not another VIDEO question

Goofy suggestion, maybe, but try opening Windows Media Player and turning off the hardware acceleration in it.

This is for the version of your file where you're playing the movie using Insert/Movie/From File, not the one where you're using an inserted WMP object (Mike M's option).

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]
http://www.echosvoice.com
presenter, PPT Live '04
Oct 10-13, San Diego http://www.powerpointlive.com



"lorry" wrote:

After trying a few more moview, i note that most of the time the CPU sits
more at 40% then the 90 somehting percent i thought ws occurring all the
time.

The videos are pretty satandard
One for example is a 720 x 241 avi pixel uncompressed 1 16 bit movie that i
tell ppt to play again and again (each second is one heartbeat....so looping
looks like the heart beating)

others are mpgs - when i go to properties i dont get the same info as
above - rather a title subject aurthor categor box (all unfilled) movie
sizes are all less than 1 mb

why should going to show mode make such a difference to movie quality? I
thought ppt handed everything off to to the mplayer? ie if it plays in one
it should play the same in any view. Obviously not. RATS!

Any other ideas?

Lorry


"Sonia" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the information. Number 3 tells us that running the movie in
in
Show mode in PowerPoint is "pegging" the CPU, which explains to me why the
play is jerky. My guess is that something about the videos is causing
PowerPoint to work overtime decoding them. Where did they come from?
Have
they been converted from other formats? Do you know the image size,
sample
size, compression and frame rate? You should be able to right click on
them
in Windows Explorer, select Properties, and click on the Summary tab.

"lorry" wrote in message
...
Thanks for your rapid reply Sonia,

HArdware acceleration : doesnt matter - as long as its about half way
down
then the movies play (ie not a black box), but if i go all the way to
the
left, the video is no better or worse. HAve tried with write combing on
and
off.

I have some screen shots of the task manager that i could send to
you...in
summary however
1. ppt open no movie playing:
system idle 70%
ppt - 14%

2.: ppt open in normal view - one movie playing
system idle 50%
ppt -34%

3. ppt open in slideshow mode - movie playing
a: just watching it
system idle 1%
ppt - 98%

b: when snagging it
system idle 40%
ppt - 43%


Sigh

Lorry


"Sonia" wrote in message
...
Given that you've addressed the normal things we would suggest, it
sounds
like there is competition for resources on your system. However, how
far
down have you set hardware acceleration? Try lowering it more if
possible.

Is the presentation being played from your hard drive, or from a CD or
other
removable media or from a network drive?

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up Task Manager. What other applications
are
running? What is the CPU Usage %? Click on the Processes tab. Tap
twice
on the CPU column to sort it by % in descending order. What are the
most
active processes, other than System Idle?
--
Sonia, MS PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun CD software, templates, and tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com/


"lorry" wrote in message
...
PPT 2003, windows x[

Insert a video file - (smallish ~ 1mb).

When viewed (by coubleclicking) in normal view it plays normally

In the slideshow it is VERY jerky

I have my hardware acceleration down as movies were often becoming
black
boxes

latest updates of windows, video card drivers (although happened
with
older
driver too....card is nvidia GeFOrce 4 MX420), computer is pentium 4
with
a
gig of RAM ie shouldnt be a processor problem

Any ideas

oh yes, the videos are mpeg and avi in standard codecs and run fne
in
quicktime and mediaplayer and (mplayer via the run command)

Not exactly sure how to do that Echo,

Could you give me some more detailed instructions if you have a moment?

What does this all mean though? Why wont the movies play in slideshow
mode...why oh why (lament)

On a separate note, I'm sure I remember you once writing in a newsgroup to
someone who was having an issue transferring ppt presentations from a mac
that they should turn off the quicktime compression - if it was you - I cant
find out how to do that and have had issues with talks written on a pc
transferred to a mac, edited a bit (and relinked - aaaargh). When I go back
to my pc with the talk, it tells me I need a different decompressor (but I
have quicktime pro on both machines....have read steve rindsbergs articles
to try and solve the problem myself but to no avail)


Win xp ppt 2003, mac OSX + ppt 2004


Thank you

Lorry


On 6/25/04 11:53 AM, in article
, "Echo S"
wrote:

Goofy suggestion, maybe, but try opening Windows Media Player and turning off
the hardware acceleration in it.

