APS paired with Companion gives you Stream Deck buttons that can start presentations seamlessly. In this article, we will take a look at different ways we can setup these presentation-buttons, depending on your preferred workflow as an AV-technician.
1. Slot presentations
The slot-presentations lets you bookmark individual presentation-files for Companion buttons.
You can select the files from the APS user-interface. Drag and drop the presentation you want for the slot, or open the file-selector with the folder-button.
In Companion, we have preset-buttons that can both start the slot-presentations, and monitor its status. You get the filename of the selected presentation, and the button color shows whether the presentation is ready or displayed in fullscreen.
To use the slot-presets, simply drag and drop the preset-commands to the available buttons.
3. Select from presentation folders
You can select a folder that is being “watched” by APS. This means that all the files from that folder will be available on Companion buttons, and if there is a change in the folder, this will be updated in real-time.
In Companion you can have unlimited number of folder-buttons that will display each file from the watched folder, and they will be sorted alphabetically: presentation-folder button #1 will always have the first presentation in the folder.
You can select the presentation-folders similarly to the individual slot-presentations: In the APS menu, go to “Folders in the “Presentations” tab. Then drag and drop, or select, the folders you want available as watched folders.
Only one folder can be “watched” at a time. You select the folder to be watched by clicking on it. The watched folder will have a red square around it.
In Companion, all the folder-presentations are available as presets. Similarly to the slot-presentations, drag and drop the folder-presentations to the buttons where you need them.
By default, the presets will have 40 buttons for folder-slots. If your folder has more than that, the presets should update automatically.
4. Folder presentation-sorting: Alphabetical vs. Numbered Only
By default, APS will show all presentation-files from the watched folder, and put them in alphabetical order. This is “Normal” sorting But we also have an option called “Numbered Only” sorting, where we only display presentation starting with a number, and put them in the corresponding folder-slot. For example, a file named “04 John.pptx” will always end up in folder slot 4.
You can choose between Normal or Numbered Only sorting from the main module settings in Companion. This is a global setting.
The video below compares the different ways you can sort the presentations in the watched folder:
5. Companion options for opening presentations
You can choose if you want to open in slideshow-mode and which slide the presentation will open from. If “run in fullscreen” is unselected, then the presentation will open in edit-mode.
These settings are identical for all APS Companion commands to open presentations
6. “Next” and “Previous” presentation-commands
These commands when a presentation is displayed in fullscreen. Then the “Next” command will proceed to the next presentation in the folder, whereas the the “Previous” command will go to the previous presentation.
These commands gives a simple way for the AV-team to control presentations for an event. As a preparation, you just need to sort the presentations in the same alphabetical order as they will be displayed. Then, during the event, you can push “Next” every time you need to go to the next presentation.
Note that these commands will only work if a presentation is already displayed, so for the first presentation, you need to start this manually, or use another APS command for this.
7. Seamless presentation-switching
The APS commands to display presentations are intelligent: they make sure that the transition to the new presentation is seamless, and if you are already displaying a presentation, then the old presentition will be closed before opening a new. This means that switching between two presentations will look like a transitions between two slides, and you can start as many presentations as you like without overloading your computer with multiple presentation-files.
Note that you “Seamless switching” is something that must be enabled from the APS settings for the seamless presentation-switching to work.
