Incorrectly rendering shapes

Hi Benny,

Can you attach the PowerPoint slide here so we can take a look?

Sure. Here you go. Thanks for looking into this.

Benny,

The jagged edges you are seeing is a side effect of the Flash conversion process for finer elements combined with screen resolution. As a workaround adding a 1% Transparency to the Line Color and pushing the Line Style Width up a few notches, you can get some pretty clean results. See image below:

By adding a slight transparency to the Line, Flash is forced to "smooth the edge a bit. For your shapes I pushed the Line Style Width to 3px.

I hope this helps!

Cool. Thank you! This is very helpful.

Ok. I did what suggested above to shape. it works out for sometimes. But the same problem is back. I have created PNG images and imported into PPT. But when I preview in Presenter, it looks jagged. Somehow the one that created in PPT is also jagged. Please take a look at the screenshot attached here. Any suggestions are welcome.

Benny,

To reiterate, the jagged edges you are seeing is a side effect of the Flash conversion process for finer elements combined with screen resolution. This means when viewed on a different monitor with a different screen resolution the issue might be more or less evident. Setting the Player Templates --> Other Tab --> Scale Presentation: to 'Lock presentation at optimal size' can reduce the effect but is still dependent on the end system viewing it.

You (repeated) reply to the above customer ("... a side effect of the Flash conversion process for finer elements combined with screen resolution...") sounds like obfuscation to me.

They may well be a side effect of the conversion process, but Articulate Presenter is nothing if not a PowerPoint-to-Flash converter (it does other things besides) and should therefore be taking into account "side effects", variance in screen resolution, etc. and yielding failthful output.

Ben,

In my attempt to keep my comment non-technical, I feel something was missed in translation.

The question in general is, why is there a visual dependency between PowerPoint and Flash (not Articulate)? Please allow me to reword below.

Twips are screen-independent units to ensure that the proportion of screen elements are the same on all display systems. PowerPoint uses twips as a unit of measure. A twip is defined as being 1/1440 of an inch.

A Pixel is a screen-dependent unit, standing for 'picture element'. A pixel is a dot that represents the smallest graphical measurement on a screen. Articulate or Flash uses pixels as a unit of measure.

Because the two units are in conflict, there is a conversion that must take place that is not as exacting as we would like and would be noticeable on finer elements.

I hope this helps!

David,

Thanks for your reply and elaboration. Clearly, twips and pixels occupy conflicting paradigms, which complicates the conversion of PowerPoint to Flash.

But that doesn't entirely explain why the little, rodent-like nibbles that appear in elements such as regular shapes, both with and without outlines, when published in Articulate Presenter, are not discernible when I carry out similar conversions of the same material using other vendors' products (mutatis mutandis). [Disclaimer: Sorry! I hate directly making comparing with competitors, but in this case it seems relevant to mention this, because it does implicate Articulate Presenter in at least some causal role.]

Could it be that Articulate Presenter is not as good at resolving twip-pixel conflict? And if so, rooting out the reason could be a useful line of enquiry for your laboratory people.

Ben

Ben,

Your comments have been noted.

Great! Thanks David.

I am having the same problem. Red circles that USE to be fine now look like crapola. No matter what the fix or work around. It still looks poor. But my thought is that it is the latest releases of Adobe flash player that is the problem. All my old studio09 stuff with red circles look great. Only in the last year or so has this become an issue. I even copy/pasted from an earlier good version into the latest using 2010 PPT and it's still looks just as bad. Hence my conclusion.

Hi James,

Do you want us to take a look and see if there's anything we can do to help? If you'd like to send us your files, please create an Articulate Presenter package, then upload the zip file to our server. You can review how to do this here: 

Send to Articulate Presenter Package – Articulate Presenter ’09 Help

Upload the resulting zip file from your computer to our server using this upload form: 

Articulate Support - Upload Your Files for Review 

Please be sure to include a description of your issue, your version of PowerPoint, version of Windows and version of Presenter '09, which you can find in Help and Support -> About Articulate Presenter. Please also include the URL for this thread so I can follow up with you personally in the forums. And feel free to come back and leave your case number here so I can keep a close eye on it. Thanks!