Embedded AVI file with text

[Walter King]

Hi,

I'm creating a PowerPoint presentation with an AVI embedded in it that shows
a screen capture of a web browser being used. Unfortunately, the quality of
the text is very poor if it isn't shown at just the right size, which I'm
guessing is exactly the same size that it was captured / created at.

My question is this: is there a way that I can force the "movie" to be shown
at a particular size? Alternatively, if I set my screen resolution to be the
same that's used when the slide shown is shown and the text in the movie
looks good there, can I be sure that it'll look ok when the slide show is
presented?

Now that I've stated the questions, let me explain part of the reason for my
concern. When I'm editing / creating the slides and I select "Play Movie"
after right-clicking on it, the movie looks just fine (at this point I'm
viewing the slides at "100%" resolution). However, when I select View /
Slide Show and the movie plays, the text looks pretty bad even though the
movie *seems* to be display at the same size that I "previewed" it in. Is it
resizing the movie and I just can't see the different (which would explain
why the text quality degrades)? But if so, why is it a different size when I
do a View / Slide Show versus when I'm editing and select "Play Movie"? If
it's *not* showing the movie at a different size, then why is the quality of
the text so much worse when I view the slide show versus just playing the
movie during editing of the slides?

The bottom line is this: how can I be sure that the text will look good when
the movie's played given that I won't have access to the machine on which
it's played in advance? Again, I *do* know what resolution will be used, but
even on my own machine I can't get consistent results with a given
resolution.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Austin Myers]

Walter,

There are so many factors involved here its difficult to say exactly where
the issue is. However, there are couple things to consider. When you run
the slide show PowerPoint and ultimately the MCI media player are using
DirectX hardware acceleration for the display. You might want to turn
graphics acceleration all the way down and see if it makes a difference.
The downside is that unknown machines/users won't be doing that...

With that said lets look at some alternative solutions. First, what type of
movie is it? (avi, wmv, etc.) And what codec or compression is involved?
All video files are not created equal. In your situation I would opt
for a higher bit rate (set in your video software) even if it creates a
large file. I would also adjust the video software to set a Key frame more
frequently if possible, this to will aid in a better quality during
playback.

And probably more important, do NOT re-encode a file that has already been
encoded or compressed. If at all possible work with the highest quality
original recording.



Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCMedia, PFCPro, PFCExpress
http://www.pfcmedia.com

 

[Walter King]

With that said lets look at some alternative solutions. First, what type
of movie is it? (avi, wmv, etc.)

It's an AVI file.

And what codec or compression is involved?

I don't know; how would I find this out? The video is a screen capture
that's done using SnagIt 6.1 and I just looked through it and couldn't find
where it tells me (or where I could specify a codec) so I'm not sure.

All video files are not created equal. In your situation I would opt
for a higher bit rate (set in your video software) even if it creates a
large file.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure that SnagIt allows me to set the bit
rate but I'm not sure it would help anyway. You see, the problem is that the
text looks bad if I replay the video at anything other than *just* the right
size -- bigger looks bad and smaller does too.

I know very little about video capture and playback but I've seen the same
behavior with static screen captures using programs like PaintShop Pro: text
doesn't reduce or enlarge very well, probably because the software doesn't
recognize that it *is* text that's being reduced or enlarged and so it just
treats it like any other pixel data.

What's frustrating about this situation and (as best I can tell) specific /
relevant to PowerPoint is that when I'm editing the slides at 100% "zoom"
(or whatever) the video looks fine but when I play it in a slide show (which
one would expect results in the video being exactly the same size that it
was during editing playback) then it looks terrible. Am I wrong in thinking
the video *will* be the same size when played during editing at 100% zoom
that it is when played as part of a slide show? If so, why is that and is
there any way I can be confident that the size it's shown at during the
slide show is the size it will appear on the target machine (the one I know
the resolution of but don't have actual access to)? If, on the other hand,
the video *is* being shown at the same size during editing with 100% zoom
that it is when shown during the slide show, why the big difference in the
video quality?

 

[Walter King]

news:[email protected]...

Austin,

I think I may be asking the wrong question. Looking at it again, I just
realized that PowerPoint is resizing the video so that it's exactly the same
(absolute) size regardless of my screen resolution. What I want is for the
video to remain the same number of *pixels* since I think that reducing or
shrinking it is going to cause problems. Is there a way to prevent
PowerPoint from changing the size of my video that's embedded within the
presentation?

Thanks for your feedback,

Water.

 

[Austin Myers]

It's an AVI file.


I don't know; how would I find this out? The video is a screen capture
that's done using SnagIt 6.1 and I just looked through it and couldn't
find where it tells me (or where I could specify a codec) so I'm not sure.

If you used SnagIt then you are using the built in TechSmith codec. Be
aware that if you send this to another machine that does not have this codec
installed it will not play properly or more likely will not play at all.

SnagIt is some what of the low end product made by TechSmith. Their other
product, "Camtasia" will do a much better job and has the controls needed to
make the adjustments I mentioned in the last post.


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCMedia, PFCPro, PFCExpress
http://www.pfcmedia.com

 

[Walter King]

If you used SnagIt then you are using the built in TechSmith codec. Be
aware that if you send this to another machine that does not have this
codec installed it will not play properly or more likely will not play at
all.

SnagIt is some what of the low end product made by TechSmith. Their other
product, "Camtasia" will do a much better job and has the controls needed
to make the adjustments I mentioned in the last post.

Thanks for that tip; I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have realized that if you
hadn't brought it up and obviously that would have been a major problem for
my presentation. I'm not really in a position to be able to buy Camtasia (or
anything else right now), but after reading your post, I decided that I had
just better stick with static screen captures. It's not nearly as "sexy" as
the video clip would have been had it worked, but at least I know the static
screen captures will look ok for the slide show.