Presentara help

With Presentara, you have a unique tool to make, share and distribute presentations that all look alike, and you have your presentations all in one place, you never need to search different drives for them anymore, and if you have Presentara Player installed on your laptop, you always carry them with you, you will never forget a presentation anymore.

Presentara enables you to easily make presentations, you can even include video and speak If you have the sound module), so you can show them on your Desktop PC, laptop or projector with the Presentara Player.  You don’t need to be online when using Presentara or the Presentara Player.

When you start making a presentation, you decide if you want it to be active or not, if not, it is not visible in the Presentara Player, so you have full control over which presentations that are available in the Presentara Player.

The general design of the interface will be the same for all presentations when viewed in the Presentara Player.

Presentara and Presentara Player are continuously being developed based on the needs of our customers, who give us feedback on their needs, their use, errors encountered. You can access the online help at www.presentara.com for updated information.

Getting started guide

Installation

1. Be sure to have your username, password and safety key before proceeding (you should have received it in an intro mail).
2. Download the zip file to your desktop
3. Unzip the file to your desktop:
1. Double click on the zip file you just downloaded
2. A new window will pop up
3. You now have two options to open it: 1) drag and drop the folder in the new window to your desktop or 2) select the folder and in the left side menu, choose to move/extract the folder
4. Whichever way you do it, the files will be copied to your desktop, however, it might take a little while.
4. Open one of the folders and run setup
5. The system requires Microsoft .NET framework installed on the pc and you will be prompted to install if its not already on your pc.
6. Open program and follow the "Getting started guide" below
7. Repeat with the other folder (run setup and follow "Getting started guide")

First time after having installed a new Presentara, you need to:

• Select “Settings”. The “General Installation” window pops up.
• Presentara will perform an automatic check to detect if Microsoft DirectX, Window Media Encoder and K-Light codex.
• If one or more of the applications are not installed on your PC, Presentara will tell you which, and will automatically install them for you after your accept.
• When all applications are installed, you can move on to establish connection.
• Choose “Load Key”
• Find the .key file on your PC, choose it, and click “Open”.
• You are now back in the “General Installation" window.
• If the key is valid, you can Press OK, which will lead you to the log in window.
• You can now enter your Username and your Password, and log in.

Remember to Synchronize first time you log in, to make sure you have updated data in your Presentara system.

When all applications are installed, you can move on to establish connection.

• Choose “Load Key”
• Find the .key file on your PC, choose it, and click “Open”.
• You are now back in the “General Installation" window.
• If the key is valid, you can Press OK, which will lead you to the log in window.
• You can now enter your Username and your Password, and log in.

Remember til Synchronize first time you log in, to make sure you have updated data in your Presentara system.

 

Log in

You can also open presentara player from the menu in admin.

Exit

Admin

Player

The exit menu closes down your Presentara player.

Working offline

Presentara must have online access when you want to work. In the bottom left corner of Presentara, you can see if you are online. If your connection should fail at any time, the status will change from Online to Offline. Wait for internet connection before saving.

If you are working on a laptop running on battery, Presentara will also let you know by means of a small icon in the bottom bar of the interface.

If you want to see how much storage your presentations use, you choose the menu “Settings” and “Main Categories”

Below the list of Main Categories, you can see the total size of your entire system, it states a total in MB. There is a certain amount of storage allocated to your account, and you will be notified in the top of the Presentara window if you reach your storage limit.

You can also see the size of each Category and presentation by selecting it in the main Presentara Admin window. Below the list, the size of the selected item is stated in total MB.

If you have a Business version, Presentara automatically synchronizes with the server to see, if any changes have been made since your last log-on. The synchronization does not download then entire content of the server; only changes since your last synchronization are downloaded, thus making the process faster.

You can synchronize automatically by choosing menu and synchronize. If you work on a business version, always synchronize before you start working on existing data.

Other versions do not synchronize automatically.

Main Categories

Pressing the “Main Categories” menu, opens up the “Main Categories” Window.

This is where you administer your Main Categories. Make new, edit, copy, and delete. To begin with, you only have access to New, if you select an existing Main Category, you also gain access to edit, copy, and delete. In the interface, below the list, you can see how much space you take up on the server, and you can exit the menu.
Below the list of Main Categories, you can see the total size of your entire system, it states a total in MB. There is a certain amount of storage allocated to your account, and you will be notified in the top of the Presentara window if you reach your storage limit.

