Customer Reviews

Serious Magic Ovation

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I also teach PowerPoint as well as many other presentation Apps.Other Apps and general Computer skils.
I saw Ovation at CES and I bought it. First of all it can now handle embedded videos but without the full control that PPT has. It also will not allow you to loop or automaticaly advance a presentation so it will not work for show displays or kisoks. The number of power looks are limited and there are no new ones available as yet. Once someone sees these than it becomes old stuff. More are needed. The text size is sometimes reduced to fit in the power look you are using making it hard to read. The custom anamations available in PowerPoint are replaced by one, and one only next element entrance. It is a good one but it gets old quickly. Anamated gifs are not as yet supported and become still pictures.

On the positive side the anamated backgrounds that are available are well done and interesting and it is very easy to use. When you first see a presentation in Ovation you are impressed with the look.

Overall,I rate the program as it is as FAIR but the promise is there. To make it a high value program that you will use over and over again the developers have to include all the good stuff that PowerPoint offers while improving the look as they have already done. Right now I feel that I have lost as much or even more than I gained.

Add fairly good add-on and support for Power Point presentations, but it does currently have limited things to offer.

after the initial impressive presentation and probably after you've downloaded the 15-day trial version, you'll begin to rethink your initial views of the software.

It does work and can indeed brighten up presentations. But in my honest opinion as a presentation skills coach and trainer, I would say that the software has potential but is not quite there yet in terms of wowing and retaining that initial impression you get when you come across it.

Try the 15-day trial first before you commit to any purchase decision. It'll help you make up your mind better.

I teach presentation skills, so I'm always on the lookout for things that make PowerPoint better. I've tried and recommended other software in the past, but none of them have the power of Ovation.

This is an outstanding piece of software. The visual effects are stunning, and it's so easy to use that a child could learn it in a few minutes. PowerPoint is boring, and everyone's presentations look the same. Not any more! Full-motion backgrounds and effects really jazz up your presentations, and they have over 100 professional-looking business themes available. See their website (seriousmagic dot com) for a demonstration of what it can do. All you have to do is drag and drop your PowerPoint presentation on the Ovation icon, choose a theme and the effects, and voila! - a new presentation!

The current version 1.0 can not process embedded video or audio files, but they say that will be fixed with the first patch within the next month or two. Despite that shortcoming, this is the best PowerPoint enhancement available - heads and shoulders above the competitors.

Ever since Adobe bought out this small operation, customer service has been severely lacking. Software will NOT work on Excel 2007. The promise for additional POWERLOOKS has become dead. Granted that the program makes presentation more interesting, the Powerlooks that was in production are no longer on the website. This is highly disappointing as I purchased this program in anticipation for further development on the Powerlook templates.

First, I should have listened to my instincts and downloaded the trial version BEFORE purchasing. Had I done this I would HAVE NEVER purchased this product. As it is, having bought the product from a box store and NOT online, I made a $99.00 mistake, plus tax.

The product has too many limitations to be considered as a viable add-on to your powerpoint presentations. As a presenter, using PPT every week, in training presentations, I can tell you that this product does more to limit PPT's slide producing capabilities than it does to add to them. As a matter of fact, I found the product to "take away" from PPT's slide building procedures, NOT "add" to them.

Save your money and wait for the next PPT add-on to come along. This product is worth neither your investigative time, nor your monetary investment.

I use PowerPoint a great deal as a teacher and thought this would upgrade my presentations. Unfortunately, every one of my computers had insufficient video memory to allow the software to work. For now, it sits on my shelf until I can purchase more powerful equipment. Certainly not for the casual user. It isn't the magic black box that will make you a star.

I got the trial and bought the software shortly thereafter. For those who are PPT maniacs, it's pretty limited. For the other 99.99999% of us, it's great because you don't have to spend a ton of time on animations, tweaking it, or worrying about everyone having seen it before (at least the first few times :D ).

However, Adobe bought Serious Magic last year. Microsoft released Office 2007. And having Office 2007 installed on a computer is sufficient to cause Ovation to work in creative and unique ways that are not especially helpful. In my case, I have a 1300-slide deck I use for training. No, I don't use 1300 slides - more than half are hidden and exposed only as required. But when I open Ovation on my Office 2007-enabled laptop, I see 1300 title slides.

Called Adobe Ovation support, and eventually got the right answer: Yes it's broken, no it won't be fixed any time soon. My only saving grace was that I never anted up for a support plan.

Bottom line: If you're on Office 2003 or earlier AND have no plans to upgrade to Office 2007, I strongly recommend it. But if you've gone to 2007, it's too late - run screaming in the other direction from this dismal excuse for a revenue scheme.

I bought the OVATION product because I use PowerPoint every day for presentations to people in our college. OVATION is so good when you work through the kinks in it that most people after my shows ask how I did such a cool PowerPoint presentation instead of how good the information was!
The product has pretty much been ignored by Adobe for any upgrades or patches and it is not compatible with PowerPoint 2007, and your video card had better be strong or the powerlook will dump out on you.
With that said, there are more than enough powerlooks to work your magic with any PowerPoint show you want to use. It is a good buy and you will not be sorry you got it, just plan to work around some things.

Fortunately, I tried the trial version of Ovation, now owned by Adobe. The software did not work properly. Every presentation I imported was just a collection of the title slide, over and over again.

Multiple attempts to get support from Adobe, just to find out if I could get the software to run (at which point I would have purchased it), resulted in dead ends.

I was told I would have to buy the product to find out whether I could get it to run properly!

This seems to be like a poor-stepchild in the Adobe family. For example, I could not find a working user forum to ask questions, in lieu of proper customer support.

...and Adobe as ZERO plans to EVER support Vista. It's a seriously great program, though, if you're planning to use XP for the rest of your life (smirk). I'm VERY disappointed in Adobe for dangling hope in their user forums for well over a year before finally pulling the plug forever.