Presentation Software and Multimedia
What the exam tests
Slide structure, masters and layouts, transitions versus animations, multimedia file formats, and slide-show delivery options.
Core concepts
- A slide layout arranges placeholders (title, content, picture); the slide master stores fonts, colours, logo and background for every slide using it. Editing the master changes all dependent slides at once.
- A transition is the effect between one slide and the next; an animation is an effect on an object within a slide (entrance, emphasis, exit, motion path).
- Speaker notes are for the presenter and are not shown to the audience unless presenter view is used.
- Multimedia formats: raster images (JPEG, PNG, GIF) are pixel grids and lose quality when enlarged; vector images (SVG) scale cleanly. Audio: MP3, WAV. Video: MP4, AVI. Resolution, colour depth and compression decide file size.
- 16:9 is widescreen; 4:3 is the older standard. Changing the ratio stretches or crops content built on the wrong master.
Worked example
A 40-slide deck must show the school logo in the same corner on every slide. Correct route: View → Slide Master, place the logo on the master, then close master view. One change updates forty slides, and new slides inherit it automatically. Pasting the image onto each slide individually looks identical at first, but every later edit must be repeated 40 times and a master change will not touch the pasted copies.
Traps
- Choosing a transition when the question asks for bullets appearing one at a time - that is an animation.
- Linking a video stored on a pen drive: the link breaks when the drive is removed. Embed for portability, link only for large files.
- Rehearse timings records slide durations; it does not animate objects.
- Enlarging a small JPEG to full screen blurs it; no setting recovers missing detail.