Slow Quicktime in Powerpoint 2004

[Bill]

I just recently installed Office 2004. I did not delete Office v.X,
since the documentation indicated it was not necessary to do so. I am
finding that embedded Quicktime movies that played fine in Powerpoint
X (30 fps) play unacceptably slowly in Powerpoint 2004 (very low frame
rate, many lost frames). I am running on

15" G4 PowerBook
1.25 GHz processor
512MB of DDR RAM.


Any thoughts on what to do? Thanks.

 

[Greg Pinelo]

I have exactly the same problem. PPT X is fine. PPT 2004 stutters.

Same computer.

 

[Greg Pinelo]

I should also say that the PPT X stuttered up until either one of the last
10.2.x updates or 10.3 (I can't remember which). The problem is between PPT
and either Quicktime or the 10.3 itself.

 

[Ed]

I did remove Office v.X when I installed 2004 and I am having the same
problem. I can not use video of any size without it lagging. The audio seems
to be fine but the video is skipping. This is only when I am running the
show. Previewing the video when not in the show seems fine.
I'm running OS 10.3.4
Dual 867
Dual 450
15" G4 powerbook 550

 

[Jack's Mom]

same here! This sucks!

 

[lorry]

me too

brand new powerbook 2G Ram - only things installed are the updates from the
mac website and office 2004.

Many other porblems including animating a transparency effect, getting
animations to link (sometimes works sometimes not)

not happy

LD

 

[Nancy Cho]

Hi, I'm one of the testers in PowerPoint and saw your postings. For those
of you who are experiencing this problem, can you reply to me personally via
my hotmail account? I need actual examples of presentations and QT movies
that are showing this performance problem so we can narrow down the problem.

Please let me know if this is okay with you. Thanks!


--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Nancy Cho
Software Test Engineer, PowerPoint
Macintosh Business Unit
Microsoft Corporation

 

[Guest]

Just drop any .mov file in to powerpoint and start the show. You will see for
yourself.

 

[Greg Pinelo]

Yes, would like to send you an example, but highly doubt I could get a
decent sized PPT and a couple of associated MPEGs into a Hotmail account.
It would be about 12 megs.

If it helps at all, this is a problem for PPT X as well, and at some point
it was solved by an incremental OS X update (I can't remember which). These
MPEGs do not choke in Quicktime or in Keynote or in PPT X.

For now I am just keeping PPT X and using it for anything with video, which
is a bit of a kludge because I would really like to use PPT 2004's other
cool new features.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[Greg Pinelo]

Yes, would like to send you an example, but highly doubt I could get a
decent sized PPT and a couple of associated MPEGs into a Hotmail account.
It would be about 12 megs.

If it helps at all, this is a problem for PPT X as well, and at some point
it was solved by an incremental OS X update (I can't remember which). These
MPEGs do not choke in Quicktime or in Keynote or in PPT X.

For now I am just keeping PPT X and using it for anything with video, which
is a bit of a kludge because I would really like to use PPT 2004's other
cool new features.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[John Perez]

I have also encountered the same video playback problem in Powerpoint
2004, and read on various internet sites that many other Mac users are
also having this problem.

Files that played perfectly in Powerpoint X v10.1.5 play ABYSMALLY in
Powerpoint 2004 on the same Mac.

We have had to re-install Powerpoint X 10.1.5 and can't upgrade until
this is fixed.

I can't believe this got through Microsofts beta testing.

However, if anyone from Microsoft is reading this I am 110% willing to
help them find the problem in any way they seem fit - sending test
files or testing a new Powerpoint build.

I'd just like to see the problem fixed asap.

Best Regards,

John

 

[Nancy Cho]

Hi, my name is Nancy and I'm a PowerPoint tester. Whoever is willing to
send me .mov files and/or presentations that show this problem, please email
me at (e-mail address removed). I will then give you my Microsoft email
address to send the files to. I haven't seen any performance issues with
Quicktime files but we want to narrow down the problem.

Thanks!
Nancy Cho
Software Test Engineer
Macintosh Business Unit - Microsoft

 

[Nancy Cho]

To everyone who is sending me and has sent me files, thanks so much. We
have found a "temporary workaround"...but we see the problem and are working
on it. The workaround for now is to decrease the movie size on the slide by
going to the format menu and select picture. Click on the size tab and in
the scale selection, check the Best for slide show checkbox and select the
appropriate resolution for the slide show display.

Hope this helps. Thanks!
Nancy Cho

 

[Greg Pinelo]

Nancy, thank you very much for your responsiveness on this issue. Looking
forward to a fix soon. And as soon as you're done, please go help the
Entourage team!

 

[lorry]

Thank you Nancy.

I think that besides actually fixing the problem, it is great for us, the
users, to know that there is a real person (or team of persons) actively on
our side.

Much appreciated

Lorry

 

[Dembo]

Has anyone heard anymore about this issue - it plagues me - ouch.

Lorry

 

[Anthony van Beek]

Has anyone heard anything?! I can't believe a company like Microsoft would
leave something like this unsolved for such a long time (Since February when
Nancy got on top. What has she done?). But you would think that something
like this would get picked up by other testers earlier in development. What
boggles my mind is that this problem is solved in an earlier version of
PowerPoint (PowerPoint X). For £$%^ sakes people do something or just let us
know what is happening. I run my business using PowerPoint and I need to be
able to run video in my Presentations.

 

[Greg Pinelo]

My feelings exactly. I fear that we will be forced to what for some kind of
"comprehensive" maintenance update for Office 2004. I don't know why they
wouldn't just release a patch for PPT itself. Deeply frustrating.

 

[Dembo]

I note the comments are getting more and more frustrated and angry.......any
MVPs heard anything or have contacts within the Seattle buildings that may
be on the way to a solution.

All I want is video in my ppt presentaion to run correctly.........

Lorry

 

[Tony Giannetti]

I just tried e-mailing Nancy Cho on her hotmail account and it bounced
back saying it was full. The 'view optimal screen resolution' setting
doesn't work fully. The motion still isn't very smooth. It moves
smoothly in chunks but definately slows and speeds up during play.
Also, it shrank all my movies down so the new size is effectively
worthless. That's extra frustrating becuase I specifically designed
my movies to be exatly the size of a powerpoint frame at the correct
resolution so that, if anything, it would have to be shrunk to fit.

My suggestion to everyone using a Mac is to switch to Keynote. It
takes Powerpoint files so you don't have to start from scratch. And
being that Apple wrote it and they're not pushing Windows Media
player, then quicktime movies actually work properly. They have cool
transitions too and the look and feel is actually a little better. I
just wish they had something to replace Word. We are fully dependent
here on Endnote and Word 2004 does not work with Endnote because
Microsoft changed something. This rendered both programs useless to
us.