This is for the version of your file where you're playing the movie using
Insert/Movie/From File, not the one where you're using an inserted WMP object
(Mike M's option).

Open Windows Media Player.
Tools/Options
On the Performance tab, move the video acceleration slider all the way to the left.

Someone posted within the past couple of weeks that this helped them be able to play their videos in PPT, even though, of course, the videos are not playing directly through Windows Media Player.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]
http://www.echosvoice.com
presenter, PPT Live '04
Oct 10-13, San Diego http://www.powerpointlive.com



"Dembo" wrote:

Not exactly sure how to do that Echo,

Could you give me some more detailed instructions if you have a moment?

What does this all mean though? Why wont the movies play in slideshow
mode...why oh why (lament)

On a separate note, I'm sure I remember you once writing in a newsgroup to
someone who was having an issue transferring ppt presentations from a mac
that they should turn off the quicktime compression - if it was you - I cant
find out how to do that and have had issues with talks written on a pc
transferred to a mac, edited a bit (and relinked - aaaargh). When I go back
to my pc with the talk, it tells me I need a different decompressor (but I
have quicktime pro on both machines....have read steve rindsbergs articles
to try and solve the problem myself but to no avail)


Win xp ppt 2003, mac OSX + ppt 2004


Thank you

Lorry


On 6/25/04 11:53 AM, in article
, "Echo S"
wrote:

Goofy suggestion, maybe, but try opening Windows Media Player and turning off
the hardware acceleration in it.

This is for the version of your file where you're playing the movie using
Insert/Movie/From File, not the one where you're using an inserted WMP object
(Mike M's option).

"Dembo" wrote:

On a separate note, I'm sure I remember you once writing in a newsgroup to
someone who was having an issue transferring ppt presentations from a mac
that they should turn off the quicktime compression - if it was you -

It probably was I.

I cant
find out how to do that and have had issues with talks written on a pc
transferred to a mac, edited a bit (and relinked - aaaargh). When I go back
to my pc with the talk, it tells me I need a different decompressor (but I
have quicktime pro on both machines....have read steve rindsbergs articles
to try and solve the problem myself but to no avail)

PPT on the PC doesn't play well with QuickTime. I'm not Mac-savvy, but IIRC, there's a setting somewhere on the Mac that tells it to use QT Compression on videos and images. (I know that at least at one time you could turn this off for images when saving a PPT presentation. Just can't remember how it was done exactly.) I'll ask the Mac MVPs about it.

Win xp ppt 2003, mac OSX + ppt 2004

Thanks for this info.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]
http://www.echosvoice.com
presenter, PPT Live '04
Oct 10-13, San Diego http://www.powerpointlive.com

PPT on the PC doesn't play well with QuickTime. I'm not Mac-savvy, but IIRC, there's a
setting somewhere on the Mac that tells it to use QT Compression on videos and images. (I
know that at least at one time you could turn this off for images when saving a PPT
presentation. Just can't remember how it was done exactly.) I'll ask the Mac MVPs about
it.

In the save-as dialog, click Options. In the lower part of the dialog box that opens
next, there's a Compression check box and quality setting. Pretty sure that's the
QuickTime trigger.

But what also happens is that other apps may use QT compression; the images get imported
into PPT and then won't "play" on Windows PCs. As far as I know, the only way out of
that is to delete the images, work out how to get the source app NOT to use QT (if that
can be done? I used to have to disable the QT init on older Macs -- kill it to keep it
out of the way, in other words). Re-do the images, re-import into PPT ... a lotta work!

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
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