Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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As you know, I am a big proponent of using video to tell your story during a PowerPoint presentation. A while back, I covered the essential capture process in an update on Using PowerPoint, Video and DVD. More recently, I dealt with the issue of using DVD video in PowerPoint.

In my consulting practice, I am frequently dealing with issues concerning the capture and acquisition of video. For example, a doctor will receive a CD or DVD from a pharmaceutical company, and wonder how to play it on his computer. It plays from the CD or DVD, but not when he tries to move the PowerPoint file to the hard drive.

This is one of the biggest examples of why and when video won't play. It's not just Murphy's Law (you're in front of an audience, so things don't work). There is actually a reason.

Where Is It?

The most common reason video doesn't play is because the video file itself is not where PowerPoint expects it to be. When you use the Insert > Movies and Sound > Movie from File command in PowerPoint, the only thing that is physically added to your presentation is the first frame of the movie. The actual movie remains where it was, and PowerPoint has established a link to it.

This means that if you move the presentation and not the movie itself, it won't play. And if you move both but don't keep them in the same relative folder locations on your new computer, it still won't play.

Sometimes this can be addressed by using the Edit > Links command in PowerPoint; but, under the stress before a presentation, this can be tricky and time consuming.

The best way to solve this is by right-clicking on the movie object in your slide and selecting Edit Movie Object.

Don't worry, no funky video editor will open. Instead, you see the Movie Options dialog box. It will reveal where PowerPoint thinks your movie should be and the file name.

This may be enough to remind you where you last left or saw the movie. You have two choices: either put it in the precise location where PowerPoint wants it, or – and this is much easier – reinsert the movie into the slide.

Figure 756

The file name can be invaluable if you don't remember where the movie was saved, or if the movie is still on a CD or DVD somewhere. You can use the Search tool in Windows to filter down to movie files; search for it on the local drive or on the disc, and then reinsert the file into the slide.

Figure 757

The best way to avoid this situation is to always keep your movies in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentations that use them, and move them together if necessary.

Codecs

The second major reason that a movie may not play even after you've moved it is because it has the wrong codec. Codec is the term for compression-decompression. What it means is that, even though a movie saved as an AVI, MOV or WMV file, it is also saved using a specific software scheme that has compressed it, called a codec.

The best way to explain this is to think about capturing a movie. You need to use some sort of capture device, whether analog or digital, to bring video into the computer and save it on the hard drive. All of these devices come with some software that enables this process; the most popular right now is the Firewire/DV format that also enables device control. But all of them use special software.

What if the movie is not converted or re-saved in another format, and it is moved to a computer without that capture device? Well, the software is no longer resident, so the movie doesn't play.

You can see this most effectively in Windows MoveMaker, which is the tool we used to capture video in the earlier update.

As a reminder, when we were ready to save the movie, we avoided the setting of Best Quality on My Computer, and chose the Other Settings. In MovieMaker, the codecs are not mentioned by name; instead, Microsoft automatically uses one that works with Windows XP natively.

Figure 758

If we go into a more sophisticated editing program, like Adobe Premiere, and export a movie from its timeline, in the Video output options we see a set of compression options with correspond roughly to the Microsoft options, but they actually name the software codec that will be used.

Figure 759

And, if we dig further into the Device Options on our computer, under System Settings, and go inside the Video and Audio Devices setting, we find the Video Codecs Properties dialog box for our computer.

Figure 760

In this case, for example, we find one codec for TechSmith Screen Capture on my computer. Savvy readers will recognize this from Camtasia Studio, a great tool we covered for capturing entire PowerPoint presentations.

But what if I use this codec to save an AVI or WMV file and move it to a machine without Camtasia? Bad idea.

When you use sophisticated editors, you need to learn the ubiquitous codecs that work almost everywhere: Cinepak, slow but good; Indeo, generally very good; and the various Microsoft versions.

MPEG video from DVD is its own animal. It generally will play on most computers that are strong enough to play DVDs. But it has a different quirk: sometimes it plays on the laptop but not on the projector, or vice versa. This is a video card memory issue. The best way to work around it is to project the slides with MPG video only to the projector by using the F7 toggle button on most laptops. This can be a bit inconvenient, but it is sometimes the only way to circumvent this issue.

Finally, there is an interesting product, created by Microsoft MVP Austin Myers, specifically to enable the seamless use of the video in PowerPoint. PFCMedia ("Plays for Certain") puts a new menu item into PowerPoint that lets you do a few very cool things.

Figure 761

First, when you insert media directly into the slide, it lets you run a quick test. Then it lets you insert the file directly into your slide with the same options as PowerPoint in terms of playing on a mouse click or automatically.

Figure 762

Inserting the file takes a few minutes depending upon its length. The reason has to do with those pesky codecs.

What PFC does is not only save the file in the same folder as PowerPoint; it also converts it to a compressed WMV file (with the same screen size) and with a codec that will play on your machine.

The only glitch I have encountered was when I took an MPG movie that I ripped from a DVD, using Ulead software, and the WMV file that resulted had no sound. But this is easily explained. There is no way Myers can have every proprietary capture codec in his arsenal; for most users, he has enough to even make it possible to play back many legacy codecs that would otherwise refuse to play on most systems.

If you are a serious PowerPoint movie user, this is a great tool for under fifty dollars.

It also lets you insert the MediaPlayer object into your slides, which lets you play movies directly from a DVD, movies from a web cam, and Shockwave files. As those who have used Shockwave know as an Insert Object in PowerPoint know, this can be tricky so an add-in that facilitates it can be very helpful.

The other very cool thing about the add-in is that by clicking on PowerPoint Community from the menu, you are taken directly to the PowerPoint User Group at Microsoft where Austin and the other MVPs hang out—and they can answer even more of your PowerPoint questions.

But hopefully as far as troubleshooting video is concerned, you are now on your way.

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