Playing Vox Proxy presentations on multiple computers
 

Installing Vox Proxy

The click license for Vox Proxy permits you to install the software on two computers: your desktop and your laptop. If you are not using a laptop, it is also permissible to install Vox Proxy on your home computer as well as your work computer.

 

Distributing presentations to others

There are two ways to allow people who do not own Vox Proxy to play your presentations:

  1. The free Vox Proxy Player. You can distribute presentation files in any manner to anyone who has the VP Player installed.
  2. The extra-cost CD Prep option to Vox Proxy, which allows distribution on self-starting CDs. The self-starting disks have the VP Player embedded on them, so the user who plays the disk does not need to have the Player pre-installed. CDs prepared in this way will also run on PowerPoint 97 or the PowerPoint Viewer, which is included on the CD.

 

The free Vox Proxy Player software

The Vox Proxy Player is much like the Adobe Acrobat Reader. It allows people to view slide shows with Vox Proxy character scripts. The end user must install the VP Player (one time) on their computer. Once they've installed it, you can distribute presentation files to them in any way - by e-mail, for example, or by an online link.

The most convenient way to distribute presentation files to users who have the VP Player is to use the special save option in the Vox Proxy Script Writer (File/Save for VP Player). When you Save for VP Player, you get a duplicate copy of your PPT file with the file extension PPV. When you distribute that file to a computer with the VP Player installed, the end user can simply open the file and it will automatically launch PowerPoint, turn on the VP Player, and start the slide show.

If you distribute the PPT file (rather than the PPV file), then the Player user must open PowerPoint, turn on the Vox Proxy Run Mode, then play the slide show.

The VP Player is included on a separate CD when you purchase Vox Proxy. It contains all of the characters and speech engines included with Vox Proxy. You may duplicate and distribute that disk to other people.

The VP Player is also downloadable from our web site at:
http://www.voxproxy.com/vpplayer.html
Note, however, that the downloadable Player contains only six characters: Paul, Chuck, Merlin, Peedy, Genie, and Robby. If you use characters other than these, you must either manually distribute those additional characters to the Player user or have them install the Player from your Player CD rather than the download.

Tthe downloadable Player also contains speech in U.S. English only. If you are using other languages, you must either have the user download and install the appropriate language or have them install the VP Player from the CD delivered with your software.
 

CD Prep

The purpose of the CD Prep program is to create a CD-R which will auto-start on an end-user's computer and run slide shows which include Vox Proxy scripts without requiring the user to have first installed the Vox Proxy Player. CD Prep is an optional feature for Vox Proxy and can be ordered as an upgrade.

CD Prep allows you to make royalty-free CDs with unlimited distribution. The CDs will play on computers with or without PowerPoint. With PowerPoint, the program supports PowerPoint 97 or newer. With PowerPoint 97, some restricted features apply. For computers without PowerPoint, the program will look for the PowerPoint Viewer. If the Viewer is not present, it will, at the user's option, install it and run. Some script restrictions also apply to the Viewer and many PowerPoint features are not supported on the Viewer.

View the detailed CD Prep documentation here, including screen shots.
 

For users of AT&T Natural voices

The license for AT&T Natural Voices permits installation of the speech engine only on a single computer, so there are a couple of things to consider:

  1. You can't legally use Natural Voices on both your home and work or desktop and laptop computers without purchasing a second license.
  2. The Natural Voices license does permit distribution of WAV files created with the Natural Voices engine. Vox Proxy contains special features that allow you to create these wav files quickly and easily. If you are using CD Prep, you can then simply include those wav files on the CD and you will not violate the license. Distributing to a user with the VP Player, however, is a bit trickier:
    1. You can't use the PPV file (you can but it won't find the wav files when it launches)
    2. You must send the wav files along with the presentation file
    3. The user must save the presentation on their computer (anywhere) and save the wav files in the vox proxy\media folder before they can run the slide show.
    4. To run the slide show, they then open the file in PowerPoint, turn on the VP Run Mode, and run the slide show