Are there any demo mpeg files available?

[NickM]

Are there any sites which post examples of various mpeg and other format
video files which are known to play OK in Powerpoint?

I'd be interested to download some examples to work with to help me resolve
my own display problems (rather than use my own video files generated from
Pinnacle Studio, which only seem to play OK in mpeg1 format).

Thanks, and happy winter solstice
Nick

 

[Adam Crowley]

I'm not aware of such a site but there is plenty of knowledge here about how
video works in PowerPoint, which formats should play well and how to fix
problems.
MPEG1 is a trusty format and usually plays well on most machines. What
formats are you having trouble with?

A quick and far from complete rundown:
Only early versions of Quicktime work in PowerPoint unless you insert as an
object.
MPEG1 is pretty reliable, MPEG2 can work depending on your hardware/software
setup.
AVI should be fine as long as the codec used is on the playback machine.

 

[TAJ Simmons]

What Adam said.....that just about sums up the current state of video play

TAJ

 

[NickM]

I've had no problems putting mpeg1 into PowerPoint 2000 presentations, and
transfering them from machine to machine, and have used them in public
lectures. But the quality is not very good, and I'd like to do better. I can
generate mpeg2 files from my own captured video footage and view them OK
with Media Player. However if I try to insert them, they appear just as
black blocks on the screen. I've been lurking here for a few weeks, and
learnt quite a lot - especially from Sonia's responses, but have seen many
questions repeated time and again. It struck me that I ought to endeavour to
try to resolve my own difficulties myself, before coming to this group to
the same old questions yet again

If someone had posted examples of different video files that are proven to
work in PowerPoint, I could then use them to try to resolve my own problems.
I read somewhere that mpeg2 files generated from Pinnacle Studio software
don't always confirm to correct standards (whatever they might be). It can
be frustrating trying to solve one problem, only to discover that the tool
you've been using is itself faulty. I'd like to play around with my
software/hardware setting, but preferably using a video file that I know
others have already shown work OK. Perhaps someone could make such examples
available for download. I think it would be a great help. Hence my
question.
Many thanks

Nick Moyes
Derby Museum, England

 

[Sonia]

If only it were that simple. If you haven't read the tutorial on Multimedia in
PowerPoint, it's at
http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/multimedia.htm . You'll see in
section 3 how it's highly dependent upon your system's MCI settings. If they
have been tampered with by Real Media or other invasive software, videos may not
work. Additionally, if a video file requires a decompressor and it's not
installed on your system, PowerPoint will spit it out.

Echo has put together a list of remedies that most frequently address other
problems with videos. You'll see it at
http://www.echosvoice.com/tshoot_video2.htm. You should check each of the six
steps.

Also, digital cameras often misname their video files and as AVIs they don't
work, but rename them to MPG and voila! They work fine.

Once you find a format that works for *you* on *your system*, be happy and stick
with it. But if you plan to distribute the presentation, all bets are off. In
that case you may want to consider WMV for playing on other Windows systems.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the problem that I have encountered, along with
others, when PowerPoint 2003 hangs on a Windows XP SP2 system if you insert an
MPG1 file that played fine on Windows XP SP 1. In that case it is recommended
that you convert the video to AVI or WMV.