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About this lesson
We’ll learn how to export a Keynote file for a self-playing kiosk.
Exercise files
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Exporting as a Self-Playing Kiosk Slide Deck .key1 MB Exporting as a Self-Playing Kiosk Slide Deck .key
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Quick reference
Topic
We’ll learn how to export a Keynote file for a self-playing kiosk.
When to use
Have you ever wondered how to convert a simple Keynote file to a self-playing kiosk video, that you can play in a lobby, at home or anywhere that begs to have information displayed in a looping fashion? This lesson is for you.
Instructions
The last time you were in an airport, did you notice the TVs in the terminal that display weather, flight status, etc? We can use Keynote to create your own “airport terminal”-like display.
Information that you may want to display include:
- sale information
- company history
- product information
- local business promotion
- more…
Because we won’t have a live person to advance the slides, we need to be sure that our slides have an automated slide transition. That can be done on the formatting pane under the “Animate” section.
Note: if we include a video on a slide, we want to make sure that the automatic slide transition timing includes enough time for that video to play.
We also want to ensure that our slideshow is looped, otherwise it will play one time, and stop. We can do this by clicking on the “Document” button on the toolbar and choosing “Loop Slideshow”.
With those two options set, we can hit “Play” on the toolbar and watch our presentation loop over and over again.
Login to download- 00:04 Keynote is a great way to effectively communicate information to an audience of
- 00:08 any size by way of a live presentation.
- 00:11 It's also a great way to effectively communicate information to people
- 00:15 in an automated way.
- 00:17 The last time you were in airport,
- 00:18 did you notice the information on screens on the terminal?
- 00:21 These screens contain boarding information,
- 00:23 flight information, weather information for the destination.
- 00:27 Airline information and other information that the flyer may be interested in.
- 00:31 It's all about information for the audience.
- 00:35 In this case, the audience is the typical flyer.
- 00:38 So how do we apply these same thought processes to an office?
- 00:42 If your office has a front lobby, that would be a great place to mount a display
- 00:46 on the wall for visitors to view as they wait for their appointment.
- 00:50 Instead of playing CNBC or CNN,
- 00:52 we can mount a small Mac mini to the back of the display hidden from view,
- 00:57 then use that Mac mini to display a keynote presentation.
- 01:01 This communicates a lot to the visitor.
- 01:03 For me, it communicates style, success, and
- 01:06 the forward thinking nature of the business.
- 01:09 These are all good things to communicate.
- 01:12 Now that we've discussed the why,
- 01:13 let's talk through how to set up a self playing slide deck in Keynote.
- 01:18 Here, we have a Keynote file that I would like to play in an office waiting area.
- 01:22 This file contains images, promotional videos, company information,
- 01:26 and much more.
- 01:28 It could also include things like promotional information for
- 01:31 business partners, advertising for local businesses.
- 01:34 Really anything you want it to contain.
- 01:37 There are two features that we need to apply to this slide deck
- 01:40 in order to effectively turn it into a self playing or kiosk slide desk.
- 01:45 In a previous lesson entitled working with transitions,
- 01:49 we talked about how to add a transition from one slide to the next,
- 01:52 it may be a good idea to review that lesson now.
- 01:56 Since we won’t have a live person to advance the slides in this scenario,
- 01:59 we will want to add an automatic transition through each of our slides.
- 02:04 In this example, we want each slide to be on display for
- 02:07 about six seconds before it advances to the next slide.
- 02:11 We do this by first selecting all slides in our slide deck.
- 02:15 You can either highlight the first slide then, while holding down the Shift key,
- 02:20 select the last slide.
- 02:21 Or you can simply select a random slide, then press Cmd+A, A for
- 02:26 all, this will select all slides.
- 02:31 Now that all slides are selected, let's go to our slide Transition settings.
- 02:36 If we wanted to, we could choose to add an animation effect
- 02:39 to each of the slides by choosing an effect here.
- 02:42 Because all slides are currently selected it would apply this effect
- 02:46 to all slides uniformly.
- 02:48 If you don't want an animation effect we can just leave it set to None.
- 02:53 Next, we need to change the start transition option from On Click to
- 02:58 Automatically.
- 02:59 With it now set to Automatic, we can specify a delay of 6 seconds here.
- 03:05 One thing to keep in mind with this timing option.
- 03:07 This is the delayed time from when the slide is initially opened
- 03:11 not from the time the last build or motion completes.
- 03:14 If a slide contains a 30 second video, for example, and
- 03:18 this is set to 6 seconds, it will play the first 6 seconds of the video then
- 03:22 automatically transition to the next slide, cutting the video short.
- 03:27 In that case, you would want to adjust this slide specifically to account for
- 03:30 the length of the video.
- 03:32 For a 30 second video,
- 03:34 you may want to adjust the delay on that slide to 36 seconds.
- 03:38 That will allow the video to be played, pause for
- 03:41 6 seconds, then transition to the next slide.
- 03:44 The timing is a design choice, so it's completely up to you.
- 03:49 Now that we have our automatic transitions just the way we need them,
- 03:52 we also need to tell Keynote to loop our slideshow.
- 03:55 If we don't, it would play through one time, then stop.
- 03:59 For a kiosk or a front lobby display this wouldn't work.
- 04:04 To loop our slide show, let's click on the Documents button on our toolbar.
- 04:08 This will expose various information about our Keynote file.
- 04:11 Including an option to change the theme.
- 04:15 The two check boxes that I recommend using for
- 04:17 our lobby display is the automatically play upon open, and loop slide show.
- 04:23 With the first option selected,
- 04:25 the slide show will automatically play itself as soon as the file is opened.
- 04:29 If you are using a tool like Apple's Remote Desktop to transfer your files to
- 04:33 the Mac mini for display,
- 04:35 there is an option to automatically open that file once it has been copied.
- 04:39 If that check box is checked and this option is selected, it almost completely
- 04:44 automates the process of copying, opening, and playing the keynote file.
- 04:50 While the first option is an optional option, the second is mandatory.
- 04:54 When the last slide is on display,
- 04:56 this option will tell Keynote to go back to slide one and start over.
- 05:01 When you're ready to end the slide show,
- 05:02 all we need to do is hit the Escape key on the keyboard.
- 05:06 As with other features in Keynote, it's always a great idea to test these features
- 05:10 before deploying them in a live environment.
- 05:13 Give it a try on your own Mac now to see what it looks like.
- 05:16 Now that you see how it works, I bet you already have at least several ways of how
- 05:20 you could use this in your office, or maybe even your home, like I do.
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