Animation timeline

[kvitso]

I am seeking help here to see if PowerPoint has the features of being used to generate slide videos in an effective manner. Currently I am using Adobe Captivate as the main software, but PowerPoint as the slide generator and where animations are also set (audio/voiceovers are added in Captivate).

I would like to use PowerPoint for the entire process, generate the video and convert it after to a better format than *.wmv

My current problem is that I cannot find a way to preview the slides (to test animation/audio timings) without having to play the slide from the beginning each time (which is very time consuming when I am interested to check the timings that happen several minutes into the slide). Is there a way to work with PowerPoint so that I can move the marker to any specific part if the slide duration and play from there?

To be honest, I find it a bit strange that (at least as far as I can tell) PowerPoint does not have a better timeline-feature (like most other similar software for editing presentations/videos has) that allows for this, since it is such a strong and long-lived product otherwise.