Create frames

- [Instructor] Okay, we've now seen how to add basic content like text, images, charts, shapes and symbols to our Prezi. Before we look at other types of media you can use, let's start taking a look at how to set up frames. Because as you start laying out your presentation, you'll probably want to experiment with the zooming and rotating effects, as well as the order in which they happen, and that's all controlled by frames. I'm going to create a new Prezi, and for this example, I'm going to select the World Map Antique template. Right, and there it is. Now as we saw earlier, when you choose a template, it usually already has a path laid out over here in the left panel.

I can click each one of these steps in the path to move through the presentation. And each one of these steps is a frame. The order of the frames here determines the order of your Prezi. To change the order of the progression, you just drag the frames up and down. Alright, so those are the pre-built frames. But the beauty of Prezi is that you can remove, add or change frames at any time. Let's say I want to start my presentation zoomed in on the title. I'm just going to quickly customize this title first. Alright, so in order to start my presentation while zoomed into the title, I need to create a frame. If you recall from earlier, we can add four types of frames, which we select from this menu here.

We can have a bracket frame, a circle, a rectangle or an invisible frame. Actually, before I add a frame I'm going to come over here to the settings button, and set my screen ratio to 16:9, which is the ratio of my Mac screen in this case. Again, this isn't absolutely necessary, but I like setting the ratio because it makes the frames I make default to those proportions. Alright so for the title I think I'm going to use an invisible frame, meaning a frame with no visible border. So I'll click the "add frame" button to add it to my canvas. Now it's easy to miss, but in doing so, that automatically adds the frame to my path.

You can see there's a new frame here now, and if I click it, it zooms right to that frame I just created. That's not where I want it to be placed though, so let's zoom back out, I'll just do so by selecting this frame, and I'll click to select the frame I created, and I'll drag that over my title. Make it a little bigger, and again, there are no numeric values in Prezi. So you just have to eyeball the position of elements most of the time. Although Prezi will try to help you align objects with each other. But even then it's not always the way you want things to line up. Alright so now when I click that frame in the path, it zooms right into my title.

Now I want my presentation to start with this frame, so I'm going to drag it to the top of the column, and let's see how this looks in Present mode. I'll just use the right arrow key on my keyboard to progress through my presentation. And I'll press "esc". So it's really very easy to add frames. Let's add another one. Maybe this time I'll choose a bracket frame, and this time instead of clicking, I'm going to drag the frame object onto my canvas. And let's say I want a frame around this compass down here.

I'm going to just drag this to the general area, and we'll just scroll, and we'll just drag the canvas a bit so we can see this better, and I'll make this a little larger, and maybe I'll just put the compass over towards the left side of the bracket. So when I click this frame in the path, it zooms in. Let's add some text in here too. Remember, all you have to do to add text is just click on the canvas. And maybe I'll center that, let's try it. We'll use the subtitle style in this case, make it bold, and maybe we'll make that just a little bit larger.

Alright, now one very important behavior to understand about frames is that anything inside the border of a frame is affected when you move or resize that frame. Let's zoom back out a little bit here. Notice if I select the frame and move it, the text block and the compass move along with it. The compass graphic is an object and not part of the background image here, which is why it comes alone for the ride. Now I can still more it and the text independently, but as long as they're within the frame, they'll move along with the frame. This is actually a pretty convenient behavior, because the assumption is that if you move a frame, you probably want to move its contents along with it.

Similarly, if I make the frame a little bit larger or smaller, its contents also increase or decrease in size proportionally along with it. Also, if you delete the frame, the contents get deleted as well. Fortunately, if you do that accidentally, you can always click the "undo" button up here. As long as you realize you deleted it right away. If you do want to get rid of a frame without getting rid of the contents, first select the frame, then click the "Type" button, where you can change the frame type, and at the bottom, here, you'll find a removed frame. And again, that deletes the frame without deleting the contents.

Going to undo that. Now let's say you want to keep the frame, but you don't want it to be part of the navigation path. For example, maybe you just want to use the circle, bracket, or rectangle frame just to have a border around some objects, but you don't want to zoom in on those objects during your presentation. Well, we know that when you add a frame, it's automatically added to the path. The way around this is to come over here and click "Edit Path." Notice when I roll over thumbnails, an X appears over them. I'll click the X over this thumbnail, which removes it from the path, but notice the bracket frame remains. So if you want to use a frame purely for decorative purposes, this is one way to do it.

And there's actually a lot you can do here in the edit path mode, but I'll get into the details in a video in an upcoming chapter. I do want to show you another way to add a frame to the path from here, though. Let's zoom out a bit, and let's zoom in on Australia. Maybe during my presentation I speak specifically about Australia, so I want to zoom in on it at the appropriate time. Now, I could drag a new frame around it here, but another way to do it from here in the Edit Path view, is to click, "Add Current View." That takes whatever's on the canvas, adds a frame around it, and then adds it to the path, which you can now see over here.

And this method can be more convenient than adding a frame with the "Add Frame" button sometimes. In fact, you don't even need to be in Edit Path mode to do this. I'll click "Edit Path" again to close this view, and let me find another object here, I'll zoom in on this ship. Like the compass graphic, this ship is its own object. It's actually grouped with the waves around it, but that's okay in this case. But you can automatically add a close-up of any object to your path by first selecting it, then right-clicking it, and from the menu that opens, choose "Add to Path". Notice I didn't even need to be zoomed in all the way on the ship.

But when I click that path in the step now, it zooms us in. So now this close-up of the ship is part of my presentation. One thing to keep in mind with this method, though, is that this is not technically a frame. Notice when I try to select it, I don't see any option to change this to a bracket or circle or rectangle frame. All I've done in this case is to tell Prezi that here, at step nine, I want to zoom in on this ship. And it still works the same way as a frame, but I feel it's necessary to point this out in case you're wondering why those frame options don't show up. Now if, for some reason, you do want an actual frame there, you can just delete the step from the path, then draw a frame with the frame tool.

And again, I'll be talking more about working with the path navigation a little bit later, but for now, that's how to work with frames in Prezi.