Looking for a way to convert MS Powerpoint presentations to video using FFmpeg

[Rodney Baker]

Has someone considered (or tried) writing a decoder for MS Powerpoint presentations to be able to render them as video files using FFmpeg?

Ideally, it would render the slides with any embedded images, audio and slide transitions defined in the presentation; if not the actual fancy transitions (which I would think would require complex filters), at least a basic cross-fade using the timings defined in the presentation. Where there are no timings present, a sensible default should be chosen with an option to specify timing on the command line.

I would attempt this myself but what I know of C programming could fit on the back of a postage stamp.

[reimar]

I think it's safe to say there is no way we will implement a PowerPoint parser and renderer, huge projects like OpenOffice/LibreOffice barely manage to get something working, there is no way we could do it.
Even more so since it just doesn't fit into the demuxer/decoder split that FFmpeg assumes.
If you want this feature, it would be more realistic to ask one of the Office suites to implement a "render/export to video" feature, possibly by using FFmpeg. Similar to what e.g. Blender provides.