Presentation Guidelines

(extracted from World CAAD PhD Workshop 2020)

Your presentation should be a pre-recorded video containing a narrated slideshow or a video of yourself physically giving the presentation. This guide helps you produce one of the three types of presentations, using simple recording methods which are widely available and don’t require extensive knowledge in video production.

Duration of your presentation

Your presentation should be short in order to keep your audience engaged:

1. We suggest a 8 minutes per work, however, you are welcome to keep it shorter. Everything between 6-8 minutes is ideal.

2. Keep in mind that the presentation is not the beef but the beef advertisement: put forward your main ideas and results, the audience will read the full details in your paper.

3. Use 8-10 presentation slides in total

4. The format and resolution of your slides should at least be 1920 x 1080 dpi

Prepare your slides

You will typically want to present using a slideshow (e.g. PowerPoint, Keynote). World CAAD does not require you to adhere to a specific template. You may take your own slide templates, or use one of the ones we provide below:

Record your presentation and upload to a video hosting service (like i.e. YouTube or similar)

There are many options for producing videos out of presentation slides, the general rule being: The more recent your presentation software is, the more likely it already has this feature built in. You might also record the screen instead looking for an “export to video” option, which is the easiest and thus preferred option for us. Below we list several alternative ways to produce your video, please have a brief look at all of them before you choose one. As a prerequisite for all of these options, we assume that you have your slides open, you optionally wear a headset (improves sound quality) and you have an account for a video hosting service – it can even be a file server on which you put the produced video (.mp4, H.264-encoded, please).

Record yourself and co-presenters in Zoom (easy)

If you have a ZOOM account, you can easily create a meeting, join that meeting together with your fellow presenters, share your screen and hit the record button. Nice side-effect: You may choose a virtual background that fits the virtual venue of the conference (right-click on an image below and choose “Save As…”):

Here are some more detailed instructions on the whole process:

First go to the ZOOM webpage and log in; under “Meetings”, press “Schedule a New Meeting” and hit the “Start this Meeting” button on the top right side.

The browser might ask you to download and install ZOOM at this stage. If you have ZOOM installed, it may ask you to “open this meeting with ZOOM” (hit the yes button).

Choose “Join with computer audio” on entering the meeting. Depending on whether or not you want to record your webcam, click the “Video” button on the lower-left side of the screen. To choose a virtual background for your webcam video, click on the up arrow on the right side of the “Video” button, then select “choose a virtual background”. In the appearing dialog, locate the [+] button to the right of “Choose a virtual background”. Select “Add Image” and choose a file from your hard drive. You should then see the virtual background being applied to your webcam video. Close the dialog.

To share your screen, hit the green “Share Screen” button on the lower side of the zoom window. Choose whether you want to share the whole screen (recommended) or a specific window. The zoom toolbar will now be hidden, be aware that it appears when you hover over the green meeting ID at the top of the screen. Go to PowerPoint (or any other presentation software you might have) and enter presentation mode. Open the ZOOM toolbar by hovering over the green meeting ID on the top of the screen, click the “…” button (rightmost item) and choose “Record on this Computer”. Hold your presentation. Click again on “…” and choose “Stop recording”. Exit the meeting. ZOOM will then start to process your recordings (it might ask you where you want to store the recorded files, please choose a folder in that case). Once ready, ZOOM will open the folder containing the produced video(s) which you can now upload to YouTube or another hosting service.

Screen record to Youtube or another hosting service (easy)

Go to the “Apowersoft screen recorder”.

Once you enter that page, it should give you the option to “Start Recording” right away; clicking on that will ask you to download a launcher – which is normal, don’t be intimidated – so please go ahead and save that file, then execute it. If nothing happens after installing the launcher, please execute the installer a second time; return to the website, which should then say “updating” and will then bring the user interface to the front of your screen. If nothing happens again the launch “Apowersoft screen recorder” through your Start Menu, Finder, or (hello linuxers!) any other means you can imagine. Including locate (don’t forget to update before, happens to me too).

