PowerPoint Playback Problems

[John R. Johnson]

1. The images I'm linking to in my presentation are all PSD images with no
background so they shouldn't appear inside a white box. About half the time
I play the presentation, some look like EPS images without a clipping path.
I've checked all the "fill" settings and everything is indicated to have "No
Fill."

2. The show will NOT playback smoothly. Very jumpy, and some of the
animations don't play at all. For instance, instead of a text box zooming
forward, it just pops into the near position. This happens sporadically all
the way through the piece.

3. The music track I'm using drops out temporarily as some of the effects
occur, even though it's supposed to play through till the end of the
presentation. It plays OK through the first two slides, then starts winking
out.

4. When I try to save the show as a QuickTIme Movie, or Optimize the file,
it crashes the PowerPoint application. Just refuses to save it as movie of
any kind, even when I disable all the transitions. Ready to shoot myself
here.

 

[mmmmark]

1. The images I'm linking to in my presentation are all PSD images with no
background so they shouldn't appear inside a white box. About half the
time
I play the presentation, some look like EPS images without a clipping
path.
I've checked all the "fill" settings and everything is indicated to have
"No
Fill."

2. The show will NOT playback smoothly. Very jumpy, and some of the
animations don't play at all. For instance, instead of a text box zooming
forward, it just pops into the near position. This happens sporadically
all
the way through the piece.

3. The music track I'm using drops out temporarily as some of the effects
occur, even though it's supposed to play through till the end of the
presentation. It plays OK through the first two slides, then starts
winking
out.

4. When I try to save the show as a QuickTIme Movie, or Optimize the
file,
it crashes the PowerPoint application. Just refuses to save it as movie of
any kind, even when I disable all the transitions. Ready to shoot myself
here.

I think you'd have better luck using .gif files with a transparent
background. They are smaller, achieve the same effect and don't depend on
quicktime for their display (which is how they can do this on Mac and not
the PC version). I think. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Using the smaller .gif files should make the presentation much quicker,
since PP isn't have to work with such large files.

Let us know how you turn out!

-Mark

 

[John R. Johnson]

I think you'd have better luck using .gif files with a transparent
background. They are smaller, achieve the same effect and don't depend on
quicktime for their display (which is how they can do this on Mac and not
the PC version). I think. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Using the smaller .gif files should make the presentation much quicker,
since PP isn't have to work with such large files.

Let us know how you turn out!

-Mark

When I use transparent .gifs instead of psd files, the white or highlighted
areas of the images become transparent and the background shows through
during the animation. The images are smaller, but it also does NOT seem to
effect the smoothness of the playback, which is still jumpy.

Also, when Itry to "Make Movie" or optimize the presentation, PowerPoint
crashes. No matter what I do, it will not save the presentation as a .mov.
J

 

[mmmmark]

When I use transparent .gifs instead of psd files, the white or
highlighted
areas of the images become transparent and the background shows through
during the animation. The images are smaller, but it also does NOT seem
to
effect the smoothness of the playback, which is still jumpy.

Also, when Itry to "Make Movie" or optimize the presentation, PowerPoint
crashes. No matter what I do, it will not save the presentation as a .mov.
J

If you work with a transparent pasteboard in Photoshop, anything with color
will not be transparent when converting to .gif if you are using the proper
matte. Do a "save for web" which gives you some added flexibility. This
isn't the primary problem, obviously though.

It sounds like your quicktime version isn't palying nice. Do you still have
6 or do you have version 7? Is it fullly up to date--7.0.4? Is office
fully updated to 11.2.3?

Just a thought.

-Mark

 

[John R. Johnson]

If you work with a transparent pasteboard in Photoshop, anything with color
will not be transparent when converting to .gif if you are using the proper
matte. Do a "save for web" which gives you some added flexibility. This
isn't the primary problem, obviously though.

It sounds like your quicktime version isn't palying nice. Do you still have
6 or do you have version 7? Is it fullly up to date--7.0.4? Is office
fully updated to 11.2.3?

Just a thought.

-Mark

I tried creating a new presentation using a couple of small GIF images, but
the playback was still very jumpy, with many of the animations skipping. So
the images are not the problem. They are also not what is causing PowerPoint
to crash whenever I try to "Make Movie." I

I have PowerPoint 11.0 on this Mac G4. I also have QuickTime 7.0.4 installed
and have no trouble playing movies from other sources.

I'm also using a music track on this presentation, which starts at the first
slide. The playback of the sound is smooth and uninterrupted until the 4
slide, when it begins to stop and start erratically.

John

 

[mmmmark]

I tried creating a new presentation using a couple of small GIF images,
but
the playback was still very jumpy, with many of the animations skipping.
So
the images are not the problem. They are also not what is causing
PowerPoint
to crash whenever I try to "Make Movie." I

I have PowerPoint 11.0 on this Mac G4. I also have QuickTime 7.0.4
installed
and have no trouble playing movies from other sources.

I'm also using a music track on this presentation, which starts at the
first
slide. The playback of the sound is smooth and uninterrupted until the 4
slide, when it begins to stop and start erratically.

John

Is Powerpoint fully updated? What size music files are you using? How big
are the .PSD files you are using? How much RAM do you have?

I might be that Powerpoint starts using virtual memory right at the
slow-down point.

Just thinking out loud!

-Mark

 

[John R. Johnson]

Is Powerpoint fully updated? What size music files are you using? How big
are the .PSD files you are using? How much RAM do you have?

I might be that Powerpoint starts using virtual memory right at the
slow-down point.

Just thinking out loud!

-Mark

As I said, I double checked the whole memory issue by creating a new
presentation using very small image files-- GIFs, with no music track. I
still got the jumpy playback. I did update to 11.2.3, but that hasn't
helped, either. One thing the smaller file version did help with was the
problem I had when trying to "Make Movie". PowerPoint didn't crash, as it
had with the larger file, and I was able to create a mov.

Let me ask some basic PPT questions here:
Are there basic PPT rules about size and resolution of the image files you
can use?
Is it better to "Insert" a background music track on the Master Slide, or
can it work just as well when it's inserted into the slide presentation?
What about the actual dimensions of the slide show's screen size? What is
the idea size for that?
Can you give me a quick lesson here on how to insert a music track on a
Master Slide, when the show had no master slide to begin with?