iMovie HD, QuickTime 7.5.5 and PowerPoint '04 Issues

[thomasp]

I've created a movie in iMovie HD (v5 I believe) which I want to insert into a PowerPoint presentation created in PowerPoint 2004. I'm using OSX 10.4.11 and have QuickTime 7.5.5 installed on my G4 PowerBook.

I've exported the movie from iMovie as QuickTime --> Expert -->Movie to QuickTime Movie --> MPEG-4 Video Compression. The converted movie plays in QuickTime fine, but when I import it into PowerPoint I get a message on the screen saying "QuickTime and a MPEG-4 video decompressor are needed to see this picture. However the movie plays fine once I run the slideshow. I also tried copying a still frame from QT into Photoshop (Edit --> Copy, then paste into Photoshop) and I get the same message.

How can I stop this message from occurring and show the still frame as normal in the presentation, prior to running the movie?


Thanks for the help

 

[xUKHCx]

Did you drag and drop the video file into the Powerpoint presentation? I used to get that message when I did (also it meant that on a windows computer the image/video didn't play). I then learnt the proper way to do it:

It is best to go through Powerpoint: Insert - Movies and Sounds - Movie from File

Hope that helps

 

[thomasp]

Did you drag and drop the video file into the Powerpoint presentation? I used to get that message when I did (also it meant that on a windows computer the image/video didn't play). I then learnt the proper way to do it:

It is best to go through Powerpoint: Insert - Movies and Sounds - Movie from File

Hope that helps

That's how I did it, via the Insert menu.

The same message comes up if I copy a frame from QT and paste it into a Photoshop file. This doesn't occur with other .mov files that I have not created in iMovie.

 

[cal6n]

Try exporting your movie as an AVI. Powerpoint prefers them. I can't help with settings, though, as I don't use that container.

 

[thomasp]

Try exporting your movie as an AVI. Powerpoint prefers them. I can't help with settings, though, as I don't use that container.

I used the Cinepak converter (since all the others reduced the resolution of the movie) within iMovie, and that seemed to work in PowerPoint, but the quality of the movie is unacceptable - it seems either the resolution is really low or the number of colours being used is less than in the original, despite having the number of colours and quality set to maximum.

This still doesn't get round the problem of not being able to copy a frame from the movie while it's paused in QuickTime and paste that into Photoshop - how can I overcome that?


Thanks for the help.