Powerpoint Madness

farss wrote on 3/28/2008, 7:32 PM

You'd think delivering a video that'd work in PPT 03 or 07 would be fairly trivial but not so. During my wasted hours trying to crack this for a client I did find this site:

http://www.playsforcertain.com/tutorial.htm

Lots of good advice and tips, pay attention to the fact that even though your video may play in WMP it does NOT mean it'll play in PPT as PPT uses a different player, MCI. The site does tell you how to run the player that PPT does use to check your video and a few other tips as well. I hope all the advice they have helps someone, I still cannot deliver a video in ANY format that PPT will play.
At best it'll play the first frame and then black, at worst it'll lockup PPT. And it isn't my PC. The client has the same problem and he's running PPT 03 and I'm running PPT 07. The final irony is it all works fine on my old clunky PIII with PPT 2000, yish.

Update:

Firstly, make certain the PC running PPT has the latest video drivers installed. I got mpeg-2 to work after I updated the video card drivers. Before it played but the video was a mess. PPT plays the video out as an overlay.

I bit the bullet and downloaded PFCMedia. It does install a number of components including Visual Studio and WME as well as itself. The Pro version would give your client the ability to trim the video and do a few other basic edits. After installing their widget into the Ribbon all works quite well. Seems to me money well spent, you can give the client almost any video format and this will encode it into something that does play.

PFC also have a freebie for bundling up all the video assets into a zip file. PPT can pack itself up but it doesn't include the video assets.

Hope this is of help to someone. Wrangling these problems shouldn't be part of our job but don't even think about trying to explain that to a client.

Bob.

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 3/28/2008, 9:47 PM

Bob,
The most reliable video format for Powerpoint is MPEG-1. I've made some pretty involved ones with several clips.

PP is way behind the curve in its ability to handle media. If that wasn't bad enough, there is no way to natively export PPT to video. You need to capture the screen or video card output to accomplish it.

PeterWright wrote on 3/28/2008, 10:09 PM

Yes, I agree with musicvid - MPG1 will play on any PC. I have used WMV9 as well, but because there seem to be issues with different versions of codecs and players, MPG1 is more reliable.

I don't know if things have changed, but a few years back I tried using MPEG2, and it looked fine on my machine, but when I delivered it to my client the video was black, as they didn't have an MPG2 encoder installed.

farss wrote on 3/28/2008, 11:27 PM

The key to understanding PPT and several other things too I've found out is they don't use the WMP that we normally see, they use a different one. If you go Run, type in "mplay2.exe" (only for XP) the same player that is used in PPT opens.

Part of my problem was the video card driver was hopelessly out of date so even mpeg-1 wouldn't play properly. Updating the drive fixed that. However still no joy with WMV or AVI.

How PFCMedia handles the problem is by adding a widget to PPT that encodes any video to WMV that does play. In the end a good add on for $50.

One other tip that can cause things to not play in PPT, if the path to media file is too long.

Bob.

Terje wrote on 3/28/2008, 11:47 PM

If that wasn't bad enough, there is no way to natively export PPT to video.

To VIDEO? That's a crazy idea, PP doesn't export images to GIF, JPG or any other image format properly. Colors are screwed up etc. PP is a horrible product and the only way I have found to work it into a modern multimedia presentation is to use Camtasia to capture PP presentations as video, export these in high quality and edit in Vegas.

JackW wrote on 3/29/2008, 12:01 AM

We use an ATI 8500DV card to play the PPT persentation from the computer to our editing computer. Transfers beautifully, although music or VO on the PPT often won't retain sync very well. No need for intermediate software such as Camtasia.

Jack

I haven't tried any of these, but on the face of it they look like they might be good alternatives to PowerPoint.

rtbond wrote on 3/29/2008, 6:00 AM

Just as an FYI, on my WIndows XP Pro installation there is no "mplay2.exe". There is however an "mplay32.exe" (reports to be Microsoft Media Player v5.2) and there is a "mplayer2.exe" (reports to be the old Windows Media Player v6.4).

I am not sure which if these (if either) you are referring to as the native PPT player. I'm guessing it would be "mplay32.exe" .

Thanks for the insights on embedding video in PPT.

--Rob

farss wrote on 3/29/2008, 6:28 AM

My bad.
XP should be using mplayer2.exe, Win2k should be using mplay32.exe. I'm only quoting the site I gave the link to at the top.

For what it's worth I've also had my install of SFPro get messed up when something went wrong with Windoz embedded player.

Bob.