Streaming Quicktime Problem
 

I have a mov file that was converted from a powerpoint with wav file audio for each slide to a mov file (exported). It was then compressed with Quicktime. When I make a reference movie file, and watch it... sometimes it works right, sometimes there is lag, slides and audio are not in sync, sometimes the first slide is skipped altogether.

Almost always the first screen is a grass green color, then either in sections or at once, it change to the slideshow. We are using Darwin streaming server.

Any ideas? is there any software that will work better?

I'm new at making quicktime movies.

Thanks in advance!
Nola

Offhand I would say you are having a bit-rate problem -- too much data down too small a pipe often generates the sync issues you are describing. A key to making this work when you are new at it is to make a number of files at different bit rates and see what works best.

Can you be more explicit about how you converted the powerpoint?

My boss converted the powerpoint with his Mac. Powerpoint for the Mac has an export to quicktime ability. I don't think the windows version has this?

If it helps, we are trying to do this on an WAN/Intranet.

I will try to dsay this in laymans terms.

QuickTime is a rich media file format that can hold multiple types of media and have them "played" at a specific time. For instance, a QT file can contain a single still picture once and have it displayed say 3 seconds into the playback and kept displayed for 4 seconds. Meanwhile, the same file can contain audio information for the whole time the picture is displayed. The picture only occurs once in the file whereas the audio data is there for the entire period. Motion video is similar to audio in that there is a constant stream of video frames.

Exporting a Powerpoint slideshow to a Quicktime file may (I am not sure) use the former QT features and just have a single picture for each slide and whatever audio you also had in the presentation.

Streaming video requires there is a constant flow of audio and video data. The QT exported from PPT may not put it in this form (even tho it's QT). Furthermore, in order to squeeze it over a network, the data has to be compressed so it flows in time. Take the QT produced by PPT and open it in the QT Pro player. Then export it using one of the presets for streaming video. That should convert the individual images to a stream of frames.

Thats what we did.

The symptoms you describe are those that occur when the client computer trying to display the video is starved of data in the stream. Try different settings in the export that create lower bandwidth (bytes per second) files. You may also have something in the network that is preventing the transfer.