Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Solving Video Playback in PowerPoint for Vista

Last updated Dec 7, 2007.

Recently I wrote about the problems with using Flash in PowerPoint and suggested a conversion utility to convert Flash into PowerPoint-friendly video.

I might have spoken too soon because as I learned at PowerPoint LIVE from watching Richard Harrington, you can choose to embed video files in PowerPoint.

Why do this? Because using the default way of playing video in PowerPoint is a matter of linking to the video — and when you distribute or move your presentation, you are always in danger of breaking those links.

While embedding video greatly increases the file size of the PowerPoint file, if you want to make sure it plays it may be worth the effort.

You can use the Developer Tab in PowerPoint 2007 to place a Shockwave Flash object into your slide, and then click the option to embed the video.

To get the Developer tab, click PowerPoint options in the Office Button and enable it in the Popular options panel.

With the Developer tab open, click More Controls.

Select the Shockwave Flash Object.

Drag out a box for the object in the slide. Right-click it and select Properties.

To locate the movie path, you can right-click it in its folders and look at its properties — note the path still does not include the actual movie name.

Complete the path = filename in the Movie properties field, and then select True for Embed.

When you exit the Properties window you still won't see the Flash movie — save the PowerPoint file and play the file full screen one time — then the movie will appear in the slide.

Now you can move this PowerPoint file anywhere, and with the Flash file embedded, it will play. You can even post it only and it should play in a web browser that has the Flash plug in installed, which it generally does by default.

It's a bit of trouble — but if you want it foolproof this is what it will take.

You might also want to note that this works with a single SWF file, and may work with a web page containing an FLV file and a preload SWF file of the kind created by some export to Flash options. Try to create a single SWF file to embed into PowerPoint that contains all of the relevant information — FLV files need to be converted to other formats as noted above.

Unfortunately the only kind of video that can be embedded in PowerPoint currently is Flash, using the developer toolbar as shown here.

Even if you use the developer toolbar to create a Media Player objects (which can lead to more problems, see below), there is not an embed option in the Properties window (as there is with Flash).

Solving Problems with Linked Video in Vista

Another issue that has come up, mainly in Vista, is the problem with certain files that are linked to the presentation, as a result of using Insert > Movies and Sound > Movie from File, not to play in Vista.

This concerns an issue of how video generally plays in PowerPoint — which uses the MCI Player in the program itself.

But some factors can make PowerPoint use the Media Player in Vista instead of MCI. One of these includes a path to the linked files that is over 243 characters long.

PowerPoint MVPs recommend putting the PowerPoint file and the linked video into a shorter file path folder (c:\project) to get it to play.

Other issues can be solved by increasing the hardware acceleration when running PowerPoint, or by reinstalling Media Player (to update it to the latest version for Vista).

Unfortunately it seems that as Vista and Office 2007 proliferate, the issues involved in video playback don't go away, and in some cases they actually get worse.

For example, the codec used to play back video is something we've mentioned as a key issue before — and in Windows XP it was relatively easy to go into the System Device area and drill down to see the codecs installed on the computer.

It is much more difficult if not impossible to do this in Vista, and this is complicated by the fact that some video editing programs (MovieMaker) also try to dumb down their options to phrases like (Best quality playback) instead of showing you're the actual codec information.

If you need to troubleshoot your video further, there are two articles I recommend for follow up. On the Microsoft Developer web site there is a clear explanation in a flowchart of the factors that determine whether video in PowerPoint plays through MCI or Media Player.

Perhaps the most comprehensive set of explanations, however, is to be found at Austin Myers Plays for Certain web site — we've covered his products in the past. Austin is a PowerPoint MVP who has created several add-ins to play DVD in PowerPoint and solve codec problems.

The shortest path (pun intended) to video success is creating, editing and then presenting the video on the same machine. This is not always possible, however, because video is processor intensive and is frequently edited on a powerful workstation and then ported to a laptop with PowerPoint for presentation.

The good news is that as presentations move online, small file sizes become critical and many of the newer tools (like Camtasia 5.0) handle the export functions to maximize playback online, and this also helps the prospects for seamless playback in PowerPoint.