Using Impatica for Power Point What is Impatica? Impatica is a tool that will help you to compress PowerPoint presentations and convert them into a more efficient format for web delivery. Impatica for PowerPoint reads and interprets the PowerPoint file and produces a compressed file in a streaming format for delivery over the internet, preserving the multimedia elements such as text, graphics, audio, video, animation and interactivity. What are the advantages of using Impatica? Impatica for Powerpoint compresses and converts Powerpoint presentations into streaming file format. This means the file size reduced and also, in streaming the file, a presentation will play almost instantly without waiting for the full file to be downloaded. Converting PowerPoint files to Impatica ensures that students can download the presentation but they cannot edit it or reproduce the original file in any way. Students are able to view large presentations when using a slow connection rate from home. Students do not need PowerPoint installed on their computer to be able to view the impaticized presentation. The Impatica file is typically 95% smaller than the PowerPoint HTML files. Especially important for presentations with multimedia files. Impaticized presentation can be uploaded into Blackboard. How to install and run Impatica for PowerPoint Impatica is available on the School s Novell delivered applications. Click and install Impatica by double clicking the Impatica icon available under Blackboard Tools. Once installed go to Blackboard Tools on Novell applications and double click the Impatica icon. This will launch Impatica for PowerPoint interface as shown below:
1 - Selecting the Source Content Files for Conversion The Source PowerPoint Files list displays the names of the files to be impaticized. You can add PowerPoint files to the list as often as you wish. Simply click the Add button or drag and drop files onto the Source PowerPoint Files list. To remove files from the Source PowerPoint Files list, select the desired file and click the Remove button. 2 - Conversion Settings Conversion settings are presented on three tabs. Slide Show, Media and Extra Output Files. Slide Show tab By default, Impatica files are saved in the same folder as the original PowerPoint presentation. To change the save location for a file, select the file in the Source PowerPoint Files list, then click the Browse button. To save the converted file in the same location as its source file, click the Source Folder button. NOTE: Do not use special characters, like dashes, parentheses, etc in the file name. Leave Impatica File Format as it is and target screen dimensions as automatic. Selecting the include playback controls option causes Impatica to include a strip of buttons to the impaticized presentation that will allow the viewer to control the playback of your presentation. If your slide show does not have any animations (text or objects moving onto the slides at different times), click on the Slide Show tab and check include playback controls. However If your slide show does contain animations, do not include Impatica playback controls. The playback controls in Impatica will not allow the animations to be viewed properly.
Media tab Wait for Sound: Impatica for PowerPoint s Wait for Sound options enable the precise synchronization of narration with the presentation. With At end of animation option selected, presentation advancement will be delayed until the current animation s sound has been played to its entirety. Selecting At end of slide option causes slide transitions to be postponed until the current slide s transition sound has finished playing. This setting is highly recommended for most narrated presentations. JPEG Images: You can specify the quality to be applied to JPEG images. For most images, 70% quality will result in significant compression without a significant loss of quality. When Always recompress option is selected, Impatica for PowerPoint will automatically recompress all of the JPEG images in the presentation. If it is not selected, only those JPEG images that have been scaled or cropped within PowerPoint will be recompressed. Recompressing decreases the file size, but also degrades the quality of the image. Animation Playback: The Animation Playback options determine the timing and appearance of animations in the impaticized presentation. They allow you to specify which version of PowerPoint you wish to mimic. With PowerPoint 97, 2000 and X option selected, the presentation will play as it would if the PowerPoint presentation was viewed in either PowerPoint 97, 2000 or X. In this mode, animation
