Author Archive for Tom Person

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Looping your Presenter audio

August 21, 2009 by Tom Person

I was recently speaking with one of our customers and the simplest of concepts came up in our conversation, looping.  Either the entire presentation or just having some looping audio that serves as a background audio track whether its a standalone Presenter file from the Adobe Connect server or a Presenter file loaded into a meeting room.

Now looping the entire presentation is simple enough.  You can go into Adobe Presenter, choose Presentation Settings, Playback and select “Loop presentation” (see image #1 below).  This will cause the presentation to play in its entirety at the timing and settings you have established and when the final slide is reached it will automatically jump back to the beginning of the presentation.

Now setting up looping audio can be a bit more complicated but not impossible. The first thing to remember is that Adobe Presenter only supports one stereo audio track in the audio settings (see image #2 below).

What we have in image #2 is a small bit of audio on Slide 1 of our presentation. If you wanted that audio clip too effectively loop and play on every slide you could manually copy and paste the audio clip across each slide in the “Edit Audio” dialog (see image #3 below). Very tedious but it works.

Now do not go in there and drop an audio-only .swf file on the slides that will not work as you might expect. Each slide with the .swf file on it will treat that .swf file as a separate instance of the audio file and you will end up will a sort of infinite-loop. I think we called it singing in the “round” when we were camping and sitting around the camp fire where one person would start to sing and then a few seconds later the next person would start and so forth. This is not the type of audio playback you want to achieve in your presentation.  Perhaps in future versions of Presenter Adobe will make this easier or more intuitive but for now this is what we have to do.

If you have the time and want to do the work open up an audio editor like Adobe Soundbooth CS4, which supports multiple audio tracks and do some audio mixing or editing there.  You could have one track that is your background audio and another that is a voice-over, narration or other audio clip.  From Soundbooth, save or export the entire file as an .mp3 audio track and import that file into Presenter using the “import audio” setting.  I suggest importing to slide #1 and click ok.  Then go into the “edit audio” setting and adjust the slide markers (those little gray boxes with red lines that show you where one slide finishes and another begins) by selecting them and moving them left or right to overlap the audio waveform displayed in the dialog.  Ideally you keep the audio as brief as possible or use a very short background audio clip when doing this mixing in Soundbooth so that you do not run out of background audio before you run out of narration audio.

Also, Adobe has just released Presenter 7.0.5.  You can use the ‘Updates…’ option in Presenter to get the latest version or click here

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A new look, a new product, new people and new customers too.

July 20, 2009 by Tom Person

There have been a lot of things going on around here as you can tell from our new website.  We decided it was about time to give it a fresh look and to push the site live to correspond to our new product launch, Podium.

We hope you find the website more useful, attractive and informative. It is all still there just maybe in a slightly different spot or location; kind of like a new release of that desktop product you have used for years where the menus and options have changed or the keyboard equivalents have been re-assigned.  Well I don’t think we made such deep changes just a better and more functional site.

Podium. Where to begin. I suppose it all started when we had folks from across industries approach us about wanting massively large web events or broadcasts that went well beyond web conferencing or traditional web seminar models and capacities.  The questions were “Can we have a large event in the tens-of-thousands of attendee range and still keep the attendee engaged and involved, at a level and in a manner that the attendee chooses, or with only the select features we as the broadcasters might want utilized?”   Well many meeting, customer consultations, developer arguments, usability testing sessions and social networking and other feature discussions later we have a hit product up and running.

The tag line says it all:  Reach a global audience with your message through highly engaging, highly scalable webcasts. High Def quality audio and video with a global reach across Mac, Windows and UNIX in an environment that is FISMA compliant (that means the Federal Information Security Management Act for the implementation of and compliance with secure data management – it a government thing) that basically means really, really secure.  We put many hours of development, testing and Q&A into Podium to date with more to come as the product evolves and that word evolves really speaks to our development philosophy. Our team members have backgrounds with various software and hardware companies and we made a committed decision to have Podium evolve with new features as we can implement, test and deploy them and not get stuck in the product release cycle that so often bogs down software companies.  We are also not going to keep the product in beta forever it’s out there now and ready to use.  So many thanks to our initial “guinea pigs”, partners and testers that helped us get to this point.

