Tips on making Prezi Presentation more interactive

 If you are using Prezi to create presentation, here are some of the tips and tricks to improve and to extend the limitations.
I assume that you have used Prezi before and have created couple of presentation using Prezi. If you are new to Prezi or have not used before, refer to my previous post on Prezi.
I have been using Prezi to create no of presentations and found out different methods to address some of the limitations on Prezi. If you are new to Prezi, just create couple of presentations before you continue this tutorial. So here are some of the limitations i found on Prezi and how to work around them. 
When a picture are zoomed in, it flicker or disappear  

There are two approaches, the most intuitive approach is to have a high resolution picture. but if you have tried this, you may have found that it is not a good approach.
My suggestion is to make the picture a SWF and import it as a SWF. SWF stands for Shockwave Flash and you can simply export your photo or image using Adove Illustrator or any other leading photo editing softwares.

How to add animations 

Again there are two approaches, either you can use a import as a Video or you can import as a SWF. There are pros and cons to both of them. If you add a video, it will start playing when it got the focus and it will remain still when you are viewing the background but if you use a SWF, it will animate even in the background. Of cause you need one of the Adobe softwares to convert between them or you can use online converters available on the internet.

What will be shown on the screen when I project this? How far it will show? 

This is vary critical if you are planing paths in between frames. If you have done a presentation on Prezi and presented using a projector, you might have noticed that the exact screen you saw on the screen is not what you see on the projector. (Most of the time right and left edges are different). This makes a presentation poor as what you planed to show ahead will be shown in this frame.
This is mainly because of the resolution problem. Most of the Projectors works on 4:3 ratio and the laptops and desktops screen aspect ration will be different to each other.
To overcome this issue, You can use standard frames when building your presentation. You can simply press SHIFT key and draw the frame, and Prezi will make the frame in to the ratio 4:3. So what will be shown on the projector is everything you put in to this frame. Most of the times, when you view this in your laptop it may show some excess things on top and bottom of the frames, but believe me it will not be shown on the projector. The other approach is simply to change the resolution of the laptop to 4:3 ratio resolution. This will make life more easier as what you see on the screen is exactly what you see in the Projector. Suggested resolution schemes is 1024x768.

When i focus on images, and text it will zoom more or does not zoom to the required level

This is where the frames comes in to play. I strongly recommend not to focus in to pictures or images. The best practice is to add a frame and focus on the frame, It makes more flexible and you easily change focus of different elements. Common practice is to build the story board and add frames accordingly. This will make sure every frame is on top of the story board and makes it more easy to manage.

How to rotate the camera?

This is a simple task. Add a frame and rotate it to the angle you want. Then add a path to it. Prezi will automatically rotate the camara and focus the frame up right in the meantime giving a nice spin effect. Beware: Do not spin so many times as it make distract the audience.

How to remove the Prezi logo on the bottom of the screen?

Prezi removes this logo or you can replace it with your own logo when you have a professional version. But if your are a student of a reputed University, you can ask for a Prezi EDU account which will allow you to remove this logo. All you need to do is sign up using the institutional email address with Prezi. I use my University of Moratuwa email to get away with this.

Can I use custom colours on my presentations?

Of cause you can use custom colours on the presentation. But you need to create a theme first. But using the new Prezi CSS editor, you can easily edit CSS of the presentation, which makes it more flexible to an advanced user.

Can I use Prezi on Powerpoint?

You can integrate both Powerpoint and Prezi. I will discuss this in a separate post

When I add a video, it will crop. Can I avoid this?

This is one of the critical problems I found on Prezi. There are couple of ways to work around but it may take considerable amount of time to archive this. One way is to change the background to suite the player. You can use background on the video. The second method makes it more attractive but you need a good knowledge in video editing to exactly match the background to the video itself.

Update - Prezi has added a lots of new features You can check them out from http://prezi.com/learn/new-features/
Here is a nice presentation I found on the internet, created by an intern in Prezi. There are no of suggestion to improve your presentation overall. I hope you enjoyed reading my article and if you have any questions regarding Prezi, add a comment and I will try my best to answer it.