Record timestamps of slide changes during a live Powerpoint presentation?

Question

I plan to implement a solution for recording lectures. One of the requirements is to record both the presenter and the slide show. The presenter is recording from the camcorder, obviously, and the slideshow is likely to be captured using a tool such as Camtasia.

Now, during playback, three components are visible: presenter, slides, and table of contents. Clicking on the chapter title in the TOC forces the video to jump to the corresponding section. This means that chapters must be matched between the titles of the chapters and their labels in the video.

Typically, a change in theme is accompanied by a change in slides in a Powerpoint presentation. In this way, timestamps can be inferred from the slides. However, this requires that I detect changes in the slides during a live performance. And I don’t know how to do it.

Does anyone know how to detect slide changes? Is there a Powerpoint API where I can attach event handlers or something like that? I am very grateful for your help!

Edit
This problem is no longer relevant for my current work, so this question will not be updated by me. However, you can still help others by posting your answers / ideas here.

Answer 1

Here is some code that will get you most of the way.

First, create a class in PowerPoint VBE, name it clsPPTEvents . Put the following inside:

Public WithEvents PPTEvent As Application Private Sub PPTEvent_SlideShowNextSlide(ByVal Wn As SlideShowWindow) MsgBox "Position: " & Wn.View.CurrentShowPosition & ", Time: " & Time End Sub 

Then create a module, call it and put it inside:

 Public newPPTEvents As New clsPPTEvents Sub StartEvents() Set newPPTEvents.PPTEvent = Application End Sub Sub EndEvents() Set newPPTEvents.PPTEvent = Nothing End Sub 

Then, by starting StartEvents sub, you can switch to presentation mode, and each time you change the slide, the message number (position) and the current time of change will be displayed in the message window. You can use these (or other) variables to write to a file. After exiting the slide show, you can run EndEvents to stop the API.

Answer 2

It would be elegant to detect slide changes, but wouldn't it be more practical for the facilitator to type a hot key whenever there is a theme change? Or something similar, but collaborates with the presenter, as he knows better when the topic changes.

Sorry for not providing an elegant answer.