Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 Bible

PowerPoint's handling of movie files is not always optimal because it uses the antiquated MCI Media player to play video. For more information about PowerPoint and video, see http://www.pfcmedia.com/multimediatutorial.htm. There are some workarounds available for most of the common problems, however, and the following sections explain some of them.

Troubleshooting Movies That Won't Play

For problems with movies that won't play, explore one or more of these possible fixes:

• Play it in Windows Media Player: If your movie won't play in PowerPoint, try Media Player. (Go to http://www.microsoft.com and download the latest version of Media Player if you don't have it.) If it plays there, you can insert the clip as an object with the Insert tab's Object button, as you learned in Chapter 15. You can't set any of the normal PowerPoint options for the clip; you play it through Windows Media Player instead during the presentation.

• Download a codec: If your movie won't play anywhere, not in PowerPoint or in any of your players, perhaps your system does not have the needed codec, which is a compression/decompression driver; different formats need different ones. When you play a video clip in Windows Media Player for which you do not have the proper codec, it tries to connect to Microsoft's servers to download one automatically. If that fails, you can try manually searching the Web for suitable codecs for that file format. You can also try downloading the latest official set of codecs for Windows Media Player from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/codecdownload.aspx.

• Still doesn't work? Try a different player: Windows Media Player does not support all video formats, but you can find a different player that will. If you do, you can install it, and then embed the movie as an object associated with that program, as you embedded objects in Chapter 15. To do this, you need to set the new program as the default for handling that file extension. In Windows XP, choose Tools Folder Options File Types in a Windows file-management window to change extension associations. In Windows Vista, from the Control Panel, click Programs, and under Default Programs, click Make a File Type Always Open in a Specific Program.

• Troubles with DVDs: DVD movie clips are a special case. Windows Media Player may attempt to play them but fail, and you get an unhelpful generic error message. This is usually caused by not having a DVD hardware or software-based encoder/decoder. If your PC plays DVD movies, then you already have one. If not, there are many good ones. See if your PC originally came with a DVD movie player application, and if so, reinstall it-that's the cheap option. Otherwise, you can try WinDVD; a free trial is available at http://www.intervideo.com. You can then use the Object button on the Insert tab to insert the clip and let it play with WinDVD or whatever player you are using.

• Convert to WMV format: PowerPoint easily handles Windows Media Video (WMV) format clips. You can import a video clip into Windows Movie Maker (free with Windows XP and Windows Vista) and then export it to WMV format from there.

• Use a third-party utility: PlaysForCertain (PFC) is a utility that converts and prepares video files to work within PowerPoint. A free 14-day trial is available from http://www.pfcmedia.com. You might find it easier to simply get this utility than to spend a lot of time messing with various file formats.

Troubleshooting Poor Playback Quality

Be aware that slower, older computers, especially those with a meager amount of RAM, may not present your video clip to its best advantage. The sound may not match the video, the video may be jerky, and a host of other little annoying performance glitches may occur. On such PCs, it is best to limit the live-action video that you use and rely more on animated GIFs, simple WMV animations, and other less system-taxing video clips.

When you are constructing a presentation, keep in mind that you may be showing it on a lesser computer than the one on which you are creating it, and therefore performance problems may crop up during the presentation that you did not anticipate. Here are some ideas for at least partially remediating the situation:

• Make sure you test the presentation on the actual computer on which you are going to show it, especially if you need a nonstandard codec.

• Copy the entire presentation and all of its support files to the fastest hard disk on the system instead of running it from a CD. Hard disks have much faster access time. Use Package for CD to collect the needed files instead of manually copying them through Windows, to ensure that you get all of the files and properly resolve their links.

• Run the entire presentation on the playback PC from start to finish beforehand. If there are delays, jerks, and lack of synchronization, just let it play itself out. Then try the whole presentation again, and it will usually be much better the second time. This happens because the system caches some of the data, and it's faster to read it from the cache than from the disk.

• Make sure the playback PC is in the best shape it can be in. If feasible, upgrade its RAM. Run Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup on it, and make sure its video driver is up to date.

• Work with the original media clips to decrease their complexity, and then reimport them into PowerPoint. For example, use video-editing software to lower the frames per second of video clips, and use image-editing software to lower the dots per inch of any large graphics.

• If possible, spread out the more complex slides in the presentation so that they are not adjacent to one another. Have an intervening slide that is just simple text.

• If all else fails, transfer the presentation to videotape or digital video from the original PC (where presumably it plays correctly). This is covered later in the chapter.

Balancing Video Impact with File Size and Performance

When you are recording your own video clips with a video camera or other device, it is easy to overshoot. Video clips take up a huge amount of disk space.

Movie files are linked to the PowerPoint file, rather than embedded, so they do not dramatically increase the size of the PowerPoint file. However, because the linked movie file is required when you show the presentation, having a movie does greatly increase the amount of disk space required for storing the whole presentation package.

Depending on the amount of space available on your computer's hard disk, and whether you need to transfer your PowerPoint file to another PC, you may want to keep the number of seconds of recorded video to a minimum to ensure that the file size stays manageable. On the other hand, if you have a powerful computer with plenty of hard disk space and a lot of cool video clips to show, go for it!