Justin,

Have you come across "plays for certain" ?

That might just do the trick for you

http://www.playsforcertain.com

Cheers

 I'm trying to to link an MP4 file to my client's PowerPoint presentation and cannot do it.  

 When I do Insert > Movie > From file it doesn't even come up in known file types.  
 So I I choose "All files" and then try to link it and I get a message saying "PowerPoint cannot insert a movie from the selected file.  Verify that the path and file format are correct and try again."  The originally default player for MP4s was Quicktime, so then I tried it after I associted MP4s with Windows Media Player and got the same issue.

 Why can't I insert MP4s?  I was able to do it in MP1 but client vendor won't make them, says they're outdated.  They crated .wmvs but they didn't play correctly in PowerPoint despite playing correctly in Windows Media Player.

 Any help would be gratly appreciated!

 thanks

 Justin

Hi Justin,

I suspect there'll be two stages to your problem, and you're in Stage 1 :-)

Right now you need to do one of two things:

1.1 Make Powerpoint understand your MP4 video format or...
1.2 Convert your video to a format that Powerpoint already understands

Given that you're doing this for a third party, I would recommend you go with 1.2 and convert the video into Windows Media format (WMV).  The advantage of doing this is that your customer's PC will almost certainly play the video "natively" (ie. without having to download codecs or other software).  So hopefully you'll dodge a future support call if they move the presentation and video to a different PC.

To convert the video I can offer two suggestions, both completely free!

1.2.1 Open the file in Windows Movie Maker and re-render it into WMV
1.2.2 Use a dedicated video converter.  I have successfully used the Prism video converter in the past.  There's a free trial period and it worked fine for me.  It should get you around your current emergency.

http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/

In theory the basic software is free, and you only pay for "Prism Plus", but I couldn't tell you what the difference is as I only used it once to get me out of a similar bind.  I can assure you that the free trial will work fine and should support MP4 to WMV conversion.

OK, so this will probably take you to Stage 2, where Powerpoint will now recognise the WMV file and embed it into the presentation, but for some reason the video will not play.  Echo has a great summary of the things to check at this page...

http://www.echosvoice.com/tshoot_video2.htm

I'm sure she'll read this, so I wanted to mention that the links on that page to pfcmedia and Sonia Coleman's site need updating (but the pfcmedia link will redirect you).

To summarise Echo's advice I would put the Powerpoint file and the video together in a folder in the root directory to eliminate the issue of pathlength.  That should sort out most problems, but there may still be a few gotchas lurking :-)

Believe me - it can work, but it's sometimes annoying to track down what's actually causing the problem.

Good luck!

Geoff

 I'm trying to to link an MP4 file to my client's PowerPoint presentation and cannot do it.  

 When I do Insert > Movie > From file it doesn't even come up in known file types.  
 So I I choose "All files" and then try to link it and I get a message saying "PowerPoint cannot insert a movie from the selected file.  Verify that the path and file format are correct and try again."  The originally default player for MP4s was Quicktime, so then I tried it after I associted MP4s with Windows Media Player and got the same issue.

 Why can't I insert MP4s?  I was able to do it in MP1 but client vendor won't make them, says they're outdated.  They crated .wmvs but they didn't play correctly in PowerPoint despite playing correctly in Windows Media Player.

 Any help would be gratly appreciated!

 thanks

 Justin

Thanks for the advice TAJ and Geoff.  

TAG, the problem with putting an add-in on my system like "plays for certain" is that this needs to be distributed to about 50 clients on their own PCs (and Macs).  

Geoff I have 4 WMV's linked to the presentation already and they work fine, I had this one already as an WMV but for some reason this one get's completely out of synch when it gets linked to the PowerPoint (the audio speeds up and slows down, independent from the video which is really weird because it runs fine in the native Windows Media Player),
Anyway, that's why they gave me an MP4 which I'd already suspected might not work.  

I have done a little online research and I just don't understand why MP4 is not an option, there is no documentation that says it doesn't work that I can find. I do know that Mpegs were.  Is Mpeg 2 the same issue?

What are the movie options these days for microsoft.  WMV, AVI is that it?

Thanks again for your feedback.

 I'm trying to to link an MP4 file to my client's PowerPoint presentation and cannot do it.  

 When I do Insert > Movie > From file it doesn't even come up in known file types.  
 So I I choose "All files" and then try to link it and I get a message saying "PowerPoint cannot insert a movie from the selected file.  Verify that the path and file format are correct and try again."  The originally default player for MP4s was Quicktime, so then I tried it after I associted MP4s with Windows Media Player and got the same issue.

 Why can't I insert MP4s?  I was able to do it in MP1 but client vendor won't make them, says they're outdated.  They crated .wmvs but they didn't play correctly in PowerPoint despite playing correctly in Windows Media Player.

 Any help would be gratly appreciated!

 thanks

 Justin

Justin,

I always use MPG1 files for my videoclips. It seems to work fine as long as
you the powerpoint and video file travels together.

Sometimes it won¹t work from a server, and you may have to pull the
powerpoint and videoclip together to your desktop.

Rebecca

On 5/22/08 12:07 AM, in article
294A1AC0-F8FD-4543-B6B9-87DA96DBAB1E@microsoft.com, "Justin"
<jrk[NOSPAM]productions@yahoo.com> wrote: