How to mix video and PowerPoint seemlessly?

March 30, 2006 8:43 AM

I'm working on a competition presentation for my student organization. The presentation is in the form of a video (made in Adobe AfterEffects) but we may also want to include PowerPoint slides. What's a good way to mix video and PowerPoint without fear of hiccups?

I considered having some slides contain full screen videos, but I am afraid that there might be 1-2 second delays whenever a new video loads. These delays can send us off schedule. Does anyone have any other suggestions -- maybe a way to export everything into flash? (The video is all 800x600.)

posted by yevge to Technology (4 answers total)

Could you just include everything (slides and video) in one long video? When you say off schedule, what other elements are you presenting?

You may want to consider something like Union.
posted by doctor_negative at 9:04 AM on March 30, 2006

If you have the time and know-how you could do it in Flash.
posted by ollsen at 9:34 AM on March 30, 2006

Response by poster: The presentation is very structured. For example, in the beginning we have the 5 presenters briefly introduce themselves. Each introduction is about 10 seconds, but if the first presenter takes 9 seconds and the second takes 9, then when the third presenter introduces himself he will see the last 2 seconds of the video clip from the second presenter. Instead I'd want to hit a key, to instantly switch to the next video clip.
posted by yevge at 4:16 PM on March 30, 2006

I work in an area which has a lot of video - and it is amazing how often codec problems bring down the most important people. The best tip I can give you is to use AVI as the wrapper then embed them in powerpoint, and to ensure that the codecs for the video compression you use are on the machine you are presenting with. The only sure-fire way to do this is to use your own laptop!

If the videos are embedded in the ppt, you can just press space to go to next slide which will solve your timing problems.

Good luck.
posted by handee at 11:43 PM on March 30, 2006