Looping Animated GIFs and Slide Show Mode - Animations won't display at beginning

[John Clements]

I have tested this on my win2k machine with PP2000 and on my associate's XP
machine with PP2002.

Insert a looping animated GIF on slide2 (use a GIF which plays a relatively
long time so the issue discribed here is easy to detect).

From Slide 1, start the Slide Show. PgDwn to Slide 2. Notice the GIF
animation automatically starts at its first frame. PgDown to Slide 3. Now
PgUp (go back to Slide 2). Notice the GIF animation has been playing in the
background and does not restart at its beginning. PnDwn to Slide3 and then
jump directly to Slide 1 and then do a PgDwn. Notice that once again the
GIF animation does not restart at its beginning.

I also experimented using the go-back-2 slides macro posted earlier in this
forum to return to a "shim" side and got the same results.

I found the ONLY way to get an inserted looping animated GIF to play from
its beginning is to close the SlideShow and restart it.

I realize that a looping animated GIF by defintion loops continuously. In a
presentation they serve a useful purpose for the presenter because it
demonstates a repeating process flow while the presenter elaborates info to
their audience. However, if the presenter wants to return to that slide to
answer or clarify an issue, it seems the GIF cannot be "restarted". Unlike
movies files, there are no controls to start-pause-end GIFs.

It would seem that if more than two or three looping GIFs are in a
presentation it could really bog things down because all of them would be
playing simultaneously in the background once their respective slides have
been activated.

Is there no way to get around this other than not use looping animated GIFs?

Regards, John

 

[Echo S]

Not using aniGIF is the only way around it I know. Converting the GIFs to
AVI will give you some control, though.

Echo

 

[John Clements]

Thanks, Echo, for looking into this. John