Right now WildPresenter is priced at $299, instead of its regular $499, and at that price the product is a reasonable Flash investment. Despite our criticisms, we really like the product.
Pretty much anytime the topic of using Flash comes up in a group of techies an argument will follow. One camp usually argues that Flash is a great creative tool, remarkable information-delivery system and outstanding communications vehicle for almost 95% of Web users. The other camp considers Flash suitable only for the most egregious excesses of advertising and other commercial fripperies.
We reviewed Macromedia’s Studio 8, which includes Flash 8, and are really impressed with what can be achieved, though there is a steep learning curve to get the best out of the system.
We also looked at various basic third-party tools for creating Flash content, such as banners (these are, in the main, simple programs), right through to Xcelsius, which creates remarkable Flash presentations derived from Excel spreadsheets (see our review of the previous version).
Today we have another third-party Flash-construction system that attempts to be more sophisticated than a simple banner builder and more general than Xcelsius. The product is WildPresenter Version 2.008, published by Wildform.
WildPresenter is designed to: record on-screen activity and convert it to a Flash presentation; edit PowerPoint presentations and templates; convert PowerPoint files to Flash; convert video content to Flash; create animated text along with animated graphics; and capture video and audio and then generate output for the Web, CD-ROMs, screensavers and e-mail.
Given that impressive range of features, it isn’t surprising that WildPresenter has a serious learning curve (though nowhere near as steep as that of Flash 8).
WildPresenter provides a number of wizards to simplify such tasks as animating text and importing video as well as managing output formats (HTML, screensaver and so on).
Another option is to create a player for your Flash content. Wildform provides a large number of “skins,” and you can select which controls (such as play/pause, stop and rewind) are available at run-time.
Within a few hours of getting our hands on WildPresenter, we had some pretty cool Flash movies, which included a Gearhead screensaver for Windows. (Drop us a note with “screensaver” as the subject and your screen resolution in the message and we’ll send you a copy.)
We also recorded a short screen session and imported a couple of PowerPoint files. Here’s where things stopped being quite so good:
The screen session drove the processor utilization to 100%, which caused a jerky mouse response while recording and marginal results. With PowerPoint files a simple presentation looked great, but a more complex one was trashed on import.
Another problem with WildPresenter is that in some places its functioning is not obvious. For example, we added a video to the timeline and set it to loop. We then added a text object also set to loop that started at frame 30 and ended at frame 90 while the video ended at frame 120.
When we ran it the video started, the text appeared and disappeared when planned, and then the video ended. But when it looped things went wrong: Instead of waiting until frame 30, the text animation started on frame 1 along with the video, and when the text object finished it started for a third time before the second run of the video had finished!
We had to get help from Wildform support (not bad; a complete and accurate answer in less than five hours). Turns out that we needed to add specific timeline objects to restart the entire timeline. Even though we had looked in the help files, this was anything but obvious.
On the other hand, we have also created a number of Flash animations that work perfectly well and are quite complicated. WildPresenter is an ambitious product and its flaws are mostly things you can work around.
Right now it is priced at $299, instead of its regular $499, and at that price the product is a reasonable investment. Despite our criticisms, we really like the product. Wait until you see the screensaver!
Flash your thoughts on Gibbsblog or drop us a line at gearhead@gibbs.com.
