Video Clip Locks Up PowerPoint

[Michael]

I have a PowerPoint 2003 presentation that contains a number of .mpg video
clips. If I try to advance the slide before the video clip is done playing,
it will lock up PowerPoint. The only way out to to use Task Manager to end
the PowerPoint task. This has worked fine in the past, so I think
something's gone West. I've tried Detect and Repair in PowerPoint with
nothing to show for it.

Should I uninstall and reinstall PowerPoint? Or Windows Media Player?
Or... ?

 

[Guest]

Try checking this out:
http://www.echosvoice.com/tshoot_video2.htm

 

[Austin Myers]

I suspect something (new software / codecs) were installed and it has
created problems. By chance are these Mpeg-2 videos? If so there are a
number of Mpeg-2 codecs out there that do NOT work well with PowerPoint or
even the Windows Media Player. If you're running WindowXP, Microsoft
provides a utility to test compatibility of the codecs in use.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ac-0ab6-4990-943d-627e6ade9fcb&displaylang=en

If you plan on distributing the presentations to other machines I would
strongly recomend you change the format from Mpeg as those machines may have
the same issues you are seeing. Our add in "PFCMedia" will do this for you
and will SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the size of the video files without loss of
quality. You may download a free fully functioning trial copy from
www.pfcmedia.com


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

PowerPoint Video and PowerPoint Sound Solutions www.pfcmedia.com

 

[Michael]

Austin: Thanks for the reply. I should have said that these are MPEG-1
video clips.

I was thinking it might be a .dll problem. The presentation works fine on
another system, but that system has a slightly different mciqtz32.dll file.
I took that .dll file to the problem machine and ended up with the same
result.

The clip plays fine using mplayer32.exe. And, the clip plays fine in
PowerPoint. It causes PPT to hang when I try to advance to the next slide
while the video clip is still playing.

Your PFCMedia product looks interesting. Are you converting files to
Windows Media format?

Michael

 

[Austin Myers]

Michael,

The problem I think you are seeing is that not all Mpeg files are created
equal. <g> Mpeg-1 has a set of "Redbook Specifications" that many software
packages tend to ignore. Unfortunately this often causes issues in PPT.

One thing I will make note of, make certain the path/filename to the media
does not exceed 128 characters as that also causes issues.

Finally, yes PFCMedia converts to one of several WMV formats. The add in
examines the video file and through a couple of magic tricks determines the
best format and data rate to use to make the smallest file possible while
maintaining quality.


--
Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

PowerPoint Video and PowerPoint Sound Solutions www.pfcmedia.com