Articulate Presenter is one of the most popular ways to convert a Powerpoint presentation for playback on the web. With Character Builder you can let a character present your slides for you. Here are some best-practice notes for working with Articulate Presenter.

We recommend creating one Character Builder project per slide. Once you are satisfied with the first project, you can use the Builder's File Save As to save it as Slide 2, Slide 3, etc. Be sure to create your project using the Straight Flash output option. This is the best type of output for working with the "in sync" option (see below).

In Powerpoint, go to each slide where you would like a character presentation. Choose Articulate > Insert Flash Movie. In Step 1, choose "Display in slide". (You can also display a movie in the Articulate sidebar area, if present.) In Step 2, Navigate to your My Documents\Character Builder Projects directory, then to your project directory, and finally to the Output subdirectory to select your Flash file. In Step 3, choose the default value for Synchronization: "Play Flash movie and slide in sync", and select "Move to next slide automatically when movie finishes".

The default time for "Buffer 5 seconds of the movie before playing" should be adequate. When you press Finish, Articulate will insert a picture (actually a shockwave flash object) into Powerpoint that represents the first frame of the Flash movie. You can then move the picture anywhere on the scene, so as not to obscure the content. (Note that the background of this picture may be solid white in Powerpoint, but it will become transparent when you publish to Flash. It helps to make the Character Builder stage has small as possible while still accommodating the character and its range of motions.)

Finally, use the Articulate > Publish menu option, as normal, to create a resulting Flash file set.

Some further notes:

• Articulate appears to silence the opening portion of the audio of its embedded movies. We recommend adding a Pause action as the first action in your presentation if the first word is getting silenced.
• Since the character will carry the narration, you may not use Articulate's built-in audio narration functionality. Or, if you already have a narration, then you will find the .wav files, one per slide, in a subdirectory beneath your Powerpoint file, in a narration directory, with one .wav file per slide. You can use these .wav files (ignore any .mp3 files) with the Import Audio feature in Character Builder builds 152 and higher.
• Some of your slides may have animations. For example a slide may have 3 bullet point, each of which appears one by one. Using only the Character Builder you would accomplish this by creating 3 text objects, setting them to initially hidden, and using the Show action at the point where each bullet is to be revealed. But in integrating the Builder output with another program, the character does not enjoy the same access to that program's objects, so timing requires a bit more work. Articulate has a Sync Animation Timings that lets you adjust the timings of Powerpoint's On Mouse Click animation. If your slide includes a Builder movie instead of an audio narrative, then you can use the same feature to adjust where the next animation will fall.
• If you update your Builder movie then you can delete your previous movie and insert the new one. When you insert a movie through Articulate, it places the movie in the folder by the same name as your Powerpoint project. To update your Builder movie you can also manually copy it there from your Builder project's Output directory.
• Note that you can also create supporting content in the Builder. Consider this if you have a complex explanation, in which the character reveals several object, such as layers on a diagram.
• By default, articulate supports output that can be resized to any size. Embedded flash movies are also sized accordingly. This will work well with vector characters, such as Dave, or Mike. However it won't work well with rendered characters such as John or Jessi, as you will tend to see seams and other artifacts. For this style of character, we recommend setting your articulate template to "Lock presentation at optimal size".