J
Joe Lombardo
I've read your multimedia FAQ's and found them not only informative
but highly entertaining! They've helped on me on more then one
occasion, my thanks to you.
I realize you MVP's probably get this question more times then you can
count but here it is once more…
What the best video format / codec to use in PowerPoint?
Ok, ok I'll try to narrow this down a little. We are producing short
DV videos, capturing and editing them in Sony's Vegas Video and can
render them to any format. The problem is I have no idea where to
start researching the pro's & con's of every video format.
The videos will be reviewed in-house and then inserted into PowerPoint
2002. The in house computers are all *at least* Pentium 3, 650 Mhz
with 512MB RAM. The PowerPoint presentations will be shown from an
IBM ThinkPad T40, 1.6 Ghz Pentium 4 with 512MB RAM.
Our needs are as follows:
We want to keep the video file size small but the quality great
(doesn't everyone?!?). We do have limited drive space available for
the videos because they are going to be on a laptop with a 60 GB hard
drive. When complete, we may have 20 - 40 video clips. The duration
of the videos will range from 20 seconds to 3 minutes.
We want to keep the laptop's system overhead low during the video
playback. As important as file size is we also do not want the memory
usage to skyrocket during the presentation when the video playback
starts. We also do not want the memory usage to continuously grow as
the presentation continues after the video. We've found this to be a
major problem because it slows down the laptop (including the running
presentation) drastically. The memory can be recovered using a 3rd
party RAM monitoring utility but we've found it best not to recover
memory until after the presentation completes because it may cause
screen refreshes or worse, Explorer to restart.
We would like the video to play from either Windows Media Player or
QuickTime when watched outside of PowerPoint.
We do not want to install additional codecs not included with Windows
Media Player or QuickTime on everyone's machine just to get the videos
to play. Up to this point we've had to install such things as DivX,
Xvid, & Elecard and these have caused OS instability in more then 60%
of the XP computers they were installed on. The person previously
creating our videos using these codecs has left the company so we have
the opportunity to re-render his videos using a standard format &
codec. The more common the format & codec the better.
Please let me know what you recommend or where I can start to research
for a format and codec that meets our needs.
I appreciate your time & help and hope to hear from you soon.
Thank you,
Joe Lombardo
DLB Associates
but highly entertaining! They've helped on me on more then one
occasion, my thanks to you.
I realize you MVP's probably get this question more times then you can
count but here it is once more…
What the best video format / codec to use in PowerPoint?
Ok, ok I'll try to narrow this down a little. We are producing short
DV videos, capturing and editing them in Sony's Vegas Video and can
render them to any format. The problem is I have no idea where to
start researching the pro's & con's of every video format.
The videos will be reviewed in-house and then inserted into PowerPoint
2002. The in house computers are all *at least* Pentium 3, 650 Mhz
with 512MB RAM. The PowerPoint presentations will be shown from an
IBM ThinkPad T40, 1.6 Ghz Pentium 4 with 512MB RAM.
Our needs are as follows:
We want to keep the video file size small but the quality great
(doesn't everyone?!?). We do have limited drive space available for
the videos because they are going to be on a laptop with a 60 GB hard
drive. When complete, we may have 20 - 40 video clips. The duration
of the videos will range from 20 seconds to 3 minutes.
We want to keep the laptop's system overhead low during the video
playback. As important as file size is we also do not want the memory
usage to skyrocket during the presentation when the video playback
starts. We also do not want the memory usage to continuously grow as
the presentation continues after the video. We've found this to be a
major problem because it slows down the laptop (including the running
presentation) drastically. The memory can be recovered using a 3rd
party RAM monitoring utility but we've found it best not to recover
memory until after the presentation completes because it may cause
screen refreshes or worse, Explorer to restart.
We would like the video to play from either Windows Media Player or
QuickTime when watched outside of PowerPoint.
We do not want to install additional codecs not included with Windows
Media Player or QuickTime on everyone's machine just to get the videos
to play. Up to this point we've had to install such things as DivX,
Xvid, & Elecard and these have caused OS instability in more then 60%
of the XP computers they were installed on. The person previously
creating our videos using these codecs has left the company so we have
the opportunity to re-render his videos using a standard format &
codec. The more common the format & codec the better.
Please let me know what you recommend or where I can start to research
for a format and codec that meets our needs.
I appreciate your time & help and hope to hear from you soon.
Thank you,
Joe Lombardo
DLB Associates