MP* files won't play in PPT

[Doofus Maximus]

A friend of mine called with a very odd problem. He just bought a new laptop
and has done clean installs of Office 2000 and Office 2003 (he is a trainer
and needs both). When inserting video files into his presentations, anything
based on the MPEG standard (mpeg, mpg, mp3, etc.) will not play in
PowerPoint. AVI, WMV, etc. seem to play just fine in both versions. With the
MPEGs in 2000, PowerPoint crashes; in 2003, the videos just won't play. The
video files will play normally in Windows Media Player and QuickTime, but
will not play at all in mplay32.exe.

We have checked the MCI Extensions in the registry and they are all as they
should be. We have checked his audio and video codecs in "Sounds and Audio
Devices" in the Control Panel. We have run DXDiag, throttled back his video
hardware acceleration, uninstalled a couple of HP video-editing apps, and so
forth. In short we have checked everything at Sonia Coleman's site as well
as the troubleshooting tips at echosvoice.com. All settings appear to be OK.

None of the work-arounds (drag-and-drop, hyperlinking, inserting as an
object) resolve the issue. I find this especially puzzling as the
drag-and-drop should turn control over the Windows Media Player, where the
videos play normally if it's running on its own. But this is not happening
inside of PowerPoint. In fact, all he gets with the drag-and-drop is a file
name.

The videos were moved to the new computer with a flash drive. They play on
the flash drive just fine on the old laptop, but not on the new one, so I
doubt that he's dealing with corrupted video files. Frankly, I'm stumped. If
it helps any, Office 2000 is patched with SP3 and Office 2003 is patched
with SP1, but the problem was there before the service packs were applied.
The OS is XP Home with SP2 installed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

Mark
doofus_maximus [at] hotmail [dot] com

 

[Sonia]

I think this must be the same problem that I encountered last Tuesday. Also
Microsoft spotted the problem soon after because a number of customers (myself
included) sent reports when the problem occurred and I encourage your friend to
do the same. The only work around that I know of right now would be to convert
the media files to another format such as AVI-Cinepak, AVI-MS Video 1, WMA, WMV,
etc.

I will notify Microsoft that you have reported the problem here but I hope
you'll have your friend send a report, especially the PowerPoint 2000 problem,
because I haven't seen that happen. In fact on one of my systems, PowerPoint
2003 completely hangs. On another PowerPoint 2003 just won't play the video.
But I haven't had a problem with PowerPoint 2000, 2002, or 97.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials

A friend of mine called with a very odd problem. He just bought a new laptop
and has done clean installs of Office 2000 and Office 2003 (he is a trainer and
needs both). When inserting video files into his presentations, anything based
on the MPEG standard (mpeg, mpg, mp3, etc.) will not play in PowerPoint. AVI,
WMV, etc. seem to play just fine in both versions. With the MPEGs in 2000,
PowerPoint crashes; in 2003, the videos just won't play. The video files will
play normally in Windows Media Player and QuickTime, but will not play at all
in mplay32.exe.

We have checked the MCI Extensions in the registry and they are all as they
should be. We have checked his audio and video codecs in "Sounds and Audio
Devices" in the Control Panel. We have run DXDiag, throttled back his video
hardware acceleration, uninstalled a couple of HP video-editing apps, and so
forth. In short we have checked everything at Sonia Coleman's site as well as
the troubleshooting tips at echosvoice.com. All settings appear to be OK.

None of the work-arounds (drag-and-drop, hyperlinking, inserting as an object)
resolve the issue. I find this especially puzzling as the drag-and-drop should
turn control over the Windows Media Player, where the videos play normally if
it's running on its own. But this is not happening inside of PowerPoint. In
fact, all he gets with the drag-and-drop is a file name.

The videos were moved to the new computer with a flash drive. They play on the
flash drive just fine on the old laptop, but not on the new one, so I doubt
that he's dealing with corrupted video files. Frankly, I'm stumped. If it
helps any, Office 2000 is patched with SP3 and Office 2003 is patched with
SP1, but the problem was there before the service packs were applied. The OS
is XP Home with SP2 installed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

Mark
doofus_maximus [at] hotmail [dot] com

 

[Doofus Maximus]

My friend called HP's tech support. HP says (1) they have never heard of the
problem and (2) it's a Microsoft issue not covered under his OEM warranty
(in spite of mplayer being a Windows component - go figure). In any event,
his solution was something to the effect of "give me my money back -- I'm
buying a Dell."

As an aside, everything works normally on his old laptop. Minor hardware
differences aside, the only major difference in the software configurations
is that the old laptop had XP SP2 installed on top of Office (Office
installed first), while the new one had Office installed on top of XP SP2
(SP2 installed first). I wouldn't think that this would make a difference,
but we're talking Microsoft, so you never know.

Thanks for the help.

Mark Stinson

I think this must be the same problem that I encountered last Tuesday.
Also Microsoft spotted the problem soon after because a number of customers
(myself included) sent reports when the problem occurred and I encourage
your friend to do the same. The only work around that I know of right now
would be to convert the media files to another format such as AVI-Cinepak,
AVI-MS Video 1, WMA, WMV, etc.

I will notify Microsoft that you have reported the problem here but I hope
you'll have your friend send a report, especially the PowerPoint 2000
problem, because I haven't seen that happen. In fact on one of my
systems, PowerPoint 2003 completely hangs. On another PowerPoint 2003
just won't play the video. But I haven't had a problem with PowerPoint
2000, 2002, or 97.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials

A friend of mine called with a very odd problem. He just bought a new
laptop and has done clean installs of Office 2000 and Office 2003 (he is a
trainer and needs both). When inserting video files into his
presentations, anything based on the MPEG standard (mpeg, mpg, mp3, etc.)
will not play in PowerPoint. AVI, WMV, etc. seem to play just fine in both
versions. With the MPEGs in 2000, PowerPoint crashes; in 2003, the videos
just won't play. The video files will play normally in Windows Media
Player and QuickTime, but will not play at all in mplay32.exe.

We have checked the MCI Extensions in the registry and they are all as
they should be. We have checked his audio and video codecs in "Sounds and
Audio Devices" in the Control Panel. We have run DXDiag, throttled back
his video hardware acceleration, uninstalled a couple of HP video-editing
apps, and so forth. In short we have checked everything at Sonia
Coleman's site as well as the troubleshooting tips at echosvoice.com. All
settings appear to be OK.

None of the work-arounds (drag-and-drop, hyperlinking, inserting as an
object) resolve the issue. I find this especially puzzling as the
drag-and-drop should turn control over the Windows Media Player, where
the videos play normally if it's running on its own. But this is not
happening inside of PowerPoint. In fact, all he gets with the
drag-and-drop is a file name.

The videos were moved to the new computer with a flash drive. They play
on the flash drive just fine on the old laptop, but not on the new one,
so I doubt that he's dealing with corrupted video files. Frankly, I'm
stumped. If it helps any, Office 2000 is patched with SP3 and Office 2003
is patched with SP1, but the problem was there before the service packs
were applied. The OS is XP Home with SP2 installed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

Mark
doofus_maximus [at] hotmail [dot] com