Well, after many hours of work, I have managed to achieve the result I want. I thought I'd write this down for anybody else who has to go through this nightmare:
There are two main problems in putting PowerPoint slides onto a DVD:
1. Unless the aspect ratio is 4 wide x 3 high, (standard TV size), you slides will suffer from cut-off. (The edges of your slides will not be displayed on the final DVD.) This is particularly bad on older TV displays.
2. If you have any PowerPoint slides which have built-in animations, you will find it very difficult to record them.
These are the work-arounds to solve the problem:
Load your slides into Microsoft PowerPoint and click FILE, PAGE SETUP. Check that the slide ratio is approx 4 units wide x 3 high. If it isn't (eg 35 mm slides format) choose CUSTOM and enter 27cms width x 20 cms height. This brings the slide shape closer to the ideal screen shape of 1024 x 768.
Check that changing this ratio doesn't distort your slides too much. (A circle is easiest to check this on).
Then export the slides as .tif files by using FILE, SAVE AS.
If some of your PowerPoint slides contain animations within the slides themselves, (for example an animated flashing signal light), then you need to capture them as they are playing.
There is a brilliant little program called Snagit which does this. (And many other useful things!) You can download a free, fully working trial version at:
http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp
So while the animated PowerPoint slides are running, Snagit can capture this information and produce an .avi which can then be loaded into Premiere.
Next, start up Adobe Premiere and load all the clips in. Select the first clip and put the vertical pointer on it to display, then WINDOW, EFFECT CONTROLS, and set MOTION Scale to 70%. Copy that clip then PASTE ATTRIBUTES on all the others on the timeline.
Export the slides by selecting FILE, EXPORT FRAME and saving as a .tif with a new name.
These slides will now be ready to load into DVDit.
I hope this helps somebody else.
Mike Rathbone
Video NZ Ltd
