UKC

I am still encountering various problems when trying to build videos into a PowerPoint presentation.

Does anyone know or have experience of an alternative to PowerPoint?

I am creating the presentation for a charitable organisation and am getting quite frustrated by the constant setbacks so PLEASE no stupid, time wasting responses.

I've also used libreoffice & Keynote (Mac only). Both claim to allow you to insert a video, I've added a video to a Keynote presentation as an experiment & it worked but I didn't try running it on a diferent laptop. I'm not convinced they are any better or worse than Powerpoint, just different.

Adding video sounds simple but judging by how rarely it actually works (based on many years of seeing 'technical problems' when speakers try) it obviously isn't. If at all possible, I'd have a holding slide while you pause the presentation, run the video using a video playing application, then go back to the presentation. I do the same if I want to demonstrate a website.

Flip chart and Pauline’s pens.

Thanks. I've got Libre but there seems to be a problem in resizing the image to fill the whole screen. I've been through the "change size and position" options but can't get it to work. Otherwise it seems ok.

I'd repeat the advice me and someone else both gave on the other thread, and now Doug gave (we both did/do give presentations for living). Have the videos standalone and alt-tab between them and ppt 

I have used Google slides quite a bit, though not often for videos.

You can build YouTube videos into it very easily, using just the url and I have just tried with two movie files on my Google Drive, one a .wmv file and the other a .mov file that I had uploaded from my Mac as a QT movie and that Google then automatically converted. Both played once then I moved on to the next slide.

In general, whenever I have had to convert a Google Slides presentation to a powerpoint file, it has done so flawlessly.

I've tried that but the problem is that when the video start there is a "flick" last a fraction of a second which detracts from the quality

Obviously your call but is the effort spent getting a video absolutely perfect not better spent on more generally getting the content right? The message is more important part, typically.

Are your videos local mp4 files or similar, or are they online ones such as YouTube?

Local, wmv

I just quickly tried creating a PowerPoint presentation with a local video embedded and it worked fine. If you want to upload a problematic presentation somewhere like Dropbox then I expect that I or someone else could take a look at it, rather than you getting to grips with new software.

Thanks. I'm currently searching local resources to see if there are any peoplein the locality who might be able to help face to face. They seem a bit thin on the ground.

Will the presentation be used on the PC used to create it or on other PCs ? I suspect the many problems I & others have witnessed are due to the presentation being created on one PC but then used on another, typically in a lecture theatre with probles arising from different versions of Windows & Powerpoint . Ifonly one computer is involved there is less to go wrong.

Good luck

That is where using Google slides is helpful. You avoid that issue.

The plan is to show it through a digital projector. I presume that would mean I could create it using any software(PowerPoint etc), save it on a usb and just plug the said usb to the projector.

There will still be a PC involved

USB>PC(running unknown PPT/Windows versions)>Projector.

Third party laptop

Well good luck...!  It may well be fine but, at the very least, have a back-up stand alone copy of the video.

I think you may have come to the wrong website? 

I use Google Slides because I am pro. 

I use powerpoint on a daily basis and I don't think it is worth the hassle trying to get an integrated video to work reliably. Sure it looks great when it works but trying to get it to work on the laptop it was built on is enough hassle, never mind a different laptop. 

As others have said,  just load it on an external application and switch between them. You can get this looking pretty slick with the alt + tab shortcut.

If you're having problems like this, you're probably going to have problems with other packages.

It's a sign that you should load the videos up in a separate program and alt-tab between that and powerpoint at the requisite times.  Putting a still image (e.g. cropped from a screenshot of the movie playing) in the powerpoint slide can help reduce the discord and make it look at bit more professional.

Advice from having given hundreds of powerpoint presentations - rocking up on the day to an unknown computer with a USB stick and expecting embedded movies to work is asking for a disaster.  

Just play the movies separately.

Edit: 

I was going to mention how wonderful I found Beamer [1] when preparing around 800 slides for a lecture course, but perhaps I shouldn't....

[1] https://web.mit.edu/rsi/www/pdfs/beamer-tutorial.pdf

I think the best advice is above - concentrate on content rather than a perceived marginal gain in slickness - but in case you're still looking for other tools, Prezi is very good at this stuff.

(1) Alternatives to powerpoint:

libreoffice (any computer platform) +/- the same as powerpoint,

keynote (mac - watch out for future compatibility issues keep a copy of everything in powerpoint format for a time 10 years later when you want to view your file but no longer have a legacy version of keynote) +/- same as powerpoint

If you are skilled in the art of latex (I presume not): beamer

If you are skilled in the art of scripting (I presume not): magicpoint

If you don't mind running off the cloud then google slides or any number of equivalents (Prezi seems popular).

(2) Alternative workflows: use static slides and switch applications for presenting movies/animations (eg VLC) - this is the practical fail safe that every sensible person has as a backup.

(3) Alternative explanations: powerpoint (and keynote and LO for that matter) are quite good at this if they can handled the movie files well.  If they can't then you run into all sorts of problems which are not well documented, change all the time and are a timesink.  The usual best advice is to use something reliable to recode the movie into a format that works.  I suggest loading the clip with VLC and saving and .mp4 format then inserting it into powerpoint etc.

General advice:

(1) it's pretty much always like this, I'm not saying it's acceptable for things to be this flaky but you'll do your head in railing against it. Take a deep breath, accept it is shite, try LO, suggestion (3) and then suggestion (2) in that order.

(2) Go to the room you will present in _early_ try your slides, make sure each and everyone works. Have a back up plan. It is getting better but the odds are still 50:50 that something that works on your computer will work on another.

Once you're done save a thought for the massed army of poor souls that have to put up with this crap day in, day out (all credit for this shitshow to Bill Gates).

In my experience, it is impossible to overstate the importance of this. 

I’d like to have a go please.😉

It is far more important to try your slides in the room you’ll be presenting in than it is to wear underpants and trousers whilst you are presenting. 

I'm a live event video/graphics (ie Powerpoint) technician: Powerpoint is standard, I'm afraid. Keynote is also very commonly encountered (and seemingly preferred by most of my content design colleagues), but it obviously requires you to have a Mac.

Generally speaking, embedding video into Powerpoint (or Keynote) can sometimes be a bit hit-and-miss. It works flawlessly a surprising amount of time, but there'll always be random exceptions that don't want to play back for whatever reason. That's one off the reasons we usually drop videos onto a separate machine with purpose-designed video playback software rather than leaving them embedded in Powerpoint. But we have the benefit of an operator, many laptops and a switcher to seamlessly cut between them.

Check that the first frames of the video aren't the problem rather than Powerpoint. If it's playing fullscreen, also try making sure that the video is physically the same size as and centred on the slide as well as set to play fullscreen.

Feel free to send me the Powerpoint as well - I'd be happy to take a look at it when I get a minute.

I'd always wanted to lecture in a kilt...

At least if the videos misbehave then you have an easy way to distract the audience

just added a video to LibreOffice Impress perfectly OK.

What actual problems are you having? Do you have the latest version?

now try playing it on the PC in the lecture theatre in the department you are visiting - it might work fine but often doesn't