How to insert a trajectory animation in a PowerPoint presentation

1. Introduction
2. What's you need
3. From trajectory to video file
4. Insert the video in PowerPoint

1. Introduction

This tutorial explains how to convert a MD trajectory to a video file to be inserted in a PowerPoint presentation.

2. What you need

• VEGA ZZ (click here for the software setup).
• Microsoft PowerPoint. In this tutorial, the 2003 release for Windows is used.

3. From trajectory to video file

• Start VEGA ZZ.
• Open the file fcb001.csr in the ...\VEGA ZZ\Examples\Molecules directory (File Open). To obtain the full path, open the VEGA Console from the Start menu, type opendatadir and press enter.
• The trajectory analysis window will be shown. Close it.
• Choose the more appropriate display mode (e.g. Stick solid, View Display Stick solid) and/or any other display option required by your animation.
• In order to obtain a nice presentation, you can change the background color that could be the same of the presentation. To do it, select View Color Settings and  the Color settings window will be shown.
• By clicking Background color, the color palette window is shown and you can choose your preferred color (e.g. dark blue).

Microsoft PowerPoint supports both AVI and MPEG-1 video files, but if you think to use the first type you should consider the possibility that the animation couldn't displayed by the PCs without the same codec used in the creation phase. In order to preserve the animation portability (but not the quality), we want consider the MPEG-1 format.

• Select Save trajectory item in File menu, put the destination directory and the file name (e.g. fcb001.mpeg) and choose the Video stream MPEG 1 (*.mpeg) as file format.
• In the Codec configuration window, you can select the Rendering mode. It's strongly recommended to select Hardware or Software mode, because the Snapshot mode doesn't allow to change the resolution. The Hardware mode allows to obtain better quality and more rendering speed, but not all graphic cards support it (compatible graphic cards are from ATI, Matrox and NVIDIA). The Software mode has less rendering performances, but is compatible with all graphic cards and allows the software AntiAlias to be enabled. The anti-aliasing is a technique of minimizing the rendering artefacts by increasing virtually the resolution. In Hardware mode, it's possible to obtain same or better results, if the OpenGL p-buffer supports the hardware anti-aliasing that is always enabled if available.
  For this tutorial, try selecting the Software rendering mode and the 4x AntiAlias.
• Select the frame resolution. You can use one of the pre-defined frame sizes or you can put a custom values of width and height. As an example, select 640x480 (VGA).
• Adjust the Bit rate. The default value (1150 Kbps) is the standard Video CD bit rate that is enough for its resolutions (352x288 PAL and 352x240 NTSC), but it's too low for a 640x480 frame. Increase it to 2000 Kbps and if the resulting video quality is not good, you can increase more.
• Set the Frame rate if needed. Usually 25 (PAL) or 30 (NTSC) frame per second are appropriate values. For this tutorial, use 25 fps.
• Click Ok button to start the video file creation.
• To check video quality, you must open it with Windows Media Player or any other video player (e.g. Media Player Classic Home Cinenema, VLC, ecc).

4. Insert the video in PowerPoint 2003

• Start Microsoft PowerPoint 2003.
• Open your presentation or create a new one.
• For a better portability, copy/move the fcb001.mpeg file in the same directory of the presentation. If you move the PowerPoint presentation to another computer, copy the movie too. Keeping your movie in the same folder as your presentation, you ensure the link will still work.
• Insert the video in the slide, selecting Insert Movies and Sounds Movie from file in main menu.
• Choose the fcb001.mpeg file and click Ok. A dialog window will be shown in which you can select to start the animation Automatically or Manually. The movie appears in the slide.
• If you want edit the movie options, right-click the movie object and select Edit Movie Object.
• The video is now inserted in your PowerPoint presentation.