PP 2007 won't play mpg file

[lemel_man]

Although I've used PP 2007 a bit I'm not an expert, and am having
problems with including a short mpg video into a presentation.
The video plays fine in Media Player and VLC, and I get no error message
when including it into a slide, but although it creates a black
rectangle that looks as if it's about to display the video, nothing
happens at all. If I click the rectangle it simply gets selected, but
nothing else - it remains as a black rectangle.
I'm using XP Pro+SP3.
Any ideas please?

 

[Victor Delta]

Although I've used PP 2007 a bit I'm not an expert, and am having problems
with including a short mpg video into a presentation.
The video plays fine in Media Player and VLC, and I get no error message
when including it into a slide, but although it creates a black rectangle
that looks as if it's about to display the video, nothing happens at all.
If I click the rectangle it simply gets selected, but nothing else - it
remains as a black rectangle.
I'm using XP Pro+SP3.
Any ideas please?

I had this problem and solved it:

a. by shortening the video file path name (PowerPoint can't handle long
file/path names)

b. converting the video to wmv format

Otherwise Google the problem - there are several websites that have helpful
tutorials for using video in PowerPoint.

Good luck,

V