[MacDV] Formatting problem: video in PowerPoint

[Mike Rehbein]

I work at an IT shop.

Our enterprise is all windoes (sigh.....!)

The policy set does not allow users to install QT or anything else so  
that each workstation and server remains standard.

In the past, QT was installed but like any windoes environment,  
installing an item on 3,000 boxes means 300 or more boxes will  
require a visit from staff to "fix" the install. Add to that, once it  
is working on all the boxes (and it never does on all.....) then  
comes the maintenance trips to the boxes (hey, it used to work,  
really). So as you can see, it is important to keep the number of  
supported apps to a minimum. QT is not considered vital to the  
enterprise for work so, it is no longer on the list of installed or  
supported apps.

That's why QT is not an option for us or many windoes shops....

This is my beef with MS. My expectation would be that MS Office would  
be cross-platform. And while much of it is, much is not. PowerPoint  
is probably the biggest pain in not being cross-platform. Instead, MS  
or the MBU (mac business unit) decided to use what each platform  
deals with best when adding movies to PPT. So, PPT on the Mac uses QT  
best and on the MS side of the fence, other formats are used. This is  
just one difference. If you are making a PPT show on a Mac, it is  
best to remain super simple if you wish to use the same PPT on a PC  
for a presentation.

Or, better yet. If you will use a Mac for the presentation, why use  
PPT at all? Move on to (yep, it is painful to learn a different app  
but.....) move on to Keynote. It will actually work. PPT needs to be  
updated severely and I hope that someday, MS takes the time to do so.  
It is appallingly messy to work with if you try to use many of the  
spiffy features.

After my more recent attempt to develop a fancy training PPT on my  
Mac, trying to be careful and test each feature I used would work on  
a PC, well, I gave up. I spent more time on the PPT functions than on  
the training material itself.

It was like having to do more maintenance on a car that I was driving  
on a trip than the time it was taking to drive the trip itself....

I still needed a product that would work on PC's so my work around  
was and is to develop the training material in iMovie and create a  
DVD. The PC seems to function with this reliably. I've had other  
fancy PPT's simply break time and again in the past and I'm tired of  
having to fix them or not fix them and remove the errant feature.

PPT is great when all you need is to knock out a quick presentation  
that consists of photos, graphics, text and little more. Very little  
more :)

YMMV,
Mike




On Feb 19, 2007, at 12:34 PM, CM McDonald wrote:

> What's wrong with using QuickTime? It works fine with Powerpoint.  
> You can just drag the files in to the slides, or you can import them.
>
> You could always include a link to the QuickTime site for anyone  
> who finds their Windows PC doesn't have the player or plug-in.
>
> Colin McDonald
>
>
> On 19 Feb 2007, at 15:50, Ehrhart, Robert wrote:
>
>> I need some help! I’m trying to come up with the configuration  
>> that will
>> allow me to play some videos in a PowerPoint presentation. I  
>> converted the
>> file to an avi with CinePak compression in Quicktime, but the  
>> image quality
>> is horrible. I converted it into a .wmv file from mpeg streamline,  
>> but it
>> won’t play in PowerPoint. A test of the .mpeg is posted here:
>>
>> http://www.mindspring.com/~ehrhart/files/
>> <http://www.mindspring.com/~ehrhart/files/>
>>
>> the file is the only one in the folder, named Test070210.mpeg
>>
>>
>> Does anyone have any suggestions about how to format the video  
>> file? It has
>> to be compatible with PowerPoint—this is for a cd of video  
>> testimonials that
>> a sales force will use to customize their presentations.
>
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