Presentation Video Guidelines for Digital Forums

Instructions for uploading your video presentation

Presenting your work in the Digital Forum

Please read the following guidelines and information to facilitate the successful recording and uploading of your oral presentation. Give considerable thought to the design and preparation of your presentation so that it is effective and informative.

All presentations received by 11 November will be published and can be viewed on demand via the SPIE Digital Library beginning 14 December 2020 when the Digital Forum opens. All presenting authors will need to register to enable full participation. Registration is free.

Video Presentation Due
30 November 2020

Creating your presentation video

The most successful presentation videos are well-narrated, graphically rich presentations of your research that both highlight the main points and fill in the most interesting details. The least effective presentation video is a simple reading of your slides or manuscript.

Click here to see an example of a past Digital Forum presentation.

Your slides will need to have audio narration embedded, and then you will need to export the presentation as an MPEG-4 (.mp4) file. The Digital Forum will only accept the .mp4 format – other formats will not be supported. Presentation video files should be no larger than 2GB.

Your presentation video should include:

•	All slides of your presentation, formatted for easy understanding of the information on each slide
•	Clear narration with a pause for transitions between slides. PowerPoint, for example, does not record audio during slide transitions
•	Explanations for each graph, picture, and table
•	Widescreen format, using the 16:9 aspect ratio, to utilize the full screen - the standard 4:3 format will work but it will not fill the entire screen when in presentation mode

To record your audio:

•	Use any kind of microphone, including those built into laptops or tablets, so long as the resulting audio is clear and easily understood
•	Follow these step-by-step instructions on recording your audio in PowerPoint and exporting a PowerPoint file to .mp4
•	If you’re using a web-based presentation program, such as Prezi, Slideshare, or Google Slides, you will need to use screen capture software to record your screen and presentation narration
•	Be sure to export your video, including all audio, as an .mp4 movie file format for submission

Reviewing your video presentation

To make sure your presentation passes quality control, please review the following before uploading:

•	Is your file saved as an .mp4 movie file?
•	Is the audio consistent and clear, free from static, hums, hisses, or interference?
•	Is the audio at the right level, without having to adjust your volume very high or very low?
•	Does your talk start promptly? (your narration should begin within the first 3 seconds)
•	Does your recording end promptly after your closing remarks, without being cut off early or continuing for too long?
•	Is there audio on every slide? Having audio on every slide ensures that each slide gets the correct timing before advancing. If a slide is self-explanatory, you can simply say, “This slide is self-explanatory.”
•	Do all your slides, movies, and animations appear correctly?

What happens next?

All videos received by the deadline will be published on the first day of the Digital Forum. Videos received after the last day of the Digital Forum will not be published.

•	The contact author will receive an email confirming we have received your video.
•	SPIE will check your file for technical issues and notify the contact author if any revision is necessary.

Further resources and assistance

You may find the following resources helpful as you develop your video:

•	FreeConvert.com – a third-party site for compressing a video file into an MP4 file
•	Online-Recorder.com – a third-party site for testing your microphone or recording a voice-over file.
•	If you still need assistance, please contact SPIE at authorhelp@spie.org