Presto Sample Project #1

Using the first two minutes of a presentation, the sample project contains everything you need to try out Presto : presenter video, projection screen video, microphone audio, and slide images.

Windows/ Sony Vegas Pro: download sample project ZIP file

OS X ( Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro): download sample project ZIP file

Table of contents

1. Event description
2. Equipment used
3. Setup
4. Recording
5. Post-production workflow

Event description

The presentation used for this sample was part of Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver #11, a fun event where architects and designers showcased their work in a fast paced format.  The event took place at the Vancouver Convention Centre (Canada Place), in May 2010.

Thanks to Michael Gordon (a senior planner with the City of Vancouver) for kindly allowing us to use his presentation for this sample project.  You can view the full presentation.

The full set of presentations from this event, all prepared using Presto, are posted on Bruce's blog here.

As shown above, this meeting room had a total of four projection screens.  The two outer screens showed the presenter's slides.  The inner left screen had a static title slide for the event, and the inner right screen displayed a live Twitter feed filtered by the event's hash tag.  Our presenter camera was down this aisle near the front, and our screen camera was off on the far left side.

Equipment Used

Presenter camera & tripod:

• Canon XH A1 HD Camcorder (recording to MiniDV cassette tape)
• Manfrotto 351MV tripod with Manfrotto 501HDV Head

Projection screen camera & tripod:

• JVC GZ-MS110 SD camcorder (a low cost standard definition camera that records to SD cards)
• Velbon CX 686 tripod

Audio recording:

• Zoom H4n
• audio cables

Miscellaneous Equipment

• USB flash drive for obtaining a copy of the presentation
• box of MiniDV tapes
• plastic equipment bins
• small wheeled luggage cart (which folds up to a nice flat compact shape for fitting easily into the trunk)

Setup

Presenter camera

The presenter camera was placed in the left hand aisle about 5 rows back.  The tripod was setup to be as high as it could go to keep it well above the heads of people in the front rows.  The fluid head on this tripod helped achieve smooth panning.

 

In general it is best if you can put the presenter camera on the same side of the room as the presenter.  This creates a more natural look to the Presto presentation because the presenter then tends to be looking toward the center of the room, and thus slightly facing toward the "screen" in the Presto two-up layout, as illustrated by the example below.  It is preferable if you can avoid being too far away from the presenter, otherwise panning requires very small movements on the pan handle.

Screen camera

The projection screen camera was placed about 10 rows back at the very left hand edge of the seating, in order to get a reasonably straight shot onto one of the two projection screens that were showing the presenters slides.  Again, the tripod was set to be about as high as it could go to keep it well above the heads of people in the front rows. For this camera, a low cost tripod is quite adequate because it is simply left locked down for the whole event.

 

The zoom on this camera was adjusted so that the projected slide almost filled the frame, as shown below.  It is also advisable to lock the focus because auto focus can have difficulty with certain types of slides, such as title slides without much text.

Audio

For this event we were able to plug directly into the sound board with the Zoom recorder, using a line-level feed via a TRS connector into the sound board.  The Zoom was left running continuously for the whole event, which lasted about two hours. 

Slides

The slides were given to us in the form of a Keynote presentation, copied to our USB flash drive.

Recording

During the recording of the event, the cameras were briefly stopped and re-started in between each presentation.  This is a big help in post production, because each presentation then comes off the cameras as a separate video file.  And thanks to PluralEyes, there is no need to try to carefully synchronize this stop/start action between the cameras, or use timecode equipment. It would have been helpful to do the same stop/start thing with the audio recording on the Zoom, but we did not have another person available to manage that.

The only camera that needs to be actively operated is the presenter camera, in order to keep the presenter in the shot.  It is best to keep the shot quite wide (as illustrated by the example frame below), remembering that Presto will be closely tracking the presenter for us in post.  So what works well is to keep the presenter within the middle third of the frame, and only start following them if they wander outside this zone.  For presenters that remain glued to the podium, this means the camera operator can be hands off for a while!

Since the screen camera remains locked on the projection screen, the person operating this camera only needs to know how to start and stop recording.  It could even be managed via a remote control, as long as there is some way to visually confirm (e.g. via a recording light) that the camera is recording when it should be.  A safer option is to simply leave it running, and use the start/stop events on the presenter video to establish the extent of each presentation.

Post-production workflow

Media preparation

The presenter video from the XH A1 camera was copied from tape to disk via Firewire (an operation which unfortunately takes as long as it took to record). 

The task was easier for the screen camera and Zoom recorder, which both use SD cards for recording, and so for these it was simply a matter of popping the SD card into an SD slot on a computer, and copying the relevant video and audio files.

The audio files from the Zoom were run through the Levelator, which is always recommended for microphone audio because of the wide range of audio levels typical with this type of recording.

The Keynote presentation file was converted to slide images using Keynote on a Mac (as explained here).

We had a total of 13 presentations to work on for this event, so keeping all the media well organized was important. The files for each media source were placed in separate folders (e.g. "video - presenter", "video - screen", "audio - zoom", and "slides").  So think ahead about how to organize your media, especially when several people are involved in the production process.

Singular Software Presto

NOTE:

• The following discussion applies to Presto for Vegas Pro.  To learn about the workflow used in Presto for OS X, go here.

After all the hard work of recording the presentation and organizing the media, we are now ready for the fun part: Singular Software Presto in Sony Vegas Pro!  I like to have my project properties default set to a convenient 640 x 360 (16:9) square aspect, progressive scan format matching the YouTube output option.  This does not limit the final output format, but is a good size to work with for the two-up layout of presenter and slides.

Opening Vegas Pro (v8, v8.1, v9, or v10; 32-bit or 64-bit), we start up the Presto wizard.  (We won't go into a detailed explanation of the steps here, so for full instructions on using the wizard, start here.)

In the first two steps we pull in all the video, audio, and slide media for a single presentation, select the presenter to be on the left of the slides, and save the project.  In the first step, after importing the Zoom audio using the "New Track" option from the audio drop down, we then select the "Mix" option from the same drop down because we want to mix several of the audio tracks.  More on this in a moment.

In step three, we run PluralEyes from the "Process" tab to get the takes from the two cameras and Zoom audio all nicely lined up.

With the tracks synchronized, now is the time to trim off any unwanted video and audio from each end of the presentation (a step that has been done for you in the sample project media), before running Presto's automatic processing.

Now we hit the "Process" button, and let Presto crunch away on the presentation.  Presto automatically tracks the presenter (so he stays inside the inset for two-up layouts showing both the presenter and slides), synchronizes the slide images with the screen video (to give us those nice crisp and bright slides in our video), and creates a default layout sequence for us. When this processing completes, it is a good time for us to save the project again.

The default layout has the title slide showing briefly, and then a transition to the two-up slanted layout with the presenter on the left, as illustrated below.  Try mixing it up some more by using the Layout Sequence controls to add  transitions or cuts to the presenter-only layout when you feel the focus is really on the presenter telling his story, or to the slides-only layout when you feel the attention is on the slide and you want to see as much of the detail in that slide image as possible.  You can make these layout changes on the fly as you play back the video in Vegas Pro. It is also easy to zoom up on a part of the slide using Vegas Pro's pan-crop editor, by clicking on the pan-crop icon at the right hand end of a slide on the Slides track.

This particular presenter liked to wave his left arm around a lot, so in the Presenter Options sub-tab, we can drag the icon of the presenter over to the left a bit to give a bit more room for his left arm to point at the slides.  Note that when you make an adjustment to the presenters position it is applied throughout the presentation.

The default slide transition is a simple cross fade, but you can easily spice it up with one of the transitions available on the Slide Options tab.

You can make this changes on the fly during playback within Vegas Pro, which is especially handy for making layout transitions as you review your presentation.

Finishing touches

The microphone audio alone can sound a bit flat. You get a nicer room sound, and pick up audience reaction better, by mixing this microphone audio with the audio from the presenter camera. The audio from the screen camera is the lowest quality and so you should simply mute it.

Finally, we like to advertise our tools of course! So we create a new video track, and put the Presto and PluralEyes logo stings onto that new track, aligned with the end of the presentation video (putting it on the same video track as the presenter or the slides can be a problem for Presto, so best to keep your own additions on a separate track).

Rendering

To render out the finished project, we simply go the final Presto wizard tab: "Make Video", make sure we have the desired output format selected, and hit the "Render Video..." button.

When preparing more than one presentation, it is helpful to come up with a naming scheme that makes it easy to keep the presentations organized.  For example, for this event we named each presentation using the template "PKNV11_<presentation #>_<presenter surname>.mp4", so this sample presentation was "PKNV11_10_Gordon.mp4".  The presentation number ensures that the videos sort in the order they were presented, while the name gives an easier way to recall which presentation it was.

PluralEyes, DualEyes, CloudEyes and Singular Software Presto are trademarks or registered trademarks of Singular Software Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners in the United States and other countries.