#1 2008-11-23 13:16:55

**_agnick_**

Keynote and more

Hi all,

I really hope somebody can help. I know very little about Adobe Connect (having only attended one such meeting over a year ago), so please be patient...

I am due to participate in a Connect "MeetingPlace Meeting". I have been supplied with all necessary details; URL, ID, pass, etc.

On this occasion I am due to deliver a presentation as well as demonstrate some software thereafter. I am primarily Mac-based and chose to use Apple's Keynote (a decision brought-on after spending a year behind PowerPoint in a previous career!).

I have no other special software other than the latest Flash player using Safari and/or Firefox. My intention was to deliver the presentation and demonstrate the software using Connect's screensharing. However, I thought I'd just check there'd be no technical difficulties with this... which is when I came across this site. Now there's a slight panic!

I read Jason Parker's post: "Using Apple Keynote Presentations with Acrobat Connect Pro" ( www.connectusers.com/tutorials/2008/08/keynote/ ) and it discusses having to export from Keynote to PowerPoint or Flash. Why? If I do try to export, I either lose control or quality... or both. Or Keynote crashes (Flash export). Later I read up as much as I could on other forum posts and general information on the web, but none discuss Keynote in conjunction with screensharing.

I have taken care not to create a presentation which would require too much bandwidth if streamed in realtime. Nothing "swoops in" or rotates in 3D, etc. I have only added some limited dissolves. Not too much texture; as much flat areas as possible.

Therefore is there a technical reason as to why I couldn't share my Mac screen (I don't need to limit to certain apps)? I intend to run at a resolution of 1280 x 800 and use Keynote in fullscreen mode.

I would really appreciate any help or comments with all this.

Best wishes,

Nick

alistairlee

Re: Keynote and more

Hey Nick,

Screen sharing is absolutely an option if you're presentation was created with Keynote.  There are no technical issues or difficulties in doing this at all.  The best practice (esp. on a mac) is to share you entire screen, not just the application (Keynote in this case) since this reduces the amount the CPU has to work.

The reason you've seen the tips & tricks on this site around exporting Keynote presentations to PPT or SWF files is that uploading a file tends to be a best practice (compared to sharing your screen) for a few reasons:
- Quality of the presentation is much better when you natively upload a PPT or SWF file.
-  Bandwidth requirements are tiny compared to screensharing (even at low resolutions)
- You can reuse the presentation over and over again
- No lag time

The downside is that you lose all of the cool Keynote sizzle.  Connect Pro is pretty good at retaining PowerPoint animations, but you'll lose anything unique to Keynote.  If those are important to your presentation - then screen sharing is probably the way to go.

Hope this helps.

**_agnick_**

Re: Keynote and more

Hi alistairlee,

Thank you very much for the reply. It is exactly what I had been hoping for!

I am starting to understand as to why presentations would be pre-uploaded. But hopefully, as I've taken care to make the presentation as "compressible" as possible, it should transmit OK-ish.

Very best wishes,

Nick