Zentation is a free service that marries video with PowerPoint presentations, delivering a mashed up version of both for online viewing.
Using Zentation is simple. Users upload their video to Google Video, log into Zentation and copy and paste the URL of the Google video, then upload a PowerPoint file. The final step involves using the “ZenSync” tool to provide precise start timings for each graphic in the presentation.
Zentation currently only supports Google Video; apparently Google Video the only major video sharing service that allows users to jump to any point in the video even if it has not fully downloaded. YouTube does not provide this functionality and Zentation believes that it is essential for the service.
Mashed presentations can be viewed directly at Zentation.com or through an embedded widget like the one below.
Some people will groan at the thought of marrying PowerPoint presentations to online video. It’s bad enough having to sit through any conference or presentation which relies heavily on PowerPoint, yet on occasion PowerPoint slides can add to the experience. PowerPoint addicted professional speakers will love Zentation by enabling them to add their slides to recorded video presentations.
Zentation is not the first app trying to bring PowerPoint style presentations to the web. Sites like Slideshare offer online PowerPoint hosting and WebEx, DimDim and TeamSlide also compete in this space. Zentation differs by providing a mashup service with video, yet all collectively demonstrate a growing interest in the online presentation space.
I could see this being useful as chapters for a longer video, similar to DVD menus. I like Ask a Ninja, but I skip over that intro every time now.
oh. a video with captions. how great.
So Zenter evolved into Zentation after being infested by Google, awesome
Alaska
not captions but slides presented side by side
captions can be “text” or “slides” or in fact other “images”
while we’re at it, let’s go one step further! let’s display a youtube video and then a slide by its side. that slide can have 30 slides per second and animate smoothly from slide to slide!
image the possibilities! a video AND a smooth animated slide on the SIDE! omg my mind is going crazy, i’m going to go program that right now.
Wow…
The company name and market space (i.e. online presentations) sound eerily familiar to Zenter. Add to that the affiliation with Google and something smells fishy. Nonetheless, I don’t see or think there is any connection…
Maybe online presentations and ‘zen’ were just meant to be together…
-Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
Viddler.com also does tagging “required” by Zentation; I have suggested to Viddler (no association) that they should also be used by Zentation. There are many instances (I teach @ Purdue University – Entrepreneurship & Innovation) where it is desirable to have a video of a presentation and assoicated PowerPoints running at the same time. Recently, one of my student teams used Zentation to present their Mid Term exam – a video interview with an entreprenuer and used Zentation with PowerPoints very successfully. Presenter Soft by Media Easy (about $90) is the closet I could find to what Zentation does for free. Note it does map PowerPoints to plain BW.
Err, what am I missing here? wats so great or new or Web 2.0 about it?
As much as it pains me to remember this, I must say a New Canaan start-up e-Media, LLC was doing this 7 years ago.
Check out https://my.dts....=13&video=1 for a much nicer version of this kind of thing including transcripts.
MDC launched mPOWER Play this week, which allows the use of audio, video, images, text, shapes and frames within a presentation (you can import PP or create your own via the MPP interface). Users can also control these objects, with timing, scroll, fades, etc and even create flash-like effects.
It is a free, web-based tool, which allows multi-author/viewer collaboration in real-time and presenatations can be published offline or online as a Webinar, website, web page, or via email.
http://www.mmdesigncorp.com
I really like this. It could be used by Fort Myers Wedding Photographers (or any company) to show there services along side a video.
This is – decent / implementation ;
Ways to make it better:
– Implement with frames/ (ajax)
– Develop voice recognition software / and Scrape text from each slide of every powerpoint uploaded – thus eliminating the main need for 20 minutes of “Zen Zync’ing”
John, (msg 10)
what product are you using in the link you mentioned?
txs!
Milton
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