• New
  New lets you add a new Main Category to your Presentara. You have to enter a name. This name will also be displayed in the menu in the Presentara Player.
  When you make a new Main Category, notice the “Is Active” check box. If this is checked, your presentation is visible in the Presentara Player.
• Edit
  When you choose Edit, you can rename a Main Category or change Active status.
• Copy
  The copy tool, lets you make a copy of an entire Main Category, complete with all Categories, Presentations and slides. This is especially useful, if you use Main Category for languages, and you want have your presentations in several languages, then you can just copy the original language, and be sure that the disposition of each copy is identical with the same pictures, videos etc. When copying a Main Category, also consider if you want the presentations under the new Main Category to be Active before you have looked them through.
• Delete
  If you need to delete a Main Category, select it, and press delete, you will be prompted – so you have to confirm deletion by a Yes, before you can delete it. If you work online, you will delete all presentations under this Main Category permanently.

Back up

Back up allows you to “Create Back Up” of your files locally on your system and also “Load Back Up” of a previous back up you have made.

You can store your back up anywhere you want on your system.

 

Reset

If Presentara encounters an error, that does not get solved by performing a synchronization, you can reset your Presentara. All content will be deleted from your PC, and you have to make a full synchronization afterwards – thus you have to be online for this.

Main Categories

Select the Main Category you want to work on. A list containing the Main Categories you have added drops down.

Categories

One of the advantages of Presentara is, that you sort your presentations into Main Categories and categories. You can make as many categories you want, and you can make as many presentations under each category you want.

• New
  Add a new category here. When you add a new category a window opens, where you have to name it, decide if it is to be active – then it will be visible in the Presentara Player. You can also check “Advanced settings”

• Advanced settings
  The “advanced settings” window is where you can add a picture or video, that will appear when the category has been selected in the Presentara Player.
  You select a picture or video by clicking the yellow folder, it will open a window allowing you to select a file from your PC. You can delete your selection by using the X. You have the following options for images: Stretch, Tile, Zoom, Center and none. They can be helpful if you don’t manage a picture in a graphics editing program.

• Edit
  You can edit the name of a category and gain access to the advanced settings described under new category.
• Delete
  If you want to delete a category, select it, and press delete, you will be prompted – so you have to confirm deletion by a Yes, before you can delete it. If you work online, you will delete all presentations under this category permanently.

Presentations

• New
  Add a new Presentation here. When you add a new Presentation a window opens, where you have to name it, decide if it is to be active – then it will be visible in the Presentara Player. You can also check “Advanced settings”
• Advanced settings
  The “advanced settings” window is where you can add a picture or video, that will appear when the category has been selected in the Presentara Player.
  You select a picture or video by clicking the yellow folder, it will open a window allowing you to select a file from your PC. You can delete your selection by using the X. You have the following options for images: Stretch, Tile, Zoom, Center and none. They can be helpful if you don’t manage a picture in a graphics editing program.
• Edit
  You can edit the name of a Presentation and gain access to the advanced settings described under new category.
• Delete
  If you want to delete a Presentation, select it, and press delete, you will be prompted – so you have to confirm deletion by a Yes, before you can delete it. If you work online, you will delete the entire presentation.
• Print
  

  If you rightclick on a presentation in the Presnetations Window, the “Print Presentation” menu appears, and when choosing it, your presentation will appear in a format for print, and a menu will allow you to change the text and format it. The printer icon will grant you access to your printers. The Save button, will let you save the file as a HTML file, with all pictures embedded in the file. Please notice, that Internet Explorer does not support this feature, as such the HTML file has to be opened by Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome. If you want to see your presentations in Presentara Player, go into Menu and choose Player, this will open your Presentara Player.

Slide

When selecting a presentation, you get an overview of the existing slides associated to that presentation. You will get preview of picture slides. The title of the slide is written below the icon for each slide. You can sort the order of the slides by Drag and Drop.

In the interface you can se active slide and inactive slides. Activation of a slide to let it be shown in the presentations, just clike "is active" when editing a slide.

In the associated menu, you have the following options.

In the Main Presentara Admin window, you can make a new Text slide by choosing a Presentation and selecting “New” in the Slide panel. A new window will pop-up, where you select the type of slide you want to make, you have 3 choices, Text, Picture and Video. When making a new slide, it will automatically be placed as the last Icon in panel. You can sort slides by drag and drop.

• New
  You can make a new slide, choosing this, you get a pop-up menu enabling you to choose between a Text, Picture or Video slide. The new slide will pop up as the last slide.
  Slides can be sorted by drag-and-drop.
• Edit
  Edit is clickable when having chosen a slide. Edit opens the “Edit Slide” window; doubleclick on a slideicon will also open it.
• Delete
  If you want to delete a slide, select it, and press delete, you will be prompted – so you have to confirm deletion by a Yes, before you can delete it.

