PowerPoint

Inserting clips into PowerPoint

Media clips in power point can be inserted by going to “insert” and scrolling down to “Movies and Sound”. You will be prompted to choose whether you want the clip to play automatically or when clicked. This is a personal preference.

You may add the video to a slide with text or let it stand alone.

You can resize the video by clicking on the lower right corner and dragging. The downloaded video should look decent stretched nearly full screen.

Playing clips through PowerPoint - Media player requirements.

PowerPoint and other programs make use of the media players that are resident on the computer. If you have a current version of PowerPoint but haven’t updated your Windows media player you may get one of a couple errors. See this excerpt from Microsoft’s MSDN web site for more detailed information.

Taken from Microsoft’s MSDN web page.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_pp2003_ta/html/odc_PP_PlayMedia.asp

Conclusion

There are several things you can do to ensure the media in your presentations perform as expected: Install the latest versions of Windows Media Player and DirectX on all computers on which you plan to run your presentations. Update the video and sound card drivers on all computers on which you plan to run your presentations, as necessary. Ensure that the computers on which you plan to run your presentations have the codecs necessary to decode and play the media files included in your presentation. If not, install the necessary codecs or re-encode your media files using codecs that are installed on the computers. Remember, if you open the media file in Windows Media Player, the player attempts to download and install the necessary codec(s) for you automatically.

For information on how to add media files to your presentation as objects that PowerPoint recognizes as movies and sounds, and the advantages of doing so, see Adding Multimedia to a PowerPoint 2003 Presentation.

DirectX on a PC is not an easy thing to find. Here is the link to Microsoft for the DirectX update.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.aspx

Moving your ppt

Taken from Microsoft’s MSDN web page.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_pp2003_ta/html/odc_PP_PlayMedia.asp

Package for CD and Media File Support

The PowerPoint Package for CD feature (PowerPoint 2003) provides a convenient way to gather a presentation and all its linked files automatically, either for burning to a CD or storage in a single location. This eliminates the problem of linked files not being available when a user moves the presentation to another computer. Be aware that the Package for CD feature does not package support files, such as any of the media players or codecs needed to play media files, with the presentation.

What Microsoft is saying here is that where ever you take the presentation you will need to have the same or newer media player as the system that created the files. If you use MPEG files on one machine they may not work on another. This sometimes happens due to codecs not being available, but can also occur when one media player “highjacks” the rights to play a file type. This happens when you answer yes when prompted to “have quicktime be the default player for known file types”.

PowerPoint 2002 and earlier (missing from one previous version but returned later) had a feature called Pack & Go. This is similar to Package for CD. It bundles all the linked files together for transport to another location. This process creates two files. One a .exe and one a .ppz. After you move the files to their new location you need to double click on the .exe and it will “extract” the presentation to the location you choose. You will then be able to play the presentation.

Using PowerPoint “Intro Slide”

The “Intro Slide” was created to give you a head start on the introduction of the guest speaker. The information is general Biographical information that is broad enough to use for each case that person is involved with. Use it however you wish. It can be valuable to download it and keep in a single place so that you can find it the next time you use that person in lecture.

Using transcript

The transcript is one of the most powerful features we have. It gives us the extensive search capabilities we enjoy on eClips. You may find that once you know a speaker’s face, you will simply read the transcript rather than play the preview video. You will be able to get through far more clips this way.

Use the transcript portions in your PowerPoint by copying and pasting into the notes section. At a later date it will help you remember what the speaker said without playing each video in the PowerPoint. It will also be there on any Handouts you print…