Is there a PowerPoint expert in the house?

[Silver_Shiney]

I need to put a short video clip in a PowerPoint slide. I can watch it no problem but there's no sound. If I preview the clip (it's in mpg format) in Explorer, I get both sound and video, so it's not a problem with the video file. The online help is useless, and Mr Google cannot assist either.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions, please?

[david63]

It's quite a while since I played with PP but in my day I was considered the company "expert".

I seem to recall that putting video into PP was a bit of a pain - not only, as you have found out, in actually getting it there but playback can be pretty dire.

Are you linking it or embedding it?

[Silver_Shiney]

Hi David

I don't seem to have a choice (that I can see). I used the Insert option on this wretched new ribbon bar, and was given the option of inserting a clip either from the web or from a file on the computer. What "help" I could see said that if it's a web file, to use embedding..

At the moment, it's a moot point because, today, PP won't even let me open the &*$&*&$* thing!

[Stephen]

How many power points do you need. I'm no sparky, but I get by

[Silver_Shiney]

How many power points do you need. I'm no sparky, but I get by

watt?

[allatc]

Which version of Powerpoint are you using ?

[allatc]

Further to last post :-

Powerpoint 2007 will play videos that are in wmv (Windows media video) and MS AVI formats (picture and sound).

Can't get it to play mpg videos at all even though when you import a file it has mpg variations as legitimate options.

How did you produce your video. Are you sure that the picture and sound streams are contained in one file, not separately.

Are you able to convert your video into wmv or avi format and try that.

[Silver_Shiney]

Hi allatc

Many thanks for that. I'm using 365 at the office and 2003 at home. I'll try converting to WMV and AVI tonight (don't have the requisite software in the office) and will let you know how I get on.

[Keechy]

How many power points do you need. I'm no sparky, but I get by

Be careful. If you use a power point, you might get arrested.

[Silver_Shiney]

Further to last post :-

Powerpoint 2007 will play videos that are in wmv (Windows media video) and MS AVI formats (picture and sound).

Can't get it to play mpg videos at all even though when you import a file it has mpg variations as legitimate options.

How did you produce your video. Are you sure that the picture and sound streams are contained in one file, not separately.

Are you able to convert your video into wmv or avi format and try that.

Hi allatc

I converted one of the clips to .avi and, while I got the sound, the video was very pixillated.

I then tried .wmv format and - SUCCESS!!

Thank you very much indeed for your invaluable help

[Silver_Shiney]

Okay, the PowerPoint is now up and running. It's on an XP-based touch-screen computer in our museum, using the free MS PowerPoint viewer. I had to create it at home using Orifice 2003's Presentation CD option, as Orifice 365's version wouldn't run properly at all. The problem I've now got is that, once fired up, the touchscreen elements are inactive until the user wipes a finger vigorously across the screen until a cursor arrow appears - only then do the hyperlinks guiding the user to various sections of the presentation work. Outside PowerPoint, (ie on the Windows desktop) everything works as advertised by touch. Visitors to the museum won't necessarily know to work the screen to get the cursor back before touching the hyperlinks.

As the computers in the museum will never be connected to the internet, there's no value in changing the OS to a later version of Windows. I am tempted, though, to scrub it and install Ubuntu instead... will have to research if that OS is compatible with touchscreens.