Playing movies

[laurenm]

Here's an interesting one that I would love to know how to solve. We are on a
PC running Windows XP Professional and Office XP. When any user is logged in
, except for an administrator, we have issues with a movie file playing
through PowerPoint. When we insert the movie, we get a green striped image
that flashes on and off the screen. It then will look as if the movie inserts
but it will not play. FYI, the movie is in a MPEG format. We can play it in
Windows Media Player with no problem but not if we link it to a PowerPoint
presentation. However, if we are logged in as Administrator, the movie
inserts and plays with no problem on the same machine using the same
PowerPoint. It seems like a security issue but we are not sure how. Anyone
have thoughts on what to do? Please let me know.

Thanks!
Lauren

 

[Austin Myers]

Lauren,

First, you might want to look at the tutorial I put together on PowerPoint
and using multimedia.

http://www.pfcmedia.com/Tutorial.htm

As to why the admin can do it and no one else, it's very hard to venture a
guess without knowing specifically how the machine is set up, what
restrictions are in place, and where everything has been located on the hard
drive. Just a guess out of the blue, the admin has access to the needed
codec, or his/her desktop is configured differently.

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCMedia http://www.pfcmedia.com

 

[laurenm]

Thanks so much for your response. I will check the codecs installed to see if
this is the issue.

LaurenM

 

[laurenm]

I just checked out the codecs and it looks like they are the same when logged
on as Administrator and as another user. I checked in the display settings as
well and it looks like everything is the same. This is very puzzling. There
doesn't seem to be anything different in the set up. Is there any setting
profile related that could cause this?

 

[Austin Myers]

How did you inspect teh codecs installed? If you used Windows to do it you
aren't really getting the full details. I use and recommend "mmview" to
look at installed codecs and activx controls dealing with media.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mmview.html

Be forwarned, this app generates LOTS of information. As an example on a
fresh install of WinXP if you run this app it will show well over 100
entries, on my test machine for media it shows over 400 entries. (While the
windows control panel may only show a dozen or so.)


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCMedia http://www.pfcmedia.com

 

[laurenm]

Thanks for your time on this. I will check into your recommendation. However,
I am still not sure this is it because why would the codecs vary from the
Administrator profile and any other profile? Seems weird to me. It's almost
seems like a rights issue but, again, I don't know how.

Thanks,
LaurenM

 

[Austin Myers]

Thanks for your time on this. I will check into your recommendation.
However,
I am still not sure this is it because why would the codecs vary from the
Administrator profile and any other profile? Seems weird to me. It's
almost
seems like a rights issue but, again, I don't know how.

Hmmm, lets say the administrator installed a media application that included
codecs with it. Other users would be locked out from using them unless the
admin specifically granted permission to use them.

Again, I know you don't like hearing it but without knowing exactlly how the
machine is set up I am taking some pretty wild guesses at this point.

You might also want to use a utility called GSpot to determine exactlly
which code the file needs.

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/


Um, and it goes without saying, you might want to give PFCMedia a try as
it's designed to solve these very issues. What the heck, it's a free
download so you have nothing to loose.

http://www.pfcmedia.com


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCMedia http://www.pfcmedia.com

 

[laurenm]

Thanks so much. I will give your suggestions a try. I really appreciate it!

Lauren