Cant get film clips into powerpoint presentation

[Robert]

Hi again experts - I looked at the instructions for putting film clips into
a powerpoint presentation and found two different ways, neither of which
works. The first was just to put the film clip into the slide, after which
I was to get a message asking whether I want it to run automatically or on a
mouse click. Nothing happened when I chose the film clip, a .avi file and
clicked "insert." The second way was to insert it as an object. In this
case, an icon appeared in the slide, but I can't get it to run.

Thanks again for any advice.

Robert

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Robert,

Have you viewed the slideshow...and then clicked the film icon?

What version of powerpoint?
Where did the avi clip come from?

The best starting page when troubleshooting video
http://www.echosvoice.com/tshoot_video2.htm

Cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
free powerpoint templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com

 

[Robert]

I did eventually get an icon onto the slide, by going to "insert movies and
sounds", then "insert video clip" and browsing to the .avi file. Now when I
do a slide show, a window comes up that says, "video not available. Can not
find vids.mjpg decompressor".

It is Powerpoint 2000, 9.0.2716 and the avi clip came from my Canon 500S
video camera. It plays fine with windows media player.

 

[Sonia]

TAJ was going to suggest this, so I'll do it for him. Try renaming the file
giving it an extension of MPG and then insert it. Your camera has recorded it
as MPG but named it as AVI. This is not uncommon.

 

[Robert]

Well, that works. Thanks Sonia. Why is Windows Media Player able to
recognize that an avi is really an mpg and play it, but Powerpoint can't?

 

[Sonia]

It's a difference in architecture and I can't tell you why (because I don't
know). PowerPoint doesn't even play the media. It hands it off to Windows.
Windows looks at its settings in the Registry and sees that a file with an AVI
extension should be played as an AVI. Windows Media Player is, I assume, a bit
more sophisticated and looks deeper and sees that it is really an MPG file
wearing AVI clothing. Camera manufacturers shouldn't misname the video files, I
guess.

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Psychic now!

Yeah I was going to suggest that

TAJ

 

[Sonia]

I knew that! LOL! I figured you were out on the town or at the pub, so decided
to be "virtual TAJ".