So far, people know why they would ever need to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a Flash file. MasternewMedia gives 12 main advantages of converting a PowerPoint presentation to Flash.

You can find reviews; there are many articles about PowerPoint to Flash software: their features, functionality and quality. We'd be glad to share our experience on how to choose a PowerPoint to Flash Converter.

You should pay attention to the following key points when choosing a PowerPoint to Flash tool:

• Quality of generated Flash content
• Support of animations and effects
• File size and structure of output (solid file or a set of files)
• Сonversion speed
• Price

1) The first and probably main key point we suggest is Conversion Quality. Why? What exactly is "Conversion Quality"?
PowerPoint to Flash conversion is a complicated process. A converter should carefully transfer slide layouts, styles and all shapes to a Flash movie while keeping the following parameters:

• Shape geometry
• Positioning
• Autoshapes
• Text quality
• Text formatting
• Lists & bullets

Let’s describe in brief how to examine key quality parameters when you are evaluating a PowerPoint converter.

Shapes geometry and positioning. All the shapes in your presentation should look the same in the Flash movie and keep their positional relationship in every slide. The main issue for this parameter is the distorted position of shapes in a converted Flash movie. If you, for example, have an array pointing to a triangular center, then in the converted Flash presentation the array must point to the same place.

Text quality and formatting. All texts and their formatting are set in PowerPoint and the Flash movie should also have the same fonts, height and other formatting. The main point to pay attention to is if the converter embeds all of the fonts into the converted Flash presentation. If not, the Flash movie will show an incorrect display of all your texts.

Lists and bullets appearance. When you create a PowerPoint presentation you can use picture-style bullets; this is very specific for PowerPoint. A converter should carefully retain the original data structure, otherwise your Flash presentation will sprawl and the presentation will become distorted and its quality will decrease greatly.

Slide transitions and animations effects. PowerPoint animation features create a significant impact on your presentation. You can keep your viewers’ visual focus on important points of your presentation while describing it orally. A PowerPoint to Flash converter must keep all slide transitions and animation effects in the same way as you see them in PowerPoint. And remember, if a converter tries to emulate an effect or replace one animation effect with another, then this is a cause of concern.

Often, problems with the quality of generated Flash content are connected with how deep and thorough a converter parses a PowerPoint presentation.

Many tools make the conversion process very simple: save every shape or even a whole slide as a raster image. Besides a quality loss, such an approach doesn't give any possibilities of using all of the advantages of Flash format.

What's the big deal about vector and raster graphics?

Raster graphics cannot be scaled to a higher resolution without loss of apparent quality. This is in contrast to vector graphics, which easily scale to the quality of the device on which they are rendered. What does it mean for you? The only and the main meaning is that your PowerPoint presentation should be converted to Flash with a really high quality.

So, it's up to you to decide whether you want your Presentation to be converted to be exactly the same as your PowerPoint presentation.

2) The second key point is Speed & Output file size. A sample presentation was converted in 60 seconds with a usual Flash Converter. The fastest tool did it in 15 seconds. See the difference? When you work with PowerPoint presentations every day, you will clearly understand that speed can be of great importance.

If PowerPoint to Flash converter is of high quality, then all flash technology advantages are highly involved. Alongside with Quality, converters should also generate compact flash files.

The output file size from a sample presentation is 600 Kb on average. The record-holding Flash Converter made the sample presentation only 292 Kb. Together with speed, file size can show you the difference.

Conversion speed is an implicit quality indicator. If all other parameters are at a high level, then most likely you have an excellent PowerPoint to Flash converter at your disposal.

3) What about PowerPoint Animations? We are pretty sure you won't be happy if you lose them after conversion. To have a perfectly converted Flash presentation, you need to have software with total support for all PPT animations.

What you should keep an eye on is to what extent an Animation effect in Flash looks the same as in a PowerPoint presentation.

All PowerPoint animation effects are unique, and this is a strange case: some converters state that there are 170+ effects, but in fact it's only about 35; all the other animations are emulated by some other effect from those 35.

Let's say you want to use rather unique Animation effect like "Comb"; many Flash Converters do not support these complex animations.

Also, we highly recommend you to pay attention to Transition effects. The issue can be the same as with Animation effects, though Transition effects can be much more important than Animation effects. Your PowerPoint to Flash converter should work with all effects precisely and with high efficiency.

4) What people don't notice sometimes is the conversion result. We're talking now about Solid flash & set of flash file. What's the reason in making the distinction? When you convert a single PowerPoint Presentation, you can expect only one Flash file. What a surprise it'll be when you find .html, images and Flash files in an output folder.

It's just great when a solid, single Flash file embeds all external resources (audio/video/images) used in your presentation.

When you want to get a set of separate Flash files, then this also should be easily performed by a PPT to Flash tool - every single slide should correspond to a separate Flash file.

5) The last, but certainly not the least comparison point is the Price. The average price range for a PPT to Flash converter is $59 to $800. This is not cheap; but actually, it is not so expensive in comparison to for the cost of Flash development. All the effective and high quality software starts from $200; this is the price we recommend you to start from when looking for a PowerPoint to Flash converting tool.

All of the above mentioned comparison points can generally be decisive key points when you're looking for a PPT to SWF converter. If you feel that this article helped you, please let us know - we'll highly appreciate it. If you think that we're wrong about some software and comparison points, please let us and we'll also discuss that matter.