Xilisoft PowerPoint to Video Converter Personal

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on July 22, 2010

Xilisoft's PowerPoint to Video Converter Personal converts Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into a wide range of standard and HD video formats, everything from AVI to WMV, that can be played back, posted online or in LANs, or carried on portable devices, even iPhones. You can use it to recycle old presentations, share them, and create archives. It has uses beyond business, though, including electronic resumes, fund-raising, public affairs--anyone who can make good use of presentations can probably find a way to reuse them, too, with a tool like this. It will even convert PPT files if your system lacks PowerPoint, though you need it to take advantage of this tool's advanced features, such as recording and watermarking.

This program's interface is a fairly typical Windows utility, though skinned with optional themes that give a modern, black-and-white look with subtle touches of color highlights; the "Ultrathin" theme in particular is attractive but not distracting. The main window displays a Getting Started screen, but it's possible for anyone who can navigate to a folder to dive right in; everything that's not self explanatory is clearly labeled, and there's plenty of help available. We were especially pleased with the video Profile selector, which offers five profile categories, including user-defined options. Each category displays its compatible file types with icons as well as descriptions of each format and what to use it for. We converted some PPT files into several common video formats, each of which played back in a freeware media player, exactly as they were supposed to.

A lot of work goes into preparing the average PowerPoint presentation (let alone the above-average one) and it's a shame to let all that time and effort go to waste just because the presentation is no longer current. PowerPoint to Video Converter Personal shows just how easy it is to convert your outdated presentation files into videos with many potential uses.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of Xilisoft PowerPoint to Video Converter Personal 1.0.3.0402. The trial version has some features disabled.