While not a new product it’s a new name and go-to-market attitude with Managed Services for Adobe Flash Collaboration Service; what we formerly referred to as FlashGrid.  Why the change?  All around allot of people reaching out to us thought that perhaps we had a different flavor or technology as it relates to the Adobe Flash Collaboration Services and we don’t’ – We just let you deploy your AFCS applications in a much bigger way.  So to clarify that issue and reinforce that if you have an application that needs to scale in a really big way (that means global), across your enterprise (that means deliver to tens-of-thousands) and do so on a global basis (that really means a global basis like worldwide) in a safe secure, environment that has years of deploying such applications and frameworks than our Managed Services for Adobe Flash Collaboration Service are for you.  We still recommend that you start with Adobe for developing your application and testing it during the proof-of-concept stages but when you are ready to deploy and GO BIG and make some serious dollars and generate lots of traffic give us a call.

New People!  This may be the best part of being part of the connectsolutions team, you work with highly energetic and creative people and we are always looking for a few good people to join us.  If you think you might fit in on our team check out our careers page and see what opening we have and send us your information.  We have a growing business and our recent hires are great new additions to team that have a fanatical commitment to customer service and success.

New customers too!  Well I cannot and do not name drop but if you look at our solutions portal you can see a partial list of our ever-growing customers in both government and enterprises markets; my favorite part of the word enterprises is that it means tens of thousands of people are using a solution that makes their day-to-day work and collaboration easier.  That tells me that not only are there lots of new things going on around here at connectsolutions but also with our global customers too. Glad to see that we are all so busy in these challenging times and using our resources so effectively it is a great new day!

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FREE Training and custom sessions.

June 30, 2009 by Tom Person

ConnectSolutions is pleased to announce that we have begun to offer FREE training to all our customers and their registered users in re-occurring one-hour sessions that cover all modules of the Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional server platform.  We know many of our customers have been using their Connect accounts for all sorts of meetings and collaborative sessions to the tune of millions of minutes a month but sometimes there is that one thing, that one feature or that one aspect of Connect that they are unsure about and often asking for help or skimming through the user-manual is just not something they do to for whatever reason.  I understand as the manual is not the most interactive format and sometime asking an instructor about one feature leads to another question and another and sooner than you realize you are a Connect expert and answering question for your friends and colleagues.

Our free training registration portal is located here:  http://www.connectsolutions.com/training/ and is open to all our customers.  We have scheduled the sessions to be focused one hour periods that will be recorded and can be referred back to for your follow up or that of your colleagues or entire organization.  The best part; well okay maybe the second best part, is that the sessions can also be customized (that makes the FREE part the best I guess) to a very specific topic or feature and we will create a unique classroom training session for you and your colleagues within your organization that is only open to your organization at a time that is mutually agreeable to all of us.

We are fanatical about customer support, service and satisfaction and if our scheduled sessions interfere with your work day let us know an we can arrange a special traning session just for you!  Check out the traning portal for the current schedule and to register for the sessions.  If you think a custom session would be better for you and your team contact our team evangelist (tom@connectsolutions.com) and lets get everyone up to speed on how to best use those Connect accounts!

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CUSTOM, Custom, custom…

June 11, 2009 by Tom Person

As we all know there are some great customization options available to you on the Connect server to brand and reinforce a consistent look and feel across your enterprise.  The Connect Central UI, the Connect login portal and of course the Connect meeting room can all have custom colors, logos, menus and URLs applied to the graphic elements that truly differentiate the Connect server and meeting room experience from all others in the space.

But can more be done?  Can we go beyond the “Customization” tab put forth by Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional? Sure and here are a few ways to customize your meeting rooms.

One of my favorite ways to customize a meeting room is to use the “Room Background” setting in the menus: Meeting / Room Performance and Appearance / Room Background.  Use an image file, like a .jpg or better yet a .swf file for a more expressive or animated experience.  My preference is for that which works best as a room background and depending on your skills, experience or content on hand one format might be better than the other. Remember you need to upload these files to your Connect server before you can load them into the meeting room; you cannot load a “Room Background” from your desktop like you might upload a file into a meeting room share pod.

For images I get the best results with a .jpg file at 1024 x 768 pixel size image with a modest amount of compression applied to it.  Use whatever image editor you prefer.  I use Adobe Fireworks but that other image editor they have is fine too and probably has more expressive capabilities.

