Animated slides conversion to static PDF - pdf

Question

For all of you, people who make ppt slides with animations like:
Showing bullet points one by one
Showing images one by one or zooming a plot
Showing a border on an active element
Internal navigation / menu / link to another slide
Transitions between slides
Is there a tool that can convert the ppt to PDF and keep each animation in a separate slide, for example?
I know you can create animated slides with LaTeX Beamer that convert nicely to PDF, I have made some of those, but I also have some ppt files that I want to convert to PDF.
This is what I have tried so far:
Slideshare, however not only it doesn't support animations, but internal navigation doesn't work, and the fonts are all messed up.
PDFcreator, the quality is quite superior in comparison, but it doesn't support the animations neither. As Slideshare, it will just put one image over the other. Also, it doesn't support transparency (for example, a text box with a semitransparent bg over an image)
LaTeX Beamer, already mentioned, but I would prefer to avoid typing these ppts content and animations into LaTeX just so that the animations are displayed correctly in PDF.
I have searched SO and didn't find a satisfactory answer to deal with animations. What do you use?

Answer 1

I found a small plugin that splits your powerpoint slides whenever they have animations. So if you have 3 animations on 1 slide he will generate 3 slides with each animation step by step. Then export it in PDF :-)
It worked for me on powerpoint 2010. I would recommend you do a backup file of presentation before splitting. And don't forget to uncheck the "Split on click-triggered animations".
http://www.dia.uniroma3.it/~rimondin/downloads.php
I also found this (but the first solution was free and worked so :-))
http://www.verypdf.com/wordpress/201306/how-to-create-a-pdf-from-powerpoint-with-animations-36850.html

Answer 2

This blog post provides a VBA macro script that will split every slide that has animations (e.g. images or bullet points that appear one by one) into multiple slides, and then you can save as PDF and voila!
Importantly, since it's a VBA script it should work both for Windows and Mac. I've only tried it on OSX (yosemite) with powerpoint 2011, and it worked pretty well. The only issue I had was that slides with animated bullet points (that appear one by one) were split into multiple slides but every slide contained all the bullet points, so I had to delete some manually. Still, for everything else it worked perfectly and it's a small price to pay compared to doing it all manually, especially image animations. Of course you may/may not encounter the same issue on Windows or other versions of PP. In any case, for OSX it's the only working solution I've found so far.
Instructions for adding VBA macros to powerpoint can be found here.
Hope it works for you too!