If you want the slide to open
right away clik "autoopen":

 

Media : text

The Media : Text frame in the Text slide, is what will actually be displayed in the Presentara Player. You can enter text in this frame by typing it, or pasting it from e.g. Word, Internet Browser etc. Text can be formatted by the same tools as the test in the “Main Text” panel.

You can also copy diagrams from PowerPoint 2003 and 2007 and paste them into the Media : Text area, as well as you can copy formatted text and background colors from the internet, and paste into this area.

Main text - Scroll

The Scrolling text is placed in the bottom of the Presentara Player. If you don’t want scrolling text in the bottom of your presentation, just leave the text box empty. If you decide to add speak to your presentation, and you want to have the same text scrolling, just leave the text there, after you have recorded your speak. The scrolling text can be formatted by using the following tools:

Font Face	Align Left
Font Size	Center
Bold	Align Right
Italic	Numbered List
Underline	Bulleted List
Font Color – 48 predefined colors	Outdent
Highlight – 48 predefined colors	Indent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, there is a number of advanced settings for the scrolling text, that is set in the “Management / Test Slides” panel.

Speak from Acapela:

In presentara you have the possibility to add speak to your presentations. Write the text and you are ready to use the speak feature:

• Først choose your language, then the voice. Presentara will remember your choosen voice.
• Then pres play and after a while you will hear the speak. (The longer the text the more time you will have to wait for the server to make the speak. The speak is being created at a special acapela voice server)
• When you are satisfied, you can choose save and you will be prompted to write a code as an acceptance of the purchase. (Each month you will be billed for the cost of the speak).
  You then save the file to your computer and Presentara will prompt you to upload the file to the slide.
  

General properties

Type the title of the slide. The title will be visible in the general slide overview of the presentation and in the Presentara Player (where it can be disabled). If you don’t want a Title, just make sure the box is left empty.

Sound / Duration / Delay

• Sound-file
  • Add New
    If you want to add sound to a slide, you can choose “Add New”. It will open Windows Explorer, allowing you to add the sound-file, e.g. speak you have made in the “Main Text” module or music. When having selected a sound-file remember to press Save in the bottom of the “Edit Slide” window.
    Standard sound formats like .mp3, .wma, .wav etc. are supported.
  • Delete
    You can delete your uploaded file here, if you e.g. want to change the file or remove sound from the slide.
  • Download
    If there are more Presentara users making presentations, and you want to reuse a sound-file uploaded by another user, you can download it with this button.
  • Play & Stop
    When you have saved the file, you can test the sound by pressing the play button, and you can stop/reset it by pressing the red “Stop” button. You can also drag the slider to quickly get through the soundfile. Make sure you have activated Play before using the slider
    
• Slide duration in ms

Slide Duration is only for the purpose of controlling how long time each slide is shown, if Autoplay is activated in the resentara player, e.g. for the purpose of making a video of a presentation. There is a 5 second default setting on it. If you have uploaded a sound-file, you can use the “Auto detect” button to determine the sound duration. It is generally a good idea, to add a few extra seconds to the time determined by the “Auto detect” tool, otherwise the slide will change to the next immediately after the sound ends.

• Duration scroll in ms
  If you use Scroll text on the slide, this tool controls how long time it takes for the text to scroll.
  
• Scroll delay in ms

Determines when Scroll text starts scrolling. If the value is zero, the text will start scrolling immediately after Autoplay has changed from the previous slide to this. It is generally a good idea, to give the viewer of your presentation a little while between the change to a new slide and the start of scrolling text.

• Run Slide  (F5)
  If you want to see how you slide will look in the presentation (and hear if you have added sound), use this function – Save first, however. It will open a new window, in which you see the slice as it will appear in Presentara Player. In the bottom, you also see the timers run, thus enabling you to change timers if necessary. Tekst Duration scroll

Management

• Is Active
  When there is a check mark in “Is Active”, the slide will be visible when Presentara Players are synchronized (Provided the Presentation, Category and Main categories are all active as well).
• Save
  This will save the slide data on the server. Remember to save before running the slide if you have uploaded a soundfile.
• Exit
  Closes the “Edit ”slide” window.
• Save and Exit
  Saves your uploaded file and entered data and also exits slide.

Media : Picture

The Picture will be showed in this frame. If you use Labels on your picture, you can drag it to it’s destination in this frame. You can only attach one picture to each Picture slide.

