Blaze this powerpoint!

August 7, 2009 8:08 PM

What video format is most compatible within Powerpoint?

I'm downloading some simple video clips and would like to know what to convert them into for Powerpoint. There are many choices including, WMV, MP2, MP4, FLV, AVI.

It's Powerpoint 2003, and I'm basically hoping for whatever plays the videos within Powerpoint the simplest (ie – load up time between slides is slowest, crashes happen infrequently, etc.).

Thanks!

posted by fantasticninety to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I've always used avi, but I imagine wmv would work best since it's a Microsoft format.
posted by sanka at 8:10 PM on August 7

Seconding sanka
posted by jkaczor at 8:16 PM on August 7

Windows Media 7 and Windows Audio 7 in an ASF container or MPEG-1 Video and MPEG-1 Layer II Audio in an MPEG-PS container will get you the broadest compatibility across Windows PC of various ages if you're planning to redistribute the presentations and attached videos.

My experience suggest to me that MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid, DivX, etc.) in an AVI container with MP3 audio is a good compromise between compression efficiency and decoding demands on most any PC made within the last decade. If PowerPoint uses DirectShow like other applications, then this would be my choice for my own use mainly because I'm not going to take the time to encode to any worthwhile H.264 profile for videos I'll use as part of a presentation.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:25 PM on August 7 [1 favorite]

Err, Windows Media Video 7 and Windows Media Audio 7 ..., etc.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:25 PM on August 7

During the last 8 years, video in presentations has been the number one stress issue for me when getting panels going at my conference. It's the one thing that consistently throws monkey wrenches in the works. If you are running it off your own laptop, then pretty much anything that works is fine - I would use .avi for quality's sake. But if you are going to be moving the presentation between computers, I would go with sanka and recommend .wmv. Any computer with Powerpoint installed will be able to run it, and I have personally never had issues with presentations using that particular file format.
posted by gemmy at 8:57 PM on August 7

Argh, it might work on your computer, but what computer is the ppt going to be run on?

ppts with embedded video made on a mac (typically mov) is really hit & miss on a pc. AVI and WMV have lots of different versions; even if it works on one PC/laptop, it may not work on another if it has a different codec or version of the codec installed.

It's a real pain in the ass, in the scientific presentation community.

The least bad way is to run the ppt with the embedded video on the system that's going to display it (like says). If it's something that you're emailing... not much you can do other than to include the video file, alone outside of ppt, in it's native format (and maybe include a couple of converted formats. EOVideo is 'ok' at converting video).

If you're presenting something at a conference, check out the presentation beforehand. Most conferences have IT people on hand who can hook up your laptop to the presentation system pretty quickly, especially if you approach them beforehand and they can do a dryrun.

====

IME, there are several versions of WMV encoders which might not work well with different versions of WMV decoders. AVI is a wrapper; what's inside of it can be very very different. I've seen *LOTS* of (multi-tens-of-thousands-of-d=dollars) programs spit out AVIs that don't work except from inside the very expensive programs (ie., the avi files don't work anywhere else).
posted by porpoise at 1:05 AM on August 8

In the past I've seen presenters who carry around a copy of VLC Portable along with their presentation and videos, as a backup. It has codecs built into it, so if it plays a video on one computer it will play that video on (as far as I've seen) any other computer.

Of course, you'll have to minimise your presentation etc so it's not an ideal solution.
posted by Mike1024 at 2:37 AM on August 8

All of these answers were awesome. Thank you so much!
posted by fantasticninety at 8:01 AM on August 8

Just so you know, Powerpoint 2003 and down (don't know about 2007) uses a standalone video player component, rather than Windows Media Player itself, to play your video if you embed it within the presentation. On older laptops and the typical min-specced PCs you'll find hooked up to most projectors, this can result in choppy playback or a black screen.

WMV is always your safest bet for playback when going across different OSs and systems, and if you get choppiness or other issues, try bumping back your graphics hardware acceleration a couple of notches, using this trick on XP:

1. Click the Start button
2. Go to Settings > Control Panel > Display
3. Click Settings, then look for 'Advanced'.
4. Click the Troubleshooting tab.
5. Look for the slider that says Hardware Acceleration. It will very likely be set to Full. Move the slider to the left until it is three notches along.
6. Click Apply, then OK, then OK again.
7. Try running the presentation again. The video may be slightly less smooth in playback, but should play all the way through. If it doesn’t, repeat these steps but move the slider another notch to the left.
posted by Happy Dave at 6:08 AM on August 10