By default, Articulate Presenter ’09 publishes content so that it is optimized for web delivery. This means that the Quality factor of the image will be 75, the resize factory will be 2, and the Audio bitrate will be 32 kbps.
In order to compare the various publishing quality options at my disposal, I created a quick presentation that contains both a high quality image and audio. The PowerPoint file itself is 769 KB and the PPTA file is 8.83 MB. In total, the source file is over 9 MB. See below for the published examples of the comparison:
Default Quality: Published at “Optimized for Web Delivery”
- Quality Factor: 75
- Resize Factor: 2
- Audio Bitrate: 35 kbps
- Total Published Size = 1.45 MB
Highest Quality: Published at “Optimized for CD-ROM Delivery”
- Quality Factor: 100
- Resize Factor: 2
- Audio Bitrate: 35 kbps
- Total Published Size = 5.92 MB
Low Quality: Published at “Custom (Advanced)”
- Quality Factor: 10
- Resize Factor: 2
- Audio Bitrate: 16 kbps
- Total Published Size = 1.15 MB
As you can see, the biggest discrepancy is the file size between the CD-ROM and the Low Quality (custom) settings. Not only is there a huge difference in the quality of the image, but the audio sounds completely different. This would explain the almost 4 MB difference between the files.
Did you notice much of a difference between the “Optimize for Web” and “CD-ROM” settings? Really, there wasn’t much. However, the image was definitely not as crisp. Fortunately, the audio still sounded very, very good. There’s also a 4 MB file size difference between these two settings. In this case, the file size difference would be enough to warrant always publishing at the “Optimize for Web” setting. Can you imagine what would happen if we had a presentation with 20 slides in total? The difference would be over 80 MB’s in size.
So, the next time you’re thinking about customizing your Quality settings, you may need to realize that Articulate has already done the leg work for you.
