Embedding large MPEG files in PowerPoint - 2003 crashes

[Presentor]

I have a number of video clips (MPEG) ranging from 3Meg to about 25Meg. I've
attached the smaller clips to a PP slide and they all show the first frame of
the clip in the window and play fine. However, when trying to attach the
larger files, probably over 7Meg and up....all I get is a 'black' window
where the 1st-frame should be and when I attempted to play it, it crashed PP
and the media player made funny clicks and noises.....had to END TASK and
start again.

Is there any trick to attaching larger files...it appears that's the only
difference in the clips.

Thanks !!!!

 

[Troy @ TLC Creative]

Movies and PowerPoint are one of those 'tricky' issues. But in general the
size of the movie file does not matter to PowerPoint because it is actually
linking to the movie file (it is not embedded - unless we go into Flash
movies and the option to embed .swf's). Most likely the culprit is something
with the computer setup.

First - can the movies play in WMP or other video player?
Second - does computer have the most up-to-date video drivers, plenty of
memory and a video card?

Here is a great source of info on how PPT interacts with video, perhaps this
and the above will help troubleshoot the problems:
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00099.htm

Let us know if anything helps - or if this brings up new questions...
--
Best Regards,
Troy Chollar
TLC Creative Services, Inc.
troy at tlc creative dot com
www dot tlccreative dot com
==================================
A Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
==================================

 

[Adam Crowley]

Is it possible that the bigger files are MPEG2 rather than MPEG1? (both have
the extension .mpg)
It's possible that you can't play MPEG2 files on your computer without the
aid of a third party decoder - if you suspect this is the case you could try
downloading the trial MPEG decoder from www.elecard.com

Also the most common problem I get with MPEG playback is with incorrectly
encoded clips. Many encoding errors can be corrected very easily by
demultiplexing (separating the video and audio streams of) the MPEG and then
remultiplexing (making the streams into a single MPEG file again) it with a
tool such as TMPGEnc at www.tmpgenc.net