Expert: Jeffson - 9/7/2007

Question
Dear KingMarsh,

when I try to play a slideshow with movies included my powerpoint gives an error message and closes. When I try to import movies in a slideshow, the same thing happens. I tried a office xp, 2003 and 2007 installation and they all react the same (os is XP, sp2). I have a dual boot system XP / Vista and in Vista Powerpoint 2007 works fine.. Do you know what the problem can be and/or how to fix it?

kind regards,

Bart

Answer
Hello, Bart

I think the reason may be that the computer does not have the requried codes to play the video file.

PowerPoint can only recognize video in AVI, MPEG, MWV format. To the video, you need to have the requried codes installed on your computer.

Codes is something to compress the video when stored and
upcompress when playing.

Here are some video format and codes.
1. AVI
PowerPoint can play and control these video files natively.
2. MOV
PowerPoint can only play QuickTime content rendered using the Cinepak codec
3. MPG, MPEG:
All flavors of MPEG files use this extension. Typically MPEG 1 movies play well in PowerPoint - and they are the best option if you need to create a presentation that needs to be played on both the Windows and Mac versions of PowerPoint. MPEG 2 movies usually are not that easy to play in PowerPoint - they are more reliant on both hardware and software and usually may not work in PowerPoint even if they do play well in Windows Media Player.

Also, here are a small tip for you.
If you can convert video to Flash and insert it as Flash video to your PowerPoint, i think you can get rid of a lot of troubles.

A handy Video to Flash converter will help.
http://www.sameshow.com/webvideo-author.html