Answer 3

This blog post provides a VBA macro script that will split every slide that has animations into multiple slides, without keeping the original slides in front of the expanded slides (as is the case in this answer).
The problem that remains with this macro and the other macro, is that the content of a text block with multiple animations is always shown as a whole (e.g. if each sentence of the same text block has a separate animation, all sentences will always be shown together).
VBA Code:
Private AnimVisibilityTag As String
Sub ExpandAnimations()
AnimVisibilityTag = "AnimationExpandVisibility"
Dim pres As Presentation
Dim Slidenum As Integer
Set pres = ActivePresentation
Slidenum = 1
Do While Slidenum <= pres.Slides.Count
Dim s As Slide
Dim animationCount As Integer
Set s = pres.Slides.Item(Slidenum)
If s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Count > 0 Then
Set s = pres.Slides.Item(Slidenum)
PrepareSlideForAnimationExpansion s
animationCount = expandAnimationsForSlide(pres, s)
Else
animationCount = 1
End If
Slidenum = Slidenum + animationCount
Loop
End Sub
Private Sub PrepareSlideForAnimationExpansion(s As Slide)
' Set visibility tags on all shapes
For Each oShape In s.Shapes
oShape.Tags.Add AnimVisibilityTag, "true"
Next oShape
' Find initial visibility of each shape
For animIdx = s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Count To 1 Step -1
Dim seq As Effect
Set seq = s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Item(animIdx)
On Error GoTo UnknownEffect
For behaviourIdx = seq.Behaviors.Count To 1 Step -1
Dim behavior As AnimationBehavior
Set behavior = seq.Behaviors.Item(behaviourIdx)
If behavior.Type = msoAnimTypeSet Then
If behavior.SetEffect.Property = msoAnimVisibility Then
If behavior.SetEffect.To <> 0 Then
seq.Shape.Tags.Delete AnimVisibilityTag
seq.Shape.Tags.Add AnimVisibilityTag, "false"
Else
seq.Shape.Tags.Delete AnimVisibilityTag
seq.Shape.Tags.Add AnimVisibilityTag, "true"
End If
End If
End If
Next behaviourIdx
NextSequence:
On Error GoTo 0
Next animIdx
Exit Sub
UnknownEffect:
MsgBox ("Encountered an error while calculating object visibility: " + Err.Description)
Resume NextSequence
End Sub
Private Function expandAnimationsForSlide(pres As Presentation, s As Slide) As Integer
Dim numSlides As Integer
numSlides = 1
' Play the animation back to determine visibility
Do While True
' Stop when animation is over or we hit a click trigger
If s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Count <= 0 Then Exit Do
Dim fx As Effect
Set fx = s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Item(1)
If fx.Timing.TriggerType = msoAnimTriggerOnPageClick Then Exit Do
' Play the animation
PlayAnimationEffect fx
fx.Delete
Loop
' Make a copy of the slide and recurse
If s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Count > 0 Then
s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Item(1).Timing.TriggerType = msoAnimTriggerWithPrevious
Dim nextSlide As Slide
Set nextSlide = s.Duplicate.Item(1)
numSlides = 1 + expandAnimationsForSlide(pres, nextSlide)
End If
' Apply visibility
rescan = True
While rescan
rescan = False
For n = 1 To s.Shapes.Count
If s.Shapes.Item(n).Tags.Item(AnimVisibilityTag) = "false" Then
s.Shapes.Item(n).Delete
rescan = True
Exit For
End If
Next n
Wend
' Clear all tags
For Each oShape In s.Shapes
oShape.Tags.Delete AnimVisibilityTag
Next oShape
' Remove animation (since they've been expanded now)
While s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Count > 0
s.TimeLine.MainSequence.Item(1).Delete
Wend
expandAnimationsForSlide = numSlides
End Function
Private Sub assignColor(ByRef varColor As ColorFormat, valueColor As ColorFormat)
If valueColor.Type = msoColorTypeScheme Then
varColor.SchemeColor = valueColor.SchemeColor
Else
varColor.RGB = valueColor.RGB
End If
End Sub
Private Sub PlayAnimationEffect(fx As Effect)
On Error GoTo UnknownEffect
For n = 1 To fx.Behaviors.Count
Dim behavior As AnimationBehavior
Set behavior = fx.Behaviors.Item(n)
Select Case behavior.Type
Case msoAnimTypeSet
' Appear or disappear
If behavior.SetEffect.Property = msoAnimVisibility Then
If behavior.SetEffect.To <> 0 Then
fx.Shape.Tags.Delete AnimVisibilityTag
fx.Shape.Tags.Add AnimVisibilityTag, "true"
Else
fx.Shape.Tags.Delete AnimVisibilityTag
fx.Shape.Tags.Add AnimVisibilityTag, "false"
End If
Else
' Log the problem
End If
Case msoAnimTypeColor
' Change color
If fx.Shape.HasTextFrame Then
Dim range As TextRange
Set range = fx.Shape.TextFrame.TextRange
assignColor range.Paragraphs(fx.Paragraph).Font.Color, behavior.ColorEffect.To
End If
Case Else
' Log the problem
End Select
Next n
Exit Sub
UnknownEffect:
MsgBox ("Encountered an error expanding animations: " + Err.Description)
Exit Sub
End Sub

Answer 4

For those of you using LibreOffice or OpenOffice,
there is a plugin available on github that does this very well :
ExpandAnimations
In my experience, all of the standard appear/disappear animations are nicely split. Object movement animations also work (you get a slide with start position and one with end position of the object). I haven't had the chance to test other animation types, but that should cover about all standard needs :-)