effects new in PowerPoint 2002 ( XP ) and 2003 will be ignored, as they would be upon playback in PowerPoint 97, 2000 or X. Presentations impaticized with PowerPoint 2002 ( XP ) and 2003 option selected will exhibit the same timing as playback of the PowerPoint presentation in PowerPoint 2002 ( XP ) or 2003. Furthermore, animation effects that were new to PowerPoint 2002 ( XP ) and 2003 will be maintained. Make Hyperlinks Open New Window: If this option is selected, all hyperlinks will open in a new browser window and display the page within the new window. If this option is deselected, all hyperlinks will appear in the current browser window and replace its content, including the Impatica presentation. Make All Animations Automatic: Selecting this option will cause Impatica for PowerPoint to override the animation on mouse click setting of PowerPoint. If this option is selected, all animations will occur automatically, without waiting for a mouse click. When Sound Format is selected to compact, Impatica for PowerPoint will convert sound objects to Impatica s compact sound format, which is designed for streaming sound over the Internet. Extra Output Files tab
Generated Support Files: Selecting HTML file option will cause Impatica for PowerPoint to create an HTML file that can be used to preview the impaticized file that was saved on your local drive. When this option is selected, Impatica for PowerPoint will create a zip package that contains the impaticized presentation, the Impatica player applet and an HTML page for launching the presentation. The ZIP file will be saved in the same folder as the corresponding Impatica file. When Zip package option is selected, Impatica for PowerPoint will create a zip package that contains the impaticized presentation, the Impatica player applet and an HTML page for launching the presentation. The ZIP file will be saved in the Save Location specified on the Slide Show tab. Once this zip package has been created, it can be used to upload your presentation to your Blackboard course. Exported Notes: If you are exporting speaker s notes check the HTML file under Export Notes. This will extract text from the Notes section of the PowerPoint presentation, and present this text formatted in an HTML page. The HTML file will be saved in the Save Location specified on the Slide Show tab. Selecting Plain text file option saves the extracted text from the Notes section of the PowerPoint presentation as a plain text file. The text file will be saved in the Save Location specified on the Slide Show tab. 3 - Impaticizing Your Presentations Once you have added all of the files that you wish to convert to the Source Files list and have set the desired conversion settings, click Impaticize. When you click the Impaticize button, the Conversion Progress screen will appear showing the progress as each presentation is impaticized. In some cases, it may take a few moments for progress to begin showing.
When all files have been impaticized a new panel will appear, presenting several options such as previewing the impaticized presentation, deleting Impatica files, viewing file information and the conversion settings used. Deleting Impatica Files To delete any impaticized files, select the Impatica file you wish to delete and click the Delete File button. Any associated files, such as HTML files, will also be removed from your computer. File Info Tab The File Info tab provides you with information regarding the source PowerPoint file, and the resulting Impatica file. Conversion Settings Tab The Conversion Settings tab lists all of the options that were set for the creation of the currently selected converted Impatica file. 4 Uploading your impaticized files to your Blackboard Course Once the conversion is complete, return to the chosen save location and you should now see the zip archive file that contains your impaticized content. This file can be added to a Blackboard course. 1 - Within a Blackboard course, go to the control panel of your course and add a new item to the content area in which you would like to upload your impaticized files. 2 - Scroll down to Content section and click on the browse button to locate the zip folder on your computer. 3 - Enter the text for your students to click to launch the web site in the Name of Link to File filed. 4 - From the Special Actions drop down box, select Unpackage this file. This instructs Blackboard to unpackage the archive file and uploads the Impatica file on the Blackboard server. Then Submit 5 You will be prompted with a follow-up screen to select the Entry Point. Select HTML file as the entry point. 6 - Check the box Launch in new window and click Submit. Your presentation has now been incorporated into your Blackboard Course. Editing an Impaticized presentation Once the presentation has been imported into Blackboard, it cannot be edited directly. To modify your presentation, edit the original PowerPoint file on your computer, then repeat the process impaticization and upload process for Blackboard again. Viewing Impaticized Files NOTE: The browser needs to have a Java plug-in to view files created in Impatica. If you can t open an Impatica file, go to http://www.java.com/en/ and download the free plug-in by clicking on the Free Java Download button.