Main text - Scroll

The Scrolling text is placed in the bottom of the Presentara Player. If you don’t want scrolling test in the bottom of your presentation, just leave the text box empty. If you decide to add speak to your presentation, and you want to have the same text scrolling, just leave the text there, after you have recorded your speak. The scrolling text can be formatted by using the following tools:

Font Face	Align Left
Font Size	Center
Bold	Align Right
Italic	Numbered List
Underline	Bulleted List
Font Color – 48 predefined colors	Outdent
Highlight – 48 predefined colors	Indent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, there is a number of advanced settings for the scrolling text, that is set in the “Management / Test Slides” panel.

Speak from Acapela:

In presentara you have the possibility to add speak to your presentations. Write the text and you are ready to use the speak feature:

• Først choose your language, then the voice. Presentara will remember your choosen voice.
• Then pres play and after a while you will hear the speak. (The longer the text the more time you will have to wait for the server to make the speak. The speak is being created at a special acapela voice server)
• When you are satisfied, you can choose save and you will be prompted to write a code as an acceptance of the purchase. (Each month you will be billed for the cost of the speak).
  You then save the file to your computer and Presentara will prompt you to upload the file to the slide.

General properties

Type the title of the slide. The title will be visible in the general slide overview of the presentation and in the Presentara Player (where it can be disabled). If you don’t want a Title, just make sure the box is left empty.

• Name (Picture)
  • Add New
    Choose “Add New” to add a picture. It will open Windows Explorer, allowing you to find and add the picture-file. When having selected a picture-file remember to press Save in the bottom of the “Edit Slide” window.
    Standard picture formats like .jpg, .png, .gif, etc. are supported.
  • Delete
    You can delete your uploaded file here, if you e.g. want to change the picture.
  • Download
    If you want to reuse a video-file uploaded to the server earlier, you can download it with this button.
  • Scale Image
    You have several possibilities for changing the picture you uploaded, by means of pushing the “Scale Image” button. Settings are;
    • None, which will place the picture in the upper left corner of the frame.
    • Stretch will stretch the image to cover the entire frame.
    • Tile starts from upper left corner making tiles with the original picture size.
    • Zoom centers the picture and makes it as large as possible without distorting the image.
    • Center places the picture in the center in the original size.
• Labels – Manage/change
  

  Rightclick anywhere in the Picture frame and a menu “Create new label” will appear. When choosing this, the label manager will appear, and you can type in your labeltext. The text is centered by default, and the color is white and the background is transparent. You can change the font, size, face, the color and background. When done, save the label.

• Move the label
  Mark the label, holding left mouse button down and then drag it, to where you want it.

• Edit/Delete
  Rightclick an existing label to edit or delete it.

Sound / Duration / Delay

• Sound-file
  • Add New
    If you want to add sound to a slide, you can choose “Add New”. It will open Windows Explorer, allowing you to add the sound-file, e.g. speak you have made in the “Main Text” module or music. When having selected a sound-file remember to press Save in the bottom of the “Edit Slide” window.
    Standard sound formats like .mp3, .wma, .wav etc. are supported.
  • Delete
    You can delete your uploaded file here, if you e.g. want to change the file or remove sound from the slide.
  • Download
    If there are more Presentara users making presentations, and you want to reuse a sound-file uploaded by another user, you can download it with this button.
  • Play & Stop
    When you have saved the file, you can test the sound by pressing the play button, and you can stop/reset it by pressing the red “Stop” button. You can also drag the slider to quickly get through the soundfile. Make sure you have activated Play before using the slider.
    
• Slide duration in ms

Slide Duration is only for the purpose of controlling how long time each slide is shown, if Autoplay is activated in the resentara player, e.g. for the purpose of making a video of a presentation. There is a 5 second default setting on it. If you have uploaded a sound-file, you can use the “Auto detect” button to determine the sound duration. It is generally a good idea, to add a few extra seconds to the time determined by the “Auto detect” tool, otherwise the slide will change to the next immediately after the sound ends.

• Duration scroll in ms
  If you use Scroll text on the slide, this tool controls how long time it takes for the text to scroll.
  
• Scroll delay in ms

Determines when Scroll text starts scrolling. If the value is zero, the text will start scrolling immediately after Autoplay has changed from the previous slide to this. It is generally a good idea, to give the viewer of your presentation a little while between the change to a new slide and the start of scrolling text.

• Run Slide  (F5)
  If you want to see how you slide will look in the presentation (and hear if you have added sound), use this function – Save first, however. It will open a new window, in which you see the slice as it will appear in Presentara Player. In the bottom, you also see the timers run, thus enabling you to change timers if necessary. Tekst Duration scroll
• Is Active
  When there is a check mark in “Is Active”, the slide will be visible when Presentara Players are synchronized (Provided the Presentation, Category and Main categories are all active as well).

