Windows Media Player object fullscreen play

[Roy]

Hi,

I have installed the Windows Media Player 9 and PowerPoint 2003 on my
computer and now I want to play a MPEG movie in a PowerPoint
presentation. I insert an Windows Media Player object and configure the
object by selecting the properties via the rightmouse context menu of
the player object.

I have setup all properties as I like to have:
URL: (a MPEG file on the harddisk)
enableContextMenu: True
enabled: True
fullScreen: True
stretchToFit: False
uiMode: none
windowlessVideo: False

When starting the slideshow is runs one time correctly. After the
slideshow has been finished, the settings fullScreen and stretchToFit
are jumped to False spontaniously. Why? Also a save of the presentation
in between does not help.

Last year I had the same kind of problem in PowerPoint 97, but that time
I have solved that problem with some VBA code. I just changed the
fullScreen property to True when the PlayStateChange event occurs with
the new state 3 (Playing). Now I've tried the same trick with PowerPoint
2003. That works fine as long as I do not close the PowerPoint
application. When the applicatoin is restarted with the presentation,
the VBA code will not execute anymore.

Resizing the Media Player object to the size of the slide does also not
help. Media Player does just play the movie in a small box in the middle
of the screen, it is really necessary to change the fullScreen property
to True.

I have tested this behaviour on several computers (all Windows XP Pro
platforms) and they do all behave the same. I have also installed
PowerPoint 2002, but that behaves exactly the same as PowerPoint 2003.

Note: Using PowerPoint 97 isn't an option since I want to use the
improved animation effects of PowerPoint 2002, 2003.

Can somebody tell me what I'm doing wrong? How can I solve one (or both)
of the above described problems?

Regards,
Roy

 

[tom]

You don't need to run the Media player object to play a
video file in PPT. Just insert the movie (avi & mpeg NOT
quicktime) and give it some play attributes. Why are you
inserting the MediaPlayer 9 object?

T

 

[Roy]

I use the Media Player object, because that is the only way (that I
could find) where my video is playing in PPT.

Inserting the video as you propose does not start the video (PPT is
asking me whether I want to start playing automatically, then I click
YES). I have read and executed the steps that I found at
http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/multimedia.htm
successfully, but the video will not start playing in PPT. At one PC,
the PPT application crashes when inserting a video file.

As I have written before, the Media Player object is working fine, but
PPT will not save my settings for the object and VBA code is not
executed anymore after closing the program, isn't that strange? Is that
a bug in PPT?

Roy

 

[Guest]

Really.... I'm not a code person, but I would make sure your video files are
all mpeg1 and insert them as directed they can be sized and even clipped if
needed.

Powerpoint is a pain sometimes eh?

tom

 

[Mike M.]

It is a bug in the Windows Media Player ActiveX control. If you do a search
on google groups you can see some reports. Here is a potential work around
from MS: http://tinyurl.com/52tu2

 

[Roy]

Thanks for your support, I will have to download SP1 and SP3 over a ISDN
64K line, so that will take a while :-(. Last year I have also used the
Media Player 9 object, so that explains that I discovered the same
problem in PPT 97!

In the meantime, I also discovered why PowerPoint does not execute the
VBA code after I have closed the file. I have to change the macro
security to (atleast) medium. When I then open the file again, PPT will
ask wether I want to activate the macros or not. When I activate the
macros, the VBA code is executing very well and I do have the fullscreen
functionality as I want it.

Roy

 

[Mike M.]

Glad you worked it out. These little annoying bugs cause lots of pain.
Good thing the local has my favorite pain medication!