presentation software that possibly works very nicely and easily with final cut pro x?

I just watched a brief tutorial by Rich Harrington on using Keynote slide shows with FCPX. His recommendation was to share from Keynote to an iPhoto event. Then bring the individual slides, including builds, into FCPX from the media browser.

I have no idea whether this would be your best solution or not. But I am a fan of Keynote; its workflow is intuitive and I like the results.

Good luck on the project.

Russ

A 'presentation' is basicly a 'manually triggered slideshow'.

A video, to contrrry, has a 'fix' clock.-

So, your presentation software should allow to 'trigger' the 'play button', otherwise, the slide/cell/frame starts showing the video instantly (=what I wouldn't like in my presentations)

=> any actual presentation software (should ...) allows that.

next...

codecs, distribution, platforms:

Are you using your own Mac only to show the presentation?

Then, I would suggest, as Russ, stay within the Apple hemisphere, highest degree of integration.Keynote.

But, if you're using 'alien' machines for playback 😉, compatibility on lowest common standard is of highest importance. In case, your show-room has some super-fast internet connection, I like to use google.docs' Presentation modul: I'm building my shows at home (Mac), refine it at the office (Windows7) and show it on some weird 'terminal clients' which do have access to internet. To integrate video, it has to be on YouTube = Google empire.

if you do NOT have a fast connection, ppt and h.264 as a mp4 is most common 'format'. Keynote can export as ppt, but you lose any 'fancy' transitions. Or, bite the sour apple, and use Powerpoint. FCPX offers very poor 'options', concerning resolution, bitrate, codecs; my suggestion is the most popular MpegStreamclip to convert a 'Master Export' into some tiny h264.mp4 and stick that into your ppt.

Great summary by Karsten.

I may have misinterpreted your objective. My impression was you were trying to integrate a presentation into a video.

Anyway, to add just a bit to Karsten's advice: Keynote also has an option to export a controllable Quick Time – where you can pause and narrate, advance at the building stage, reverse, and so forth. I've used this export for complex multi-media presentations and it works well. Here's awrite-up.

Russ

Precisely. I haven't updated my legacy iWork apps yet – even though it's a freebe.

Russ