mpeg movie won't play in PowerPoint

[Bob F]

I'm new to PowerPoint and am going through Step By Step. At the point of
inserting a practice movie file (mpeg) into a slide, the movie area of the
slide goes blank when I try to play it.

The movie plays fine in WMP-11 (which is not longer listed under
"Accessories-Entertainment on my XP-Pro machine)

How do I get PowerPoint to recognize Windows Media Player 11?

 

[Lucy Thomson]

Hi Bob

PowerPoint doesn't use Windows Media Player to play movie files - it uses a
thing called the mciplayer. However, I don't think that is the problem: I
think it's the old file path length chestnut. Try creating a folder directly
on your C drive (e.g. C\mypres rather than somewhere with your 'My
Documents' folder), move the presentation and mpeg to the folder, then
reinsert the movie. Does it work now?

If that doesn't work, be sure to let us know your version.

Lucy

 

[Bob F]

Hi Lucy,

Thanks for your timely and accurate assessment of my problem. Your
suggestion worked. I suppose that the only permanent solution to this problem
is to keep file path names short where using movies in a presentation.

BTW my version is PowerPoint 2003 with SP3 for Office 2003 Pro

Bob