Placing Flash in PowerPoint?

[katkramer]

I am about to pull my hair out over a STUPID problem with the evil empire's piece-o-crap PowerPoint program.

I'm working for a company that uses PowerPoint (on XP boxes) to do professional presentations. We have the need to import a Flash video into PowerPoint and have it play. Seems like a pretty easy thing to do...we've found instructions, and although not straightforward, we've gotten it to work...occasionally.

You have to go into PowerPoint's preferences and turn on a "developer" setting that give you an extra menu item. When you choose that menu, you get new options, including the option to insert an object. From a dialog box, you choose what kind of object that is...in our case "Shockwave Flash." The you get a blank box...you right click to get the "Properties," you type in the entire pathname of your video, choose "embed," then close the dialog box. Then everything's supposed to work fine. Well, sometimes it does.

We've heard that there's other software available that adds this functionality to PowerPoint, but we can't tell if it's required on the playback machine as well. One piece of software we found was $199.

We've also found the same problems with QuickTime. PowerPoint on the PC has a feature to allow you to "Insert Movie," but it will not allow you to see any .mov QuickTime files, even when choosing the "View All Files" option. Again, you have to go through this stupid developer thing, insert a developer object, choose "QuickTime Object," but then it tells you that it can't complete the task.

I think there's an opportunity for a lawsuit here against Microsoft for blocking content from Adobe and Apple. Apparently microcrap has their own "Flash-killer" called Silverlight, so of course they don't want you to be able to insert Flash easily.

They sure don't play well with others. I'm a Mac user, and this experience in Windows at work makes me really appreciate why I will NEVER buy a PC ever.

[katkramer]

Oh, one more thing. I created a PowerPoint movie on my Mac in PPT 2008, embedded a QuickTime movie (that worked fine and played fine), but when I transfer that PowerPoint file to the PC, it breaks the QuickTime movie and only shows the first frame. QuickTime IS installed on the PC too, BTW.

[mikebw]

Sounds like you were asking for trouble and got it.

Have you tried converting the flash video to AVI?

[bazookaman]

I believe, and someone may know better, that while images are embedded in a powerpoint, movies are not. Therefore, you must keep the imported movies with the presentation. Otherwise you get a broken link b/c powerpoint cannot find the video asset it needs.

[katkramer]

bazookaman wrote:
I believe, and someone may know better, that while images are embedded in a powerpoint, movies are not. Therefore, you must keep the imported movies with the presentation. Otherwise you get a broken link b/c powerpoint cannot find the video asset it needs.

You are correct, as far as I know. I put the movie in the same folder as the PowerPoint, which is the same configuration as the Mac.

Now, the funny thing is that although this company is a PC shop, the artists are starting to get MacBook Pros and Cinema displays. Ooooohhhhh......aaaaaahhhhhhh.

[katkramer]

mikebw wrote:
Have you tried converting the flash video to AVI?

Just tried, and there is no option to export the PowerPoint as an AVI, or the keynote movie. Good thought, though!

[mikebw]

I was actually thinking of taking the flash video that you already have, converting it to AVI, then importing the AVI into powerpoint.

[JoeM]

It works, I've done it a few times for presentations at my company and I think I may have posted about it at the other place quite some time ago when someone else was doing it. I don't insert as an object. I insert as an active x control. But once you try to hand off your presentation to someone else to run on their box, you can typically expect problems.

Also, in my experience, Mac PPT doesn't translate well to PC and visa versa. So if it's for a PC presentation, I'd do it on a PC. If you can present on your own laptop, you are much safer. Of course, if you are handing it off, you can expect problems (active x, fonts, etc.)

You can save out your Flash as an AVI or an animated GIF. That will work but file size will be quite larger.

here's info:

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpo...lash2.html
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpo...lash1.html
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpo...flash.html

[M A V I C]

In general, Flash has only worked on Windows PPT, and not video. If you want video, you have to do WMV on Windows, or if you're in PPT on Mac you have to use QT.

[Mike V]

It's been over a year since I've been on a PC, but I used to put Quicktime videos into Power Point Presentations all the time, no problem that I remember.

I don't remember jumping through any hoops.

The Quicktime movie doesn't get embedded in the file, it is just a link.

Then when you are done there is a command to "Collect for Output" and it copies everything including the linked files maintaining the hierarchy and the links etc.