I was creating a presentation with Microsoft PowerPoint X for Mac, and
discovered a very disturbing thing. What PowerPoint calls "animation"
is not animation at all, but instead is merely a transition between
slides or slide elements. What I need is the ability to create a
presentation in which a large (e.g. 2048x1536 pixel) image is animated
such that I can create an effect of zooming in or out on the image,
and panning on the image with precise control. This effect is
basically what you see on a lot of documentaries where you see old
photographs and panning and zooming is used to make it more
interesting than just looking at a still photograph, or to show
details. If this can be achieved in PowerPoint X for Mac that would
be preferable, however if other Mac OS X software is required that
also would be acceptable. The only other requirement is that the
rate, timing, and extent of the pan or zoom can be precisely set up
ahead of time, and that the actual presentation run smoothly in
real-time like a regular (e.g. Powerpoint) presentation would.
Also I need to specify that any solution which involves creating a
video is not an acceptable solution. One reason for this is that the
resolution of the presentation cannot be limited to video resolutions,
and video at higher (non-standard) resolution is usually unacceptable
in performance. Another reason is the exceptionally large amount of
space that would be required to show, for example, a 60 minute video
just panning and zooming in a single image. The solution cannot limit
resolution or require much more (say twice) the disk space used by the
original image files in the presentation. |
Clarification of Question by
smyrna-ga
on
14 Feb 2003 11:45 PST
I am not looking for an answer that tells me how to actually do the
animation. The software that plays the animation does not have to be
specifically designed for presentation, although I would assume such
software would be an idea candidate for this feature, since such an
animation is a kind of presentation.
What I need is documentation showing there exists a technology X
capable of performing the required task: creating pan/zoom animations
which meet my efficiency requirements. One way to partition the task
is to say that technology X consists of two parts: the application
which is used to create the animation, and the file format which
stores the result and is used by whatever player renders the
presentation.
I would consider Flash to be the "file format" half of the solution IF
it meets the efficiency requirements. Restated, if I have a hundred
or a thousand JPG images that are 2MB each, I cannot use a file format
that represents them as 20MB bitmaps. In the same vein, if I have
several hundred or thousand frames which all show some viewport into
the same image, the file format should only store the image once, and
merely need to store the viewport (coordinates, zoom, and timing
information) for each frame. I also need to state a third
requirement: the image cannot be degraded in any way to meet the space
requirements, it must remain at its original quality.
The second or "application" half of the solution is a particular
application which provides a user interface for specifying the
parameters for panning and zooming. I know that there are lots of
applications out there which allow the results to be exported to SWF
format, and that there are a lot of applications which allow certain
kinds of animations to be created. What I need to know is which
application(s) will allow me to produce the specific animation type I
desire and allow export to the efficient file format efficiently.
(Its no good if the file format is efficient but the software doesn't
take advantage of it.)
To summarize in direct response to your request for clarification, I
do not require information on how to embed a Flash animation in
Powerpoint or instructions for simulating pan/zoom in Flash. To
answer my question all I need to know is what technology meets my
requirements, and a little bit of documentation showing this.
For example:
"The _____ file format meets the efficiency requirements because it
says at http://______________ that it stores files such that the
requirements are met, and application _______ can create a pan/zoom
animation which is stored in the above format meeting the above
requirements such as efficiency and the existence of a real-time
player as shown at http://________________."
Note that I do not consider programming directly in Flash as an
acceptable answer, as I could just as easily (ha) write a program in C
or some other language to achieve the desired effect.
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