lecture.studio

Export to PDF and PowerPoint

Lecture Studio does not export itself; marp-cli turns the same file into PDF, PPTX or HTML.

Lecture Studio renders and presents decks but has no export command yet. Because a deck is a standard Marp file, marp-cli exports it to PDF, PowerPoint or HTML with one command, and any other Marp tool works too.

Info

The in-app reference says that export "uses the Marp toolchain". That means the commands below, run in a terminal, not a button in the app.

Install marp-cli#

With Node.js installed:

npm install -g @marp-team/marp-cli

Or run it without installing, with npx @marp-team/marp-cli in place of marp below. PDF and PPTX export need a Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Edge or Chromium) on the Mac; marp-cli finds it on its own.

Export a deck#

Run the commands from the unit's folder so that ./assets/… image paths resolve:

cd "~/Documents/Lecture Studio/cs101-fall26/week3"
marp week3-slides.md --pdf                 # week3-slides.pdf
marp week3-slides.md --pptx                # week3-slides.pptx
marp week3-slides.md --html                # week3-slides.html, self-contained
marp week3-slides.md --pdf --allow-local-files

--allow-local-files is needed when the deck references images outside the folder. --pdf-notes adds the speaker notes to the PDF; --pptx-editable produces an editable PowerPoint at the cost of some fidelity.

Themed decks#

Decks written by the scaffolds carry their style inline and need nothing else. A deck that names theme: ytu-lecture or theme: ytu-talk needs the theme file, which lives in the themes/ folder of the source repository:

marp week3-slides.md --pdf --theme-set /path/to/lecture-studio/themes

A whole course#

cd "~/Documents/Lecture Studio/cs101-fall26"
for f in week*/week*-slides.md; do marp "$f" --pdf; done

The PDFs land next to the decks. They are ignored when a course is copied into a new term, on purpose: each term exports its own.

Read more#

The guide Export Marp to PDF and PPTX with marp-cli covers what each format keeps and loses and how to script exports.