Management

• Save
  This will save the slide data on the server. Remember to save before running the slide.
• Exit
  Closes the “Edit ”slide” window.
• Save and Exit
  

  Saves your uploaded file and entered data and also exits slide.

Media : Video

The video will be showed in this frame. You cannot enter anything in this panel

Main text - Scroll

The Scrolling text is placed in the bottom of the Presentara Player. If you don’t want scrolling test in the bottom of your presentation, just leave the text box empty. If you decide to add speak to your presentation, and you want to have the same text scrolling, just leave the text there, after you have recorded your speak. The scrolling text can be formatted by using the following tools:

Font Face	Align Left
Font Size	Center
Bold	Align Right
Italic	Numbered List
Underline	Bulleted List
Font Color – 48 predefined colors	Outdent
Highlight – 48 predefined colors	Indent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, there is a number of advanced settings for the scrolling text, that is set in the “Management / Test Slides” panel.

 

General properties

Type the title of the slide. The title will be visible in the general slide overview of the presentation and in the Presentara Player (where it can be disabled). If you don’t want a Title, just make sure the box is left empty.

• Name (Video)
• Add New
  Choose “Add New” to add a video. It will open Windows Explorer, allowing you to find and add the video-file. When having selected a video-file remember to press Save in the bottom of the “Edit Slide” window.
  Standard video formats like .avi, .wmv, .mp3, .FLV etc. are supported.
• Delete
  You can delete your uploaded file here, if you e.g. want to change the video.
• Download
  If you want to reuse a video-file uploaded to the server earlier, you can download it with this button.
• Play & Stop
  When you have saved the file, you can see it by pressing the play button, and you can stop/reset it by pressing the red “Stop” button. You can also drag the slider to quickly get through the video. Make sure you have activated Play before using the slider.

Sound / Duration / Delay

• Sound-file
  • Add New
    If you want to add sound to a slide, you can choose “Add New”. It will open Windows Explorer, allowing you to add the sound-file, e.g. speak you have made in the “Main Text” module or music. When having selected a sound-file remember to press Save in the bottom of the “Edit Slide” window.
    Standard sound formats like .mp3, .wma, .wav etc. are supported.
  • Delete
    You can delete your uploaded file here, if you e.g. want to change the file or remove sound from the slide.
  • Download
    If there are more Presentara users making presentations, and you want to reuse a sound-file uploaded by another user, you can download it with this button.
  • Play & Stop
    When you have saved the file, you can test the sound by pressing the play button, and you can stop/reset it by pressing the red “Stop” button. You can also drag the slider to quickly get through the soundfile. Make sure you have activated Play before using the slider.
    
• Slide duration in ms

Slide Duration is only for the purpose of controlling how long time each slide is shown, if Autoplay is activated in the resentara player, e.g. for the purpose of making a video of a presentation. There is a 5 second default setting on it. If you have uploaded a sound-file, you can use the “Auto detect” button to determine the sound duration. It is generally a good idea, to add a few extra seconds to the time determined by the “Auto detect” tool, otherwise the slide will change to the next immediately after the sound ends.

• Duration scroll in ms
  If you use Scroll text on the slide, this tool controls how long time it takes for the text to scroll.
  
• Scroll delay in ms

Determines when Scroll text starts scrolling. If the value is zero, the text will start scrolling immediately after Autoplay has changed from the previous slide to this. It is generally a good idea, to give the viewer of your presentation a little while between the change to a new slide and the start of scrolling text.

• Run Slide  (F5)
  If you want to see how you slide will look in the presentation (and hear if you have added sound), use this function – Save first, however. It will open a new window, in which you see the slice as it will appear in Presentara Player. In the bottom, you also see the timers run, thus enabling you to change timers if necessary. Tekst Duration scroll
• Is Active
  When there is a check mark in “Is Active”, the slide will be visible when Presentara Players are synchronized (Provided the Presentation, Category and Main categories are all active as well).

Management

• Save
  This will save the slide data on the server. Remember to save before running the slide.
• Exit
  Closes the “Edit ”slide” window.

Update

Here you can update your Presentara to a newer available version of the program.

License

Here you can see what type of license you have, how much storage is used, and how much you have access to.

Presentara Help F1

Your basic guide to the program.

Visit our site

Visit our site, sends you to our website where you can see what is going on, what we are working on, how other customers use Presentara, video guides, and links to our support.

Suggest a feature

Feel free to tell us, how we can improve Presentara and Presentara Player. Presentara is being continuously developed, and it is important for us to hear your opinion, as we might be able to include your proposal into Presentara, thus giving you a better experience.

About

This is where you can see the release date and version number of your Presentara Player.