For .swf files I use either Adobe Flash or Adobe Illustrator and publish them and Flash Player 9 files.  If the background was created in Adobe Illustrator I use an 800 x 600 canvas and then just get creative.  The design capabilities of Illustrator are exceptional. Crisp text, the effects, the range of colors and the object options make all the things you create very clean and professional.  If I have something created in Adobe Flash I follow a few basic rules. 1) actionScript 2.0 only and keep the coding to a minimum, 2) when using actionScript I never reach for resources outside the authoring file (can you? Yes. However if you get all complicated and dynamic it can makes things really slow down in the meeting room),  3) I keep the animation to a minimum as it can be distracting and since other pods are going to cover the background it might go from distracting to annoying, 4) don’t use the components that require Flash Player 10 or actionScript 3.0 and finally 5) TEST, Test, test.

You really need to test your .swf files whether from Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash or any other tool that outputs .swf files.  Not all authoring tools and vendors create the same quality of .swf file output.  Using a room background while similar to loading a .swf into a share pod is not exactly the same.  So test you room backgrounds in your meeting rooms and if it is an animated .swf let it run for a few minutes and then open pods, switch layouts and make sure your wonderful creation is not impacting your meeting room in an unexpected way.

Okay room backgrounds are great but what else is possible?  You can begin by using the share pod to upload a PPT files, .jpg, or .swf file that has our organizations brand, logo, crest or your personal photo; then I typically delete the entire name from the pod title bar.  Yes it can be blank but it does make it more difficult to locate later if you close the pod.  If you use blank spaces (the spacebar) in the titles the same difficulties apply.  Remember to save your meeting rooms as room templates once you are happy with your customization so that you can have that consistent custom experience and so can all of your meeting room hosts.

Make your own custom pods!  This is the highest level of customization that you can achieve. You do this and do it well you are a true Connect Master.  Alistair Lee at Adobe is one of those masters but he may never admit it. Check out all his creations at the Acrobat Connect Pro Exchange which is really a tribute to Alistair and his productivity as a developer.  Of course, ConnectSolutions is not standing on the sidelines we have developed a few custom pods for our customers and will be coming to market with a few of them in the near future. Keep checking our website for more details.

Okay go forth and customize your Connect experience – your server, your meetings and your events.  Adobe Connect provides many wonderful UI elements but with a little time and effort you can create a tailor made experience that exceeds the out-of-the-box offering.

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A little order please.

May 31, 2009 by Tom Person

One of the things I hear comment on from time to time is that the share pod in Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro just lists things and holds onto stuff.  Well that’s true.  It’s actually a great feature that most of us take for granted in that we can upload a ppt file, an image, some flash paper content or a custom pod and whether we return tomorrow, next week or next month the content is still there.  Unless you implicitly delete it off the server or remove the content using the “Organize pods” feature under the pods menu to delete the content there.

That is really what I am going talk about here.  That fun little menu choice “Organize pods” located under the Pods menu in the main UI of your Connect meeting room.  Here you can not only “Delete” content, “Select Unused” content but “Rename” content and renaming things can help Hosts and Presenters alike in a meeting room.  By default content you have loaded in the share pod is listed in alphabetical order but often I (and more often than not someone using my room or co-presenting with me) want to have things displayed in a logical order that matches the presentation I have outlined on paper or the order in which I have the content and presentation ordered in my mind.

I have found the best way is to go into the “Organize pods” dialog box, select the content, select “Rename” and add a #1 or #2 and so on to the front of the content items; especially useful if your PowerPoint files have similar names of titles or if you have multiple presenter or speakers. This forces the numbered ppt files to appear at the top of the list in the Share pod when you load them using the “What do you want to share? – Documents” accordion menu.  I also tend to put a blank space, or two, in front of any file that I use in the share pod that might serve as the first item, welcome slide or such item that needs to be the first thing attendees see when they enter that layout. This is especially useful when someone else in using the room and making the same or similar presentation or if you have a newbie whose comfort level with Connect is not as high as yours.

So simple yet and yet so easy a way to keep your content, your presenter’s content and all the various files you upload into the share pod organized.  So don’t just upload “stuff” and have it listed there take a few seconds and put some order to the material. It may save you minutes down the road and make all your meetings all the better.

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