Linked movies... control initial image in movie object...

[Guest]

I have a couple of slides with linked movies (wmv). When these movies are
linked in, the movie object sometimes displays a blank (black) screen or the
1st image in the movie. I want to be able to force the inital view of the
movie to be a black screen - is there a way to control this?

Moreover, what causes the movie to display a blank screen versus the first
image in the movie to being with?

 

[Austin Myers]

Lots of videos have a blank (black) screen in the first frame. All depends
how it was encoded and can be removed with a video editing package. As you
have seen, PPT grabs this first frame, converts it to an image, and displays
this static image as a place holder for the video. (There is no video until
it actually starts to play, only a place holder.) Or, with your video
editing software you may add a blank (black) frame at the beginning of the
video.

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

PowerPoint Video and PowerPoint Sound Solutions www.pfcmedia.com

 

[Guest]

Thanks for response but my expereince tells me different....

I have a copy of the same movie saved in two different locations (simple
copy and paste). These two movies are linked into two different ppt slides -
sometimes the movie displays the first image, sometimes just a blank screen -
so I'm left wondering what triggers PPT to dispaly the 1st image. For my
test, one movie is on a networked drive, the other is on my hard drive...

Your explination makes sense, and what I would expect to be the case, but
that's just not what I'm experiencing - there must be some other cause or
variable that I'm introducing... maybe from your expereince you could tell me
some common mistakes that I might be making...

thanks for your attention to this matter.

 

[Austin Myers]

I would need to examine the video to offer any more help. If it's a
reasonable size email it my way.

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

PowerPoint Video and PowerPoint Sound Solutions www.pfcmedia.com

 

[Guest]

Its several Meg...
In looking at the video - its first frame in not a blank screen - so I think
the sure fire way will be to insert a blank screen - I'll take that route for
now but I'm still wary of how it gets handled through ppt. Strange though why
I've gotten it to come up both ways...

W/o me sending you my actual file, you should be able to substitue any wmv
with a non-blank 1st image screen for your own testing.

Thanks for your time responses.