can adjust the size of the panels using the vertical splitter control between the wizard and view panels, and the horizontal splittler control between the top panels and the timeline.

If you close the project window, you will be prompted to save the project if there are unsaved changes.  Then the start window will open again.