I haven’t written so much as a paragraph in two days. All my time has been sitting in the director’s chair on the set (kitchen table) of my mini movie. The other day, a new friend from my author’s group launched her new book. She sent ’round the link to a mini book promotion commercial on Youtube. I think it was home made and very well done at that. I was fascinated and inspired.

How hard could this be were I to have a go? I create powerpoint presentations for work all the time. I know the tool pretty well. I know how to add color, animation, and music. Confident, I went searching for free art to use. That’s important. The last thing you want is to innocently take another person’s intellectual property. There were a few I just couldn’t determine if they were free to use or not, but figured as they’re Renaissance art, I’d be safe.

After amassing a likely pile of pics, I went looking for music with no strings attached. That’s important too.  Copyright infringement holds true for music as well as photos and other art. I discovered an obscure but lovely piece of music on an old CD bought at a dollar store on a whim. I can’t even find an artist’s name so I know that will be alright to use too. And so with my odds and ends littering my desktop I assembled a nice little presentation. Here’s the sticky part…I must have uploaded that sucker to Youtube 5 times. Nowhere did I see the words on the site telling me it wouldn’t take powerpoints before I wasted my time uploading!! It told me after. Loading five times took thirty minutes each. Arrgghhh…….

Last night, in my half sleep, a thought came to me. Check Youtube for a how-to video. If you want to learn it, chances are Youtube has a video to teach you how. I’ve used it before for that very reason. Yeah, I also use it for videos of talking dogs, laughing babies, and feeding my obscure interests. Example: I enjoy medieval music and other people on Youtube do too. It’s a terrific resource even with the annoying ads that flood the site now. So one word came to me in my twilight state: Convert…convert….convert….Eureka! I’d convert the powerpoint to a movie file!

Could I do it for free? Sure, if I wanted a watermark of the company’s logo on each page.  Sure, if I only wanted six slides done instead of thirty-one. Nope that wouldn’t do. I shopped around for the best price and ease of use and found Acoolsoft PPT to DVD Lite. It took me three tries before I realized I had to go to the company’s website to see the how-to’s. It was so easy once they explained it.  I”m very pleased. The music might be a tad off at the end, but yes, I’m pleased.

Here’s a peek: