Putting videos in Powerpoint: the bane of my existence!

manveruppd · 5 Sep 2010 at 02:11

As title really, just a rant. Trying to show extracts from a DVD, and cutting them to the right size with VirtualDubMod and then embedding them into a presentation is truly hellish. Especially when you find out that, for some reason, they don't work on a Mac, and if you try to embed Mac-specific movie formats instead, the Windows version of Powerpoint won't open them!

Also, I ended up with multiple versions of each clip I want to show (because of faffing about in VirtualDubMod, and searching for a codec that Macs will also read), and now there seems to be absolutely no way to find out which of the various different video files lying around in the same folder as the presentation I actually embedded in it. Right-clicking on the frame from within Powerpoint doesn't bring up a Properties menu option, and there seems to be no way to find out a PPS file's dependencies! So I'm ending up copying all 74 different video files onto USB sticks and Dropbox because I can't figure out which 8 I actually used...

It just all makes me quite " :mad:

"

ivrytwr3 · 5 Sep 2010 at 09:02

i can't be a$$ed with that faff. I grab my vids off youtube or other hosting site, that way someone else has done all the work!

If the clip isn't out there, i'll use a different clip.

Sirrel Squirrel · 5 Sep 2010 at 10:52

Try using mpeg1

manveruppd · 5 Sep 2010 at 11:33

VirtualDub doesn't seem to support it...

Of course I can get any video in any codec to play on any machine, but it would be nice to be able to save it in something which you can chuck on a USB stick and play on ANY computer without needing to hunt down extra codecs for it. Even Youtube won't play without Flash, and yes, 99% of PCs have Flash installed, but you can't really know for sure that it will can you?

Sirrel Squirrel · 5 Sep 2010 at 13:05

Try an encoder called Super - http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

That'll convert to MPEG1, MPEG1 is about 15 years old so it will work on everything, the quality isn't fantastic but it's only going in a PP presentation.

manveruppd · 5 Sep 2010 at 14:14

Well, I need a codec that's supported in Virtualdub, otherwise I'll need to re-encode the clips into MPEG1 after I make them, dropping the quality even more.

ns400r · 5 Sep 2010 at 14:29

Try a plugin.
http://home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/stable/

manveruppd · 5 Sep 2010 at 14:34

That seems like a whole new complete version of VirtuaDub rather than a plugin for it... :confused:

ns400r · 5 Sep 2010 at 15:37

Nope, it is a plugin. Goes in to the 'plugin' folder! You need to read past the first line. I've linked to the plugin below.

http://home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/Plugins/MPEG2/index.html