Serious Magic Announces Ovation – A Software Companion to PowerPoint

[Doctor]

Ovation Converts Ordinary PowerPoint Shows Into Visually Appealing Presentations That Capture Attention, Increase Retention and Deliver Results

Serious Magic has announced a technology preview of Ovation, companion software for Microsoft PowerPoint that automatically and instantly transforms PowerPoint slides into polished, professional presentations. Based on a new visualization engine, Ovation offers two key benefits; it dramatically improves presentations and then it helps presenters deliver them better.

"Ovation re-imagines flat, lifeless PowerPoint slides into rich, compelling presentations that have the polished look of a network TV broadcast," says Mark Randall, president and CEO of Serious Magic. "Then Ovation helps presenters deliver that presentation better with a teleprompter to stay on-point and a unique on-screen TimeKeeper to stay on pace."

Upgrading an existing PowerPoint presentation is as easy as dropping a PowerPoint file into Ovation and selecting a theme from the included library. Each theme features high-resolution text, eye-pleasing color treatments, dynamic transitions, subtly moving foreground elements and motion backgrounds. Presentations can start with a stylish animated Welcome sequence to greet the audience as they enter the room. During breaks, Ovation’s intermission mode displays an eye-catching thematic animation complete with a countdown to the end of the break. A powerful closing animation ensures an organization’s brand or key point is memorable long after the presentation is over.

To help users become a better presenter, Ovation offers Presentation Assist, a teleprompter/note card feature that allows users to view a script or an outline that scrolls alongside their presentation ensuring no key points are missed. Using a laptop’s external output feature, audiences see the full- screen presentation on a video projector or monitor while only the presenter sees the Presentation Assist interface. Ovation’s TimeKeeper warns if the current pace puts the presentation in jeopardy of going into overtime, while the Deeper feature enables users to attach a hidden, optional slide, graphic or picture to each bullet so they’re always prepared to add more in-depth information if prompted by a question from the audience.


Availability
Summer ’05. MSRP: $99.95

About Serious Magic

Serious Magic, Inc., founded in 2001, are also the creators of Vlog It, the world’s first video blog creation software which will be available this Spring. For more information, please visit www.seriousmagic.com.


Source: Serious Magic, Inc/ PRNewswire

[skypilota72]

I have tried to install Ovation and failed each time, and have tried this on 3 of my computers.

It initially installed and even ran through most of the frames in the powerpoint conversion process, but at the end of the conversion always received the "Unexpected Termination – Illegal Error" box, and this was on all 3 computers!

1st System – Home Built
Tyan Thunder S2885 ANRF MB
Dual AMD Opterons, 250 CPU’S
4 Gigs Reg. Matched RAM (Crucial)
1 Terrabyte Raid-0 Striped Data SATA (Maxtor 7500)
250 Raid-0 SATA Programs / OS Drive (Maxtor 7500)
ATI-AIW 9600 Pro (128 VidRam)
Canopus DVStorm II Pro DV-Board
WinXP Pro, SP-2 Updated
MS Office 2003 Pro
Adobe Acrobat 6
Adobe Photoshop CS1
Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5
Adobe After Effects 6.5
Adobe Encore 1.5
Adobe Audition 2.0

2nd System – Purchased System
HP dx5150
AMD 64 2.4 Ghz
Athlon 4000+
1GB PC3200 RAM
160 GB HD
WinXP Pro
MS Office 2003 Pro

3rd System – Purchased
Toshiba Qosmio G25-AV513
(Just upgraded from MCE to WinXP Pro to use Ovation)

I seems that the Ovation product is horribly glitchy. It is had to believe that this will not run on 3 completely different systems. All O/S’s, driver sets and applications are checked for updates daily (I am a stickler on that).

This product is not supported for WinXp MCE so you must upgrade to the Pro as I did. Their small writing says this on their website regarding support help.

I would love to use Ovation on two of my systems, but cannot get this to even install. No helpful info from Serious Magic. Too bad!

[John290742]

I had similar problems with the demo version but had brilliant support. Just ran dxdiag to produce a report, sent to technical suport, the asked me to check for ovation updates and also update video driver and voila!

I must admit though – this could have been avoided if they put this info on there website an it does make me think twice!