Comments

jrazz wrote on 11/13/2006, 9:19 AM
You need to focus on bitrate and the playback machine's processing power and ram and how much is tied up in performing system tasks. I make a wmv file that you want (optimal choice) and play it on the machine that the powerpoint presentation will be played on. If it stutters or has problems encode at a smaller bitrate until it does not have issues any longer.

j razz
dvideo wrote on 11/13/2006, 9:27 AM
Generaly though, assuming that playback is on an average computer (fair amount of Ram and so on) What size should I be looking at?
gordyboy wrote on 11/13/2006, 9:47 AM
I was running a wmv file of 80mb on a 1ghz processor with 512mb of RAM yesterday and it ran OK. This was encoded at a high quality setting in Vegas (the data rate is reported as 3335kbps). If you resize the video to make it full screen in Powerpoint though, it will usually choke and stutter. I have found it also is affected by what other things are going on in your presentation in slides before your clip starts playing.

I haven't found much better results with my laptop which has 1gb of ram and a 3.4ghz processor with wmv files. Sometimes they run OK, sometimes not.

I use Onstage DVD which is a plug-in for Powerpoint which allows you to play files from a DVD at full screen resolution within Powerpoint. I render all my clips in Vegas using the DVDA template, build a DVD in DVDA and then render to a hard disc location. Onstage DVD just needs the Video_TS file to play files from.

Cheers

gb