We’re living in the age of multimedia. Every single day, an average of 60 million photos are uploaded to Instagram. On Facebook, the number is even greater—users are said to post at least 350 million photos daily. Meanwhile, on YouTube, 100 hours of videos are uploaded every minute. In our hyperactive and fast-paced environment, presenting information through text isn’t enough. We all want to see ideas play out through engaging visuals.

Usually, presentations are focused on text, punctuated with with still images that highlight points every now and then. Multimedia presentations differ from this format. Through the use video clips, animation, sound effects, and interactivity, multimedia presentations can give the audience a better visual experience.

Because of it’s dynamic zooming animation, Prezi is already an effective tool for multimedia presentations. However, there are still other multimedia tricks you can try. Here are 3 things you can do to add more life to your prezi:

Use fade-in animation 

A fade-in effect will add to the dimensional look that the zooming animation already gives. With this technique, you can animate items within a frame to fade as you move along the path. Start by clicking on ‘Edit Path’ at the bottom of the left sidebar. Once in Path Mode, choose the frame you want to animate and click on the star.

Once the Animation Wizard appears, just select the items in the progression you’d like to appear.

To preview the fade-in effect, click on the Play symbol above.

Add background music and voice overs 

To give your audience a full multimedia experience, you can also add sound clips to your prezi. You can choose to add a background track which will play on loop as you deliver your presentation. Just click on Insert from the top menu and choose ‘Add Background Music’.

Once you’ve selected the file you want, Prezi will start to upload the audio.

With the upload completed, you can click on the Play symbol to preview the track. To delete track, just choose the Trash icon.

If you’re planning to share your prezi online, you can also add voice overs that will play as viewers move along the path you defined.

Select the path step or frame you want from the left sidebar, then click on Insert from the top menu.

And if there’s anything you want to change, you can easily replace any of the sound files via the Insert option.

Keep in mind that there’s only a handful of audio file formats you can upload. Currently, Prezi supports the following:

• MP3
• M4A
• MP4
• WMA
• WAV
• FLAC
• OGG
• AAC
• 3GP

If the sound clip you want to use is in another format, there are tools you can use to convert your files.

Insert video clips

To complete your multimedia presentation, you can insert short video clips to your prezi. You can decide to upload a file from your computer or embed a video from YouTube. To add a clip that’s already saved on your computer, simply click on Insert and choose ‘From File’.

You can upload videos in any of the following format:

• FLV
• MPG
• MPEG
• MP4
• WMV
• MOV
• F4V
• M4V
• 3GP

Once the upload is done, you can now move and resize the video using the transition tool.

To embed from YouTube, make sure you have the video prepared in another tab. Head to the Insert option once again and choose ‘YouTube Video.’ A pop up box will appear where you’ll have to paste the YouTube link.

You can then use the transition tool to make size adjustments and move your video around. Be sure to add attribution using the text tool, either in the same frame or at the end of your prezi.

There you have it! It’s not hard to come up with unique multimedia presentations, especially with a flexible tool like Prezi. Give your presentations more life than before using these 3 multimedia tricks.

 

Featured Image: Featured Image: Death to the Stock Photo / Prezi logo via Wikimedia Commons