The new Speechi 3.0 version introduces major new features related to video and video / PowerPoint synchronization.

The new "Smart Import" feature is a major breakthrough, because it allows you to instantaneously create synchronized PowerPoint presentations with video embedded into them. Tools that allow such constructions typically cost 10 to 100 times as much as Speechi – not to mention you need hours to obtain a result close to what you will automatically get with Speechi.

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Until the early eighties, there were only two ways to commit to a humanitarian cause: fund it as a private donor or do some voluntary work in a non-profit organization.

Two major events have happened since them – both of them in the IT area, which is everything but a coincidence.

1.the Open Source trend

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The majority of the video cameras on the market will provide you with an initial format in AVI, MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 (format produced by our camera Sony). It is then necessary to convert the format into FLV. The step is identical to that which should be done to insert a video FLV on a blog. To do this, there are several free and commercial tools available. We use a product called Riva FLV encoder. It is free and it accepts the formats MPEG 2 and MPEG 4.

The adjustments that work best for the Web are as follows:

- Size of film: Today 240 X 180 should be a minimum and it seems not very useful to go beyond 640 X 480. The “average” format on the Web is of 320 X 240.

- Frequency: 15 images a second at least, 25 images a second at most, 20 is a good compromise. Do not modify the frequency of the original video. If you do, it can degrade the quality.

- Band-width: For a video of good quality, 360 kbits/s is sufficient (beyond that, the viewer must have a really fast Internet connection to be able to view the video well). For videos with low resolution, 120 kbits/s can be enough (low limit).

- Band-width of the sound: Use maximum 48 kbits/s, except if you have a sound recording of excellent quality and if the quality of the output sound is important to you. For normal quality, 24 to 32 kbits/s, mono, should be sufficient.

Other alternatives to Riva (which remains our best choice “by default”, but which does not support all the “codecs”) are

- Sorenson Squeeze 4 (best quality, the most functions, but expensive and for Speechi, the additional functions are not very useful since Speechi takes care of almost all of them)

- Flash MX 2004 Pro (more complete and more practical than Riva)

- ffmpeg. This is the program which is “behind” Riva. For the “expert” users of Linux only.

In version 3.0, Speechi accepts videos with the FLV format. To summarize, the advantages of this format, usually used in Flash, are as follows:

+ better video quality
+ possibility of carrying out “streaming” with direct access (in other words, it is possible, if you have a video of 3 hours, of going directly to the 90th minute of the video without first having to view the initial 89 minutes).