unusual behavior of embedded wmv movies

[djihz]

Hello all,

I'm stuck (and banging my head) with a weird problem.

On an iMac running winxp pro sp2, I have a wmv movie embedded in a ppt
file.
First, the colors of the movie were wrong, so I installed wmp10, and
updated the codecs for mplayer2.exe. Both players now display the
video correctly.

Not the same in powerpoint : the emebedded video looks fine except for
the bottom end, where it looks like the video has been stretched 20
pixels downwards.

I tried to suppress / re-insert the movie, change its size, everything
I could think of in powerpoint, without success.
Just to make sure, I tried installing office 2000, XP and 2003 : same
problem.

I tried on other computers (plain old pc's) with the same software
versions : no problem, even without installing wmp10, which scares me
a little.

I tried on another iMac, same config... same problem. I also checked
the movies on this one in wmp9 before updating the codecs, and the
"stretched" effect was visible as well. So updating fixes both colors
and stretching in wmp and mplayer2, but only the colors in powerpoint.
I don't get it.

I now suspect a graphics driver issue, which would be very bad news.
But I'd like to make sure I'm heading in the right direction first,
and since I'm not experienced with powerpoint, I might certainly be
missing something.

Could anyone help me out here ?
I would greatly appreciate.

Thanks,
Nicolas

 

[djihz]

Hi Steve,

You have no idea how glad I am you passed by and dropped an answer. I
had to turn acceleration down three notches, but now everything works
fine.
I see you are the author of the page you linked to. Very useful
indeed : thank you very much.

After my first post, I tried installing updated and alternate drivers
(nothing friendly about that on iMacs), but this didn't change a thing
either, even with the latest ones.
So no workaround here ; this was probably the only way to fix it for
now.

Thanks again for reading my post and answering it.
Cheers,

Nicolas

 

[djihz]

Hi all,

I'm back with the same issue.

Turning down hardware acceleration solved the problem, but the quality
loss is too important.

So to sum things up :
I have one wmv file, which is correctly displayed in both wmp10 &
wmp6.4 (mplayer2.exe - the one used by powerpoint as far as I know).
When embedded in a slide, playback is correct except for the lower
part, where the video seems stretched 20 pixels downwards (the size of
the embedded video does not match the size of the "original" movie :
it is 20 px higher).

Updated or alternate video drivers didn't change a thing.
This issue affects iMacs only (20 inches, both models) , every other
computer I used displayed the ppt with the embedded movie correctly.

I have no idea what to do next.
I especially don't understand why the movie is correctly handled by
both players, and not in powerpoint.

Any clue, anyone ?

Thanks,
Nico

 

[djihz]

Updated & solved.

I wasn't aware that there was another way of embedding movies in ppt
slides.

For those interested, this is how I proceeded :

in ppt, menu VIEW > TOOLBARS > CONTROL TOOLBOX.
in the control toolbox, use the "hammer/wrench" button and select WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER.
your pointer is now a cross, use it in the slide to draw the rectangle area where the movie will be embedded.
you now have a black rectangle with multimedia controls. Right-click it > PROPERTIES.
a window pops up, with two tabs and rows of parameters. Select CUSTOM and click the button with the three dots.
in the new window, use BROWSE to navigate to the file you want to embed. CONTROLS LAYOUT > NONE if you don't want multimedia controls to be displayed. Others options are self-explanatory.
APPLY.

Now the movie should be displayed correctly in slideshow mode.

Some issues nevertheless :

Some parameters (stretchToFit or fullscreen in my case) revert back to their default setting, no matter what you do. This is a known pre-2003 issue, and sometimes tho only solution is to install office 2003 or newer.
It might help to uncheck VIEW > VIDEO SIZE > FIT PLAYER TO VIDEO ON START in windows media player (9 at least), if you have troubles with stretchToFit in ppt.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Nico