Powerpoint to FCP
 

When I loaded a client's Powerpt. presentation onto my Mac a box popped up warning me that "Ppt. doesn't support ActiveX controls". Some of the slides came up black. How can I get this to open on my Mac so I can load it into FCP 5? I know ActiveX is a Microsoft product, is it a format issue and will not work?

Thanks for any input.
Tom

Welcome to the forum, Tom.

You can't directly load a PPT into FCP because it's not a movie or animation format, you'd first need to have PPT export it into a format that FCP supports.

Alternatively you could load the PPT into Keynote (if you own iWork) and have Keynote make the conversion into a Quicktime movie. Keynote has full access to all the QT export formats including all the pro-codecs (when it's being used on a FCP system) so you could export it into the exact format you're editing in.

Hi Robert
 

and thanks, I've been a longtime reader and it's good to be in the forum.
My problem comes before importing Ppt into FCP. When I open the presentation itself on my Mac I don't get all the slides, some are blacked out. I figure it's got something to do with not having ActiveX controls since I'm working with a presentation that was built on a pc and I'm trying to open it on a different platform.

Hi Tom.

Robert is absolutely right. I have one corporate client who is always sending me Powerpoint files (which I was never able to open). After getting iWork, those problems are gone and Keynote has extra features which can give an extra polish to the original Powerpoint presentation.

Just open the Powerpoint file in Keynote, add any extra effects (if you desire), then export it as a Quicktime movie (as Robert says, you can export it into the exact format settings you're using in FCP). Then it will import into FCP without any problems.

This sounds more like a Microsoft problem. Active X is a Windows Technology which - as far as I know - was never ported to the mac. It's not part of Mac Office, thus these files won't open/display their content correctly when opened on a mac. Looks like the only workaround would be to open them on a PC and convert them first so they're not relying on active x anymore.
I have my doubts that keynote is able to convert the file.

Here is a quote from the Apple website:

"Versatile in so many ways, Keynote imports presentations created in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (Office Open XML) as well as earlier versions."

And:

"Keynote ’08 lets you import PowerPoint and AppleWorks presentations and share your presentations with others, by exporting them as PowerPoint presentations or a variety of other formats."

Thank you, gentlemen.
Keynote acquired; now I'm playing with the size and timing of the quicktime movie as I sync it to the video of the presentation.

I appreciate all the input.
Tom

So, keynote was in fact able to open and convert the file ?! Wow!! I'm very positively surprised. I've been using keynote for over a year now and I love it, but in this case I was afraid that it would be unable to convert activex controls.
Best,
Dino