By default PowerPoint does not embed .AVI files. PowerPoint does not infact embed any video files at all. When you use the Insert > Movie > Movie From File... menu command in PowerPoint, PowerPoint does not embed the physical video into your presentation but merely creates a relative link to the file which opened during play back.
To confuse matters even more James, when PowerPoint plays video it doesn't play video through the Windows Media Player, but instead plays it through a Windows controller called the MCI Player. The MCI Player does not always play video files that otherwise play without difficulty in Windows Media Player. See http://www.123ppt.com/powerpoint/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=202 - Video causes power point to crash .
This is because Windows Media Player decodes and plays back video using the codecs installed on your machine. The MCI Player does not always have access to these codecs and so without access to custom and non standard Windows codecs can on occassion deliver suprising results. For exmaple, play video without sound, or without picture, or fast forwarding to the final frame.
When converting a video file from one format to another, it is always important to ensure that the software you have selected to do the conversion is using a standard Windows default codec. By default, I mean one that is available freely on every machine and installed with Microsoft Windows, such as Windows Video or Cinepak. The importance of this James, is that this will ensure that your video file plays correctly up on every platform and without unexpected results.
When converting video files for use in PowerPoint, it is always a preferred option to convert the source video file to MPG or WMV file rather than AVI. This is because AVI is not a fully supported video format of Windows. AVI can be played across most Windows operating systems through Windows Media Player, but AVI requires greater use of codecs, with Cinepak being the only default standard provided by Microsoft.
AVI files are also much greater in file size than WMV or MPG files and on occassion, when large AVI files are used in a PowerPoint presentation, PowerPoint can behave erractically, or in the worst cases hang or crash locking CPU Usage to 100%.
------------- Charles Henry,
Creative Director, www.123ppt.com
|