Would you like to use animations in your science videos to illustrate something you are describing
on camera, but don't know how?
In this tutorial, I'm going to show a quick and easy way to create a simple animation
in Powerpoint and then how to get it into your video project.
There are more sophisticated animation programs that professionals use, but for many of you,
Powerpoint will work just fine.
Most students and scientists already have this software and know how to use it.
And that's the main reason I'm using it for this tutorial.
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Some of you may be familiar with the animation option in powerpoint, but that's not what
I'm going to use for this demonstration.
Instead, I'm going to create a movie in PowerPoint by having each each slide represent a frame
in a film.
To create an animation, you simply duplicate each slide and change something in each succeeding
slide until you've built your animation.
Which is what I'm doing with this image of an eye.
Each slide becomes a frame in the movie and the eye appears to shift back and forth when played.
Let's now take a look at the powerpoint file for the animation I showed earlier.
This animation depicts the processes contributing to relative sea level rise.
You can see that I've started with a slide containing two basic elements for the slide
background.
I inserted an image of the ocean to fill the lower two thirds, then an image
of the sky to fill the upper third of the slide.
I added other images such as a profile of a landform to show layers of sediment built
up over time and a skyline of a city, which happens to be New Orleans.
I continued adding, subtracting and resizing objects in the frames to build the
animation.
For example, I inserted a box to show a close-up of soil particles that get squeezed
together to illustrate how the land sinks over time.
The trick is to duplicate each slide precisely so all the succeeding slides will match up
with the preceding slides, except for the elements you wish to change.
To do this, select edit and then duplicate. Or use the keyboard shortcut, Command D on
a Mac.
Now, I have an exact duplicate of that slide.
So here, I just resize the box slightly to begin the compaction animation.
And in each succeeding slide, I've made additional slight changes in the vertical dimension of
the box.
Then I wanted to show how melting land ice raises the ocean surface.
I added a photo of an icefield.
Then I gradually reduced the size of this ice image and expanded the ocean so that the
ocean surface appeared to rise.
Once I have all the slides created, then I want to set the transition time between slides.
Select transition and then none in the list;
then set the time by checking this box and setting the time in seconds.
I've set the transitions here for .4 second.
Tap apply to all slides and you are done.
Save your work and then all you do is export it as a movie file.
To do this, select File, then save as movie.
Let's take a quick look at the options.
Under movie settings, we want to set the size and quality.
Depending on how you are going to use the file, you may want to change from the default
size of 640 by 480 pixels.
Under media settings, we want slide transitions to play at the speed selected so we use that
setting.
Here, you can add a soundtrack or you may elect to do this later with a movie editor.
I don't want it to loop, so I leave that box unchecked.
You can also elect to show movie player controls, if this is going to be a stand-alone movie.
I'm going to use it in a larger video to play automatically, so I will hide these.
And then select apply to current presentation only.
Click OK and we then export the file.
So here is the file, which will open in quicktime.
You can use it as a standalone media file, as I said before, or you can use it in a video,
which is our main goal with this tutorial.
Let's now go to iMovie to see how we can insert this animation into a video project.
I've already got a project started with a clip where I'm in the field talking about
sea-level rise.
I can now use the animation to create a picture-in-picture simply by dragging and dropping the file on
top of the target clip.
First, I'll go to the cropping tool and select Fit, which fits the window to the dimensions
of the animation clip.
We can show the animation as a cutaway, which is the default option.
But to change to a picture in picture, we just select it in the toolbar.
I can now move or resize the window as needed.
Now, the animation will play inside a window within the main clip.
Such animations can greatly enhance your science videos.
Well, that's a very brief demonstration of how to create a simple animation with Powerpoint.
As I said, there are more sophisticated animation programs out there, but those will take some
training to master.
However, if you have a simple animation to do, then this procedure gives you an easy
way to make it.
For more tips and tutorials, check out my ebook, The Scientist Videographer.
And thanks for watching.
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