If you have successfully launched the capture software, you can choose whether to switch on your webcam (then it’s a “narrated presentation with speaker view”; if you’d rather stay anonymous, just don’t click on the webcam icon). DON’T go ahead and click the red “record” button, please first activate your sound our you’ll need to do it all again. So click the dropdown right to the loudspeaker icon and activate “Microphone”. I haven’t tried “System sound and microphone”, might work as well.

Go ahead recording (put PowerPoint into the presentation mode!), after you are done click the stop button. Apowersoft recorder then says: “Not enough disk space? Try to upload it to cloud storage”. Click on that, this is what we really really want. Choose entry and exit timestamp for your video (perharps start at the point where you put PowerPoint into presentation mode is good!), then click the disk icon to “Save as – Video File” on the left-lower side (YES – don’t click the “upload to the cloud” icon!!!). Then click “Open Folder”. You will see your recording(s) there.

Open a new browser tab, log into YouTube, and click on “Upload Video”. Drag (or click to open) the video file you have created, give a title, click yourself through the further steps (choose visibility “Public” or “Not Listed” so that the video is accessible by your fellow eCAADe participants). You should be presented with a video URL. You can of course also use another video hosting service, if you wish to.

Export Powerpoint to Youtube (easy)

If you have PowerPoint 2007 or less, you are out of luck (but this isn’t a problem – see the above option “Screen Record to YouTube” and “Advanced: Export slides as images, record audio separately, combine in video editing software” instead). The good news is that PowerPoint 2010+ offers the feature to export a “narrated presentation” to YouTube, even though this is just “presentation slides + audio” (which might actually be a plus – one doesn’t necessarily have to see the speaker). Please check out the following tutorials:

Microsoft’s official guide on how to record a video using PowerPoint, which will be slides + narrative only.

Video visually explaining how to do that in 60 seconds. Be aware that you need to record a narration for the whole presentation, which the author of this video is considering only on the surface. Please see the official guide for further information.

Export slides as images, record audio separately, combine in video editing software (advanced)

You can save a PowerPoint slideshow as images (Save As, choose “other formats”, jpg or png images, choose “All Slides”). Then you record your voice track while the presentation is running, using e.g. a software like Audacity. Put both resources together in a video editing software such as Adobe Premiere, and export a .mp4 (H264 codec). Upload that file to YouTube or another hosting platform. If you cannot figure out what these explanations mean, please go back to the other options given, since this is clearly an advanced topic not suited for everyone.

Preparing your presentation – Option B: Capturing yourself giving a physical presentation

Instead of a slideshow, you may also capture yourself giving a physical presentation outlining your paper (e.g. on a blackboard as shown below) and tangible results (e.g. in the fabrication lab if that is possible given the current circumstances). Keep in mind that although this format allows for great freedom, your presentation should nevertheless be aimed at the scientific community (so no “marketing videos” please – give enough details so that everyone knows what your approach is about and advertise ideas, not products).

By far the easiest (although not the best) way to record yourself holding a physical presentation is your cellphone: You can record using your camera, then share to YouTube or upload via the YouTube App (or use another hosting service’s upload function).

Notice especially that the sound quality is off when you are not close to your cellphone, and that the image quality is really bad (you cannot even start to read the blackboard I have drawn on, although this might also come from my lack of calligraphic ability). So write BIG and BOLD, talk LOUD and CLEAR. Don’t pace around hoping that anyone will understand you. Stand still and be focused on the camera. PREPARE BEFOREHANDS or the video will be really long, things you want to show should already be in place and not (as I have done) be written or placed on scene during the video.

Better yet still, use a webcam or professional camera (reflex camera/SLR) to improve the image, and record the audio track separately (combine in video editing software such as Premiere, then upload to YouTube or another hosting service). This is really the top segment of video production (as well as a creative challenge), so please use one of the other options if you are unsure on how to work out these challenges.