Filed under: Software, Education, Podcasting
Ladies and gentlemen, start your lectures: ProfCast 2.3.0 arrives
Educators and professionals who need to record and podcast lectures often turn to Humble Daisy's ProfCast, a tool for adding enhancements to PowerPoint or Keynote slideshows to create powerful podcasts.
ProfCast today received a major update to version 2.3. The original app allows recording of live presentations, syncing slides with an audio track, and full RSS feed generation and publishing support. The new version incorporates several improvements, the most significant being support for PowerPoint 2008.
The app now automatically detects whether Keynote or PowerPoint is being used for a presentation, and then begins the process of recording and publishing the lecture with all slide timing and voice narration.
Humble Daisy also killed a number of bugs from the previous version of ProfCast, and version 2.3.0 is a free upgrade to existing owners of the application. The program is $59.95 for first-time buyers, and educational discounts are available. ProfCast can be purchased from the online store.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bill Tilstone said 1:48PM on 1-05-2009
Steve, can you please tell me what does this do that exporting a Keynote presentation (incorporating narration) does not do?
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Dave Chmura said 2:18PM on 1-05-2009
That's a fair question. ProfCast still adds important value to Keynote 4.0 (iWorks '08). ProfCast incorporates the slide titles from your presentation and automatically generates chapter markers. The chapter markers make it easy for listeners to navigate to a particular section of the recording.
If you recorded using Keynote would need to go back manually and add descriptive chapter titles for your slides without ProfCast.
Another important difference between Keynote's audio recording and exporting ability and ProfCast's is that the former produces video with an audio soundtrack while the latter produces an enhanced podcast, which is to say an audio track with integrated still images. The end result of a ProfCast recording is a much smaller file size.
That's not to mention those who are unfortunately stuck with Keynote 2, Keynote 3, or Powerpoint.
Dave Chmura
Jools said 2:55PM on 1-05-2009
Bill - the current combination of the latest versions of Keynote and Quicktime introduced a bug whereby audio is lost when exporting a Keynote slideshow with narration. Until Apple fixes this, Profcast could be a good alternative for those affected by the bug.
Jash Sayani said 2:50PM on 1-05-2009
The price is very steep......
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todd said 3:22PM on 1-05-2009
If you think you can do it cheaper, then write your own version and sell it for less. $60 for an application that saves me time is well worth it.
Dave Chmura said 6:24PM on 1-05-2009
We also provide academic pricing which starts at 50% off. It's important to have a reasonable price so that we can continue to develop and evolve the product.
Jash Sayani said 11:46PM on 1-05-2009
Well, its steep for me as I usually code my own softwares or use open-source. But yes, if it does benefit the user then its worth much more.....
Bill Tilstone said 2:54PM on 1-05-2009
Thanks Dave. So if I have a Keynote presentation with embedded video I'd be better exporting to iPod direct from Keynote but if using slides and audio it would be better to use ProfCast? (It is Keynote 4).
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Dave Chmura said 3:02PM on 1-05-2009
That is certainly one approach. ProfCast also reads urls embedded in your slide's notes to create a clickable link (embedded in the media file that you distribute). So you could use ProfCast to record a presentation and have a link to the video that was embedded in a particular slide available for the user.
Alternatively, you could create your recording using ProfCast, and then edit in the video file using GarageBand or QuickTime after the fact.
Mostly it depends on your intended audience.
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Jools said 3:11PM on 1-05-2009
Dave, does the trial version have any restrictions (other than the 15-day limit)?
Dave Chmura said 3:15PM on 1-05-2009
None whatsoever. We want you to get a full appreciation for what ProfCast does (and does not) do before you commit! I will be the first one to tell you that ProfCast isn't the perfect tool for every job. It is a great tool for the job it was intended to do though.
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Simon Arch said 4:57PM on 1-05-2009
mmm...Garamond Narrow... Haven't seen that old chestnut in a few years.
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