Video in Powerpoint

[Andrew Leigh]

Hi,

have done a search and but did not find the solution.

I need a short clip in a powerpoint presentation, sounds easy enough. I inserted the clip as a .avi using the standard menu functions in powerpoint. The clip shows annoying motion artifacts which are not present when viewing in Premiere 6.0. When paying back in WMP9 the motion artifacts are also present. Read somewhere one need to interlace consecutive frames.

Went back to Premiere 6.0 and interlaced consecutive frames, no difference. Once again when opening the file in a seperate window within Premiere show no problem with the clip.

Have to be doing something wrong, any ideas?


Cheers
Andrew

[Ed Smith]

I don't understand what you mean by 'motion artifacts'? Can you try and discribe it in laymans terms?

It might be an idea if you could post a pic or the actual AVI for us to view and make sense from?

Cheers,

Ed

[David Stoneburner]

What has worked best for us is making the video into an mpeg 1 file. A good quality mpeg 1 at 352x240 2.1 mbs looks just as good as the original dv. When you stretch it bigger, it does soften up a little, but I think acceptable. Also mpeg1 is much easier for lower end computers to play back, as well as it works better on Macs, so it is very good for cross platform.

[Rob Lohman]

I can't imagine a 352x240 mpeg1 stream will look just as good
as a DV stream since it is a much lower resolution. That being
said, it might be wise to go with a lower resolution indeed.

What you are probably seeing is interlacing artifacts indeed.
Going to a lower resolution will simply discard one field and
thus no more interlacing problems. I suspect somewhere in the
encoding something went wrong. DV is lower field first instead
of normal upper. So check to see if your WMV is encoded with
that setting.

[David Stoneburner]

If you take the 352x240 and play it back on a computer at the size, it can look really close to the original DV file. If you resize it full screen then it will get softer and fall apart. Since the question was about PowerPoint, I have help to put video on a lot of presentations. Usually the video will take up 1/2 to 3/4 of screen with some kind of graphic titles or other type of text on the background supporting the video. If you would want full screen video, then another format may be better, although I have made an mpeg 1 at 702x480 that ended up looking better than a stretched 352x240. It still lost some quality from the original DV, but it was small and playable. Still PowerPoint was really designed for that, I would go with a DVD if video quality was the most important thing.

[Rob Lohman]

MPEG1 isn't supposed to go beyond half resolution. Switch to
MPEG2 for that. I agree that such a lower resolution format can
be benificial in this case (ie, powerpoint presentations). I just
"disagree" that is looks as good as DV. That's all.

[David Stoneburner]

No problem there, but eventhough mpg1 was designed to go above 352x240 what I have done is export it out at 702x480 and have it work and look pretty good.
Example: I work at a university, a professor needed to send a video that he shot and edited to NASA. This was a couple of years ago. He wanted to put it on cd. In the video it had a lot of full frame graphics. He edited with Premiere 6, and we used the bbMPG free plugin to export out to mpg1. We made two files. File 1 was 352x240, cbr at around 2.1 mbs. When you played it back on a computer it looked good at it's native resolution, but when your went to full screen mode it did what you what it should and soften up and had blurry edges. The graphics weren't as sharp. So I thought how about make it full resolution. File 2 was 702x480, cbr at around 2.1 mbs. The file size was about the same as file 1. When played back on the computer, it played back just fine at full size and looked much clearer when set to full screen. The professor got some very high praise for the cd that he sent to NASA, the 702x480.
I've been able to do this more than once. The only problem that I have come to was a project that had a lot of moving graphics. The graphics were clear but got a little jumpy near the end of the sequence. Audio and sync were just fine. The 352x240 wasn't as sharp but the moving graphic sequence didn't jump as much. I don't think it was the mpg file, I think it was the encoding. The vcd specifications strictly state that a vcd must be 352x240 and no more than 1.5 mbs. But other than that it is possible. It's just a thought and something that has worked for me. I would agree to stay with the normal size of 352x240, but if you want or need it to play back much larger, 702x480 can work.

[Peter Moore]

MPEG-2 with the Elecard / Moonlight Codec is usually the best option for Powerpoint movies in full res. It is so fast, even works on old laptops.

[John Locke]

Andrew,

Since we often have to load our PPT presentation into other machines (ones already set up for the speaker and hooked-up to the beam projector), we use Flash video. That way, we don't have to worry about PC/Mac/Version/System conflicts.