Problem with Presentation Font sizes between Mac and PC versions
Terry Stout
Hi David,
You've highlighted two very important technical aspects of how EW8 handles media.
Regarding PowerPoint size: You are correct that EW8 flattens PowerPoint slides into a series of image/video frames. While this significantly increases file size, it is a deliberate design choice to ensure that your presentation remains stable and looks identical, even if the destination computer doesn't have the same fonts or Office version installed as your home computer. To manage file size, we recommend optimizing your images within PowerPoint before importing.
Regarding Font Sizes: What you are experiencing is likely a result of DPI/PPI scaling differences between macOS Retina displays and standard Windows monitors. Because Mac Retina screens have much higher pixel density, a '40pt' font occupies a much smaller physical area than it does on a standard 1080p Windows monitor.
Because 'Auto-size' calculates font size based on the available canvas area rather than an absolute point value, it is the most reliable way to ensure cross-platform consistency. We are looking into ways to better normalize these scaling differences in future updates to make the transition between Mac and PC even more seamless.
Thank you for your detailed feedback!
David Scott
The way EW8 handles PowerPoint files is to convert the stack to a series of movie files rather than using a PowerPoint player engine. If you import a PPT file, allow it to generate the slides and then save the file as a standalone file, the resulting file size is huge. For me, the file size is about 20 times larger than when using EW7.
I decided to create a native EasyWorship Presentation instead but when I select a text size other than auto-sized, the Mac text size has to be really high to make it view properly. However, if you open that Presentation using the Windows version, the text size appears huge on-screen. Using auto-sizing somewhat works, although not always. The bug seems to be on the Mac side.