Present and export

Presenting#

F5 presents from the start; Shift+F5 presents from the current slide. While presenting:

• →, Space or PageDown plays the next step; ←, Backspace or PageUp goes back. Add Shift to move a whole slide.
• Home / End jump to the first / last slide; type a number and press Enter to jump to that slide.
• B / W blank the screen to black / white, S shows presenter notes, F toggles fullscreen, R resets the timer and M reduces motion.
• One Escape leaves, even in fullscreen.
• Clicking the left quarter of the screen goes back; clicking anywhere else goes forward.

The full list is in Keyboard shortcuts.

Export#

Export ▾ offers these formats, each written to the project’s exports/:

• HTML — one self-contained .html with every slide, step, animation, transform and font, playing in any web browser with the same keys as Present. No Flux on the presenting machine, no network, nothing to install: open the file, give the talk.
• PDF — one page per slide, showing the slide with every build step applied: a handout or a copy to send before the talk (<deck>.pdf). Plots and text stay sharp at any zoom.
• PDF, each step — one page per build step, so a slide that reveals three things becomes three pages (<deck>-steps.pdf).
• PowerPoint — an editable .pptx (<deck>.pptx) that plays your builds and transitions in PowerPoint’s slide show. Text arrives as real text boxes (bold, italic, colour, superscript and subscript kept), and rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows and drawn paths as real PowerPoint shapes you can restyle. Plots arrive as vector pictures: right-click one and choose Convert to Shape (Group ▸ Ungroup in older versions) to edit its individual lines, points and labels.
• PowerPoint, final state — the same, but one PowerPoint slide per slide with every build step applied and no animation (<deck>-final.pptx): the easiest file to edit further.

How builds play in PowerPoint#

PowerPoint’s Morph transition tweens every object that appears under the same name on two consecutive slides, so it can carry what Flux animates — moves, Changes of size, colour or text, the camera, entrances and exits. A slide with builds becomes its resting state plus one PowerPoint slide per click, each entered by Morph over the effect’s duration:

• effects that play one after another within a click become extra slides that advance by themselves after the same gap; an auto step advances after its delay; steps chained with previous land on the same click;
• entrances and exits fade; Rise in and Pop in keep their lift or pop, and Pop out its shrink;
• the slide’s transition (fade, slide, push) plays when the slide is entered.

Objects are named with a leading !! (the Selection Pane shows it) — that is how Morph pairs them across slides, so keep the names if you edit a build. Morph uses its own ease, so a step’s easing, arc paths and eased stagger distribution are not carried over. A plot whose parts build up step by step cross-fades from one state to the next, and a count-up cross-fades from its first number to its last. Morph needs PowerPoint 2019 or Microsoft 365; older versions show a plain fade.

Page size, fonts and media#

PDF pages and PowerPoint slides have exactly the stage’s shape; PowerPoint slides use the standard 13.33-inch width. Videos show their poster frame in PDF and PowerPoint, and PDF pages show where animations end. Fonts that are not installed on the other computer (such as Gelasio) are replaced by PowerPoint.

Video#

Video… exports the current slide and all of its animation steps as one continuous .mp4. Set Delay between steps, Hold at start, and Hold at end, then choose where to save. Defaults are a 0.5-second step delay, a 1-second start hold, a 2-second end hold, and 1080p at 60 fps. Settings are remembered for the next export.

The start hold sets when the first animation begins. Later manual steps use your chosen delay; with previous steps play together, and automatic steps keep their authored delay. Animation durations, easing, Becomes, ghost copies, text changes and camera motion come from the same player used by Present. The video begins from the slide’s initial design regardless of the step you are editing.

Choose 720p, 1080p or 2160p, and 30 or 60 fps. The slide’s aspect ratio is preserved (portrait slides work too); the displayed pixel dimensions show the exact output size. MP4s use H.264 with AAC audio from unmuted clips. Individual timing holds can be 0–60 seconds; a single-slide video can be up to 30 minutes long. Static slides export as a still video.

Flux saves the slide before export and renders a snapshot in the background. You can keep editing while progress is shown, or Cancel export. An existing MP4 is replaced only after its replacement finishes successfully. Show in folder reveals the completed file. Export warnings identify missing assets or animation issues that also need attention in the slide. Video export is available in the desktop app.

The CLI uses the same exporter (timings here are milliseconds):

flux export-slide-video <deck-id> <slide-id> --out slide.mp4 \
  --step-delay 500 --start-hold 1000 --end-hold 2000 --height 1080 --fps 60

Embedding a slide in a document#

In Paper, choose Insert slide… or type /slide, then select this deck and a slide. The document keeps a live reference. Renaming, reordering, and saved edits update the linked block; playback begins at step 0 and advances one step per click.

Deleting a referenced slide or removing its deck lists the affected documents, including open unsaved documents, before you can choose to proceed. Deleting a block in Paper does not delete the source. HTML exports retain manual playback; PDF and Word show step 0.