video mystey

[SpecialK]

I can't quite get a 17MB MPG-2 video in a (otherwise blank) PPT
presentation to run on my laptop (PP 2000 on XP SP1, latest Directx):
1.) presentation and video are on on c:\test (shouldn't be a name
length problem)
2.) video runs fine in mplay32.exe (and WMP 9) but not in PPT
3.) disabling hardware accel does not help
4.) renaming does not help
5.) video runs on desktop computer (XP SP2, PP 2000) without problems

Video will run after recoding into MPG-1, but I want to solve the
problem. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Sonia]

See http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/multimedia.htm .
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com

 

[Austin Myers]

2.) video runs fine in mplay32.exe (and WMP 9) but not in PPT

That indicates to me that your video driver isn't up to the task. PPT uses
a different mode (for lack of a better word) for display during the
slideshow. I'd head to the video card manufactures web site and see if
there is an updated driver available.


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Solutions to Multimedia in PowerPoint www.pfcmedia.com

 

[SpecialK]

Thanks very much for your suggestions, but I still am unable to get it
right.
- I have gone through the registry and it seems ok to me (I am lacking
the ivf-entry, but I suppose that should be ok?).
- I have installed the latest video driver (It's an Intel
82852/82855).
- I tried modifying the color depth, no success
- video will not run in safe mode either

I suppose that if it's running in mplay/wmp, codecs should not be the
problem?

Any more ideas? I am really desperate since it's a fairly new laptop
and I think I should be able to play that damn video.

 

[Sonia]

Where have you stored the video file? Is it in My Documents, or in another
location that generates a very long path? If the full path to the file exceeds
128 characters, the file will play in mplay32.exe, but won't play in PowerPoint.
Try moving everything to C:\Test and delete the video and then reinsert it (that
corrects the link address) and then test it. Does that help?

 

[SpecialK]

Thanks again, but I stored presentation and video in c:\test in the
first place. I still can't get to run. I realized another interesting
effect: On my desktop computer, the video is shown as a black square
before and after running correctly (no still in the beginning or
after finishing), but on my laptop it's exactly the other way around
(still, black while running, then back to still). On other machines I
have also seen white blanks when videos are not running, do black
instead of white blanks indicate anything or is it just PP 2000 and
2003?
I also checked that video with AVIcodec and GSpot. AVIcodec says that
it's an MPG-1, GSpot says it's an MPG-2 and that the codec is not
installed (on both machines, though runnning). I am pretty sure it's
an MPG-2 though.

For any more ideas I would be really, really grateful.