EX1 footage into Power Point

[Greg Kiger]

While I have dreams of taking Speilbergs seat, today I have a paying client who wants us to deliver our EX1 video in a format that they can drop into a Power Point presentation. We have diligently tried many formats with no luck.

Has anyone had success at outputting something that will play well within a Power Point presentation.

thanks in advance

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by Greg Kiger

While I have dreams of taking Speilbergs seat, today I have a paying client who wants us to deliver our EX1 video in a format that they can drop into a Power Point presentation. We have diligently tried many formats with no luck.

Has anyone had success at outputting something that will play well within a Power Point presentation.

thanks in advance

Use Windows Media. Have done this for many clients and Windows Media files always seem to work fine with Powerpoint.

[Carlos Viteri]

Dear Greg,

You first have to encode the footage using squeeze or compressor to a mpg4, Mov. or windows format then go to PPT and inset them in.

[Craig Seeman]

Can't Power Point handle H.264 MOV files?
Encode to that in Compressor, etc.

If they want WMV, then get Telestream Flip4Mac and encode to that (encodes with all Quicktime based apps, Compressor, etc).

[Scott Howard]

You can make a lot of different files work, but the easiest and best for PowerPoint is a Windows Media file. And keep in mind that it's not embedded into the PowerPoint - it's being referenced by it. So whenever you move the PowerPoint file, you have to move the video file with it and probably relink it.

[Marcus Durham]

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

Can't Power Point handle H.264 MOV files?
Encode to that in Compressor, etc.

If they want WMV, then get Telestream Flip4Mac and encode to that (encodes with all Quicktime based apps, Compressor, etc).

Powerpoint uses Windows Media player to play back video that is embedded in a slide. Therefore you are entirely dependant on what codecs an individual machine has. Just because H264 works on your own machine doesn't guarantee it will work on the clients.

There is nothing worse than a client arriving at a site to find their Powerpoint slide won't work because they are loading the presentation onto a machine with a base Windows install.

In which case it is always safest to use Windows Media. They'd have to have a really old install (pre 2002) for it not to work. It's a standard codec on Windows machines and has been for a number of years which means you won't get angry phonecalls from your client demanding to know why their slide suddenly doesn't work.

I have seen some people use MPEG 1 in preference to Windows Media but frankly unless there's any risk of a PC that is more than about 7 years old being used I wouldn't bother.

In short WMV will just work. I've used it on countless presentations, the only problems I've ever had were user error.

Also remember that Powerpoint only references the file so ideally you need to keep it in the same directory as the presentation. No video file, no playback.

Also take into account the bitrate and resolution you use. Business machines tend not to be the highest spec in the world so if you are encoding high bitrate HD video be sure that the target machine can play it back. I tend to play it conservative to be on the safe side because I know some clients are running older laptops with integrated graphics.

[Greg Kiger]

Very helpful as always - thanks so much to you all :)

[Greg Kiger]

OK, sounds like the goal is to get a Windows Media WMV however ....we can't see a way to render the video in a WMV format in either QT Pro or FCP.

Any further suggestions?

thanks

[Marcus Durham]

You need to buy the Flip4Mac plugin:

Telestream Flip4Mac WMV - Overview

Or you can just download the free Windows Media encoder from Microsoft if you have access to a Windows PC or have a dual boot/Parallels. Although you'll need to make sure your video is in a format Windows can play first if you do it that way.

[Greg Kiger]

Brilliant - we will give it a try :)

cheers Marcus

[Vincent Mesman]

Or use any standard XP, Vista or Win7 machine and run the free Microsoft Media Encoder.

The free version encodes up to 20Mbps. If they use an older computer for playback, keep the bitrate between 4Mbps and 8Mbps. Check if WMV v9 is supported or else revert to WMV v7.
I had exellent results with WMV v9 at 20Mbps 1080p25 on 5m screens.

Feed this encoder with AVI compressed or uncompressed files.