Alpha channels and animation/video clips (again?)

[Alon Amit]

I'd like to get some video clips into my PowerPoint slides. The clips
have a lot of transparency, and it would be VERY useful to have other
elements on the slide (text, background) show through those transparent
regions. I realize that PPt insists on playing video on top of
everything else (which is also a real shame), but at least it could
allow the things underneath to stay visible?

As far as I can see, it seems that animated clip art supports this, at
least partially: I don't know if you can have transparency in the
middle of the frame, but at least the areas around the animated object
are transparent, so you're not forced to have a rectangular white or
black background. Perspector (www.perspector.com) also creates
animations with this feature, I'm not sure about the format but they
seem to be animated gifs.

My clips are larger, longer and somewhat more sophisticated than what
I've seen on animated gifs, but perhaps they can be converted into
ones? I'm using a variety of tools to create the animations, including
some rather heavy machinery like Mirage (from Bauhaus) and occasionally
even Alias|Maya. I'm also creating Flash in Swift 3D. All of these
tools can export to many different formats, e.g. AVI with Alpha channel
or Flash, but it seems that PowerPoint ignores this alpha channel when
the AVI is imported.

I'm currently using Office XP (2002) but will gladly upgrade to 2003 if
this would help.
Thanks very much for any thoughts, hints and ideas.

- A. A.

 

[Bill Dilworth]

Since this did not come through the discussions group (where I would assume
it was a suggestion to be put out there for 'me too' votes), I'll assume
this is a suggestion from the NG.

Please make sure that you tell MS directly, also. If you are not using the
web-interface, I don't know if the votes count for telling MS that you feel
this way. Please spend a moment and visit
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp

As it is, PowerPoint does not play the video, it just tells Windows that it
needs one played and Windows takes it from there. Being able to play a
video over/under text would be nice, agreed. I do believe there are some
Worship Service software out there that do already play video under text.

--
Bill Dilworth
Microsoft PPT MVP Team
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..

 

[Sonia]

Because GIFs are just special image files and not video files, you can place
them on the Slide Master and they won't obscure what you place on your normal
slides. Animated GIFs also support transparency. However, they are 256 color
images, so not suited to the use of gradients or any subtle shading.

 

[Alon Amit]

Thanks, Bill. I'm not sure I was able to follow the first paragraph -
is this newsgroup linked to something else at Microsoft?

Anyway, you wrote:

"As it is, PowerPoint does not play the video, it just tells Windows
that it
needs one played..."

So now the question becomes, what does the Windows Media Player do with
the alpha channels? Apparently, nothing. One would expect it to
respsect them, so when you played an AVI with transparency regions, the
windows behind the Media Player would show through. I don't think they
do.

On the other hand, if there was any other AVI player that did that,
especially one in which you could suppress the bounding box and
controls so that it played ONLY the movie clip, one could launch the
player from within PowerPoint and things would be fine, right? This
solution has the serious drawback that the computer running the
presentation must have this player installed, but that may be worth it.

Can this work? Does anyone know of an AVI player that is aware of
what's "behind" it and shows it through the alpha channel?
Thanks again,

Alon