Method and format for a packaged presentation?

I'm investigating the possibilities for producing a kind of
"lecture in a box" as a way of allowing a speaker who is not
able to go on tour to deliver, through a computer presentation,
a series of slides with accompanying video inset of the speaker.
Or, for use as a distributed teaching medium.

What I envisage is an XVGA presentation, 1024 x 768 pixels.
Most of this area -- let's say, the right-hand size three fifths
-- is used to display a series of slides.  These could be bullet
points, they could be still images; anything that a speaker might
typically present on screen, but in a somewhat squarer form factor.
I also envisage a brief simple dissolve transition between frames.

As for the left side of the screen, about 400 pixels in width,
I'd imagine that some of this would be used for branding and
constant titling, but there would also be a zone about 320
pixels wide and 450 pixels tall that would be a window for
the display of a cropped video close-up of the speaker.
(I imagine the speaker would be videotaped against a wider
background and the video then would be cropped to fit the
allocated zone.)

As for the method of delivery, I am relatively agnostic about
that, but I envisage it being played from the hard disk of a
reasonably well specified local laptop, not running over the
Internet, not even coming off a DVD disk.  In other words,
within reason I don't see compression and Kbps being a big
issue.

What I am concerned to achieve is the best possible impact and
image quality.  So, for example, I would rather that the non-
video components of the display are not greatly marred either
by compression artefacts (as they would be on a video DVD)
or by interpolation (as they would if a format such as PAL
video QuickTime were expanded to run in full-screen mode).
For example, if I use screen captures, I don't want them
mushed up.  The sharper they can be, the better.

= = = =

My first throught was to use Final Cut Pro to create a movie
with a frame rate of 25 fps, at 1024 x 768 pixels ... drop the
slide images onto the timeline and set transitions ... layer in
the actual movie clips within that, masked with an alpha channel
... then convert the result to MPEG-4, which I have found to be
better at conserving detail in still images than some other DCT-
based methods.

However, I can't actually find a way of getting Final Cut Pro
to work in a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels.  (It seems possible
to *define* such a format but I can't find a way to *use* it.)

Alternatively, I am wondering if such a thing could be put together
in Flash.  I have no Flash experience, but I did use Director quite
some time ago, and I think they are related...

Any tips about the direction in which I should be thinking would
be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Conrad
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