Technical specifications and FAQ for Prezi Video on Windows

In this article, you can find all the technical information about the installation and operation of the Prezi Video desktop application for Windows.

System requirements

Windows version

Windows 10 - Windows 10 N & KN is only supported if the media feature pack is installed

Hardware

OS: Windows 10 (64 bit or 32bit) or newer with updated drivers and DirectX 11 or higher
Processor: Intel Core i3 2.00 GHz or AMD equivalent
Memory: Minimum of 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 405 / AMD Radeon 5000 or higher with 512 MB memory (or comparable)

Installation

32 bit version can only be installed on 32 bit Windows
64 bit version can only be installed on 64 bit Windows
The installer is 250-300 MB
Required free disk space: 200-300 MB for the application + required frameworks if need
The following frameworks are also required to be installed - the installer installs them on-demand:

Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2019 x86 (for 32 bit and 64 bit application as well)
Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2019 x64 (only for 64 bit)
DirectX 11 (it should be shipped with Windows 10

Installation may or may not require internet connection
Installation requires administrator rights

Supported files

*.pv - Prezi Video files created based on Prezi presentations
*.pvl - Prezi Video files created based on the light create flow
*.ppt - imported content into Prezi Video files
*.pptx - imported content into Prezi Video files

Camera and microphone troubleshooting

For troubleshooting tips in the Prezi Video desktop app, please check this article. For troubleshooting camera and microphone issues on your computer, please check this page.

Deployment guide

What kind of installers are available?

MSI installer: Fully customizable installer only for administrators. In this case, the application doesn't update itself when a new upgrade is available. External software components need to be installed by the admin as well.
Omaha based EXE installer: the app automatically installs itself to %ProgramFiles% and updates itself in the background without any user interaction
Omaha based web EXE installer: It’s a really small sized installer (2-3 MB) and downloads the application files and prerequisites on demand during installation

Does the Software need more software-components or windows-updates for running (for example Java?)

VC++ redist x86 and x64
DirectX 11

Can the Software be installed on another Partition than (C:\)?

MSI installer: admin can change the install location
Omaha based EXE installer: the app automatically installs itself to %ProgramFiles%

Does the Program run with an activated UAC?

Yes, elevated rights are only needed for installation.

Does the program run with user rights?

The application runs with user rights.

Does the software need an active internet connection during installation (registration)?

No registration is required. Internet connection is only needed if the web Omaha installer is used.

Is a silent installation possible?

It’s possible with the MSI and Omaha installers as well.

Where can I find the installation-related log files?

To access the logs, just type %temp% into windows explorer and press enter.

Is there a way to install and suppress the app launch on install?

Yes, by using the MSI installer.

Is it possible to deploy the application through an SCCM package?

Yes, by using the MSI installer.

Is it possible to deploy the application to virtualized environments?

Yes, but graphics acceleration has to be turned on on the given platform.

What technologies are used?

https://github.com/google/omaha - Connect to preview (local build by Prezi)

https://www.advancedinstaller.com/

https://github.com/Crystalnix/omaha-server - Connect to preview (hosted by Prezi)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Core (self-hosting)

Is the application available from the Microsoft Store?

No, not yet.

Is any MSIX installer available?

No, not yet.

Where are the updates coming from?

The Omaha update server is hosted by Prezi on AWS. The update servers are hosted on EC2 and the update packages and update descriptors itself are on S3.

Logging

MSI logs under %temp%
Prezi analytics and developer logs under %localappdata%\Prezi.Cast\GlassBox
Engine logs under %temp%\Prezi.Cast\Engine\Log

Storage

%temp%\Prezi.Cast - Temporary files used by the application, which is cleaned up after they’re not used anymore.
%localappdata%\Prezi.Cast - session information, logs, imported content
Sensitive information is encrypted using the Windows Data Protection APIs.

Registry - storing feature flags, settings and updater information

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Prezi

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Prezi

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Prezi

Crash reporting

Sentry.io is used for C# and C++ crash reporting.
Only the user device ID is sent to Sentry.io, which helps us make the connection between crash reports and Prezi analytics logs. The user’s, more precisely the machine’s device id is located under C:\ProgramData\Prezi\pui

Media stack

The application heavily relies on Microsoft Media Foundation for:

enumerating camera and microphone devices
compositing the webcam + presentation content
recording video
trimming and transcoding video to different formats

Media Foundation is a lower level, built-in OS component (except for Windows N and KN versions), which relies on external encoder, decoder, … shipped by the GPU drivers.

The virtual camera is a DShow filter, registered globally by the application installer.

Virtual camera

The virtual camera DLLs are registered by the registrator service that installer registers (virtual-cam-registration-service.exe) at install time. As the virtual camera DLLs are global resources, the application is only updated if the DLLs are not in use.

The virtual camera components:

Virtual camera DLLs

(x86) virtual-cam.dll
(x64) virtual-cam_x64.dll

Virtual camera registration util

virtual-cam-registration.exe

Virtual camera registrator service

virtual-cam-registration-service.exe

General topics

Does the software need an active internet connection while running?

Only for accessing the cloud-based features:

login
import ppt/presentation
upload video/document

You need to log in to be able to use certain features of the application even in offline mode. You should be able to use the application without (silently) logging in again for 30 days.

Can the Software be used with a proxy-Server & which ports are needed for communication?

System-wide proxy settings are used automatically, no setup is needed (eg. the ones that are set in Control Panel \ Internet Options). However, custom proxy settings that need authentication are currently not supported.

The software firewall of windows is active in general and deactivates all incoming ports. Is that a problem for the Software?

The applications work with the default Windows firewall. For more strict company firewalls that restrict access to domains, the IT admin needs to enable access to the Prezi servers:

Do we support deep linking?

Yes, via prezi-video://.

Do we support SSO/SAML?

Yes, besides Prezi login, Facebook and Google login is available. SAML is also supported. To learn more about setting up SAML SSO for your team, please check this article.