Medical Video Emergency Leopard QuickTime

J

JohnEnglish

macrumors newbie
QuickTime and PowerPoint 2008 no longer support .avi format.
Here, at work, I have 12 years of important diagnostic cardiology video captured as .avi and imported into PowerPoint 2004/Tiger.

The lecturing professor is the very first in the world to use non-invasive doppler technology to diagnose heart valve problems. He travels worldwide and is well known.
Yet, the AVI videos imported into PowerPoint which he has been using for more than ten years, no longer run at properly.
The nearly 300 Lectures cannot be remade.
Legacy computing is not a solution.
On a new Intel dual Core 2 laptop they won't run in Tiger/PowerPoint 2004 as it crashes; on Leopard/PowerPoint 2008, they still don't run automatically.
Perian adds AVI codec for QuickTime Pro 7+
But what to do about getting the PowerPoint teaching lectures to play automatically.
And management seems to think this is my fault.

What is your suggestion to me to get these .avis to play automatically without crashing.
Re-importing as .mov is not an option? So many have the same generic name and I can't match the preview against the first frame.

Thanks,
JE
 
Well AVI still does work in Quicktime.

But AVI is not a codec. You need to find out what the codec is.

.avi is a wrapper like .mov


Just play them in VLC Player, it plays everything.
 
Once you download Perian...

There are also a few apps like videobox that can batch convert the videos to something like mp4 files.

If you set the preferences to set the output files format to mp4, and audio/video bitrate high enough chosing "use your audio/video choices" ... most of the conversions should be a click or two. And not degrade the lectures.

There are also some other apps that can do the job also with a lot of files at a time.

---

Also you may be able to use Crossover and a Windows version of PowerPoint also, might work, might not.

Edit: Then there is also the Apple version of PowerPoint called Keynote, could try a demo version of that to see what happens, and videobox, crossover, and the other apps likely also have trial versions to see what might work for you.
 
answers

Thanks for the responses.
MPEG-1 is the codec, and yes AVI is a format allowing [primitive] interleaving of sound and video.

The real problem is the imported videos don't play promptly in newer OS and newer Powerpoint. Re-importing fixes this lack of autoplay with looping. with Perian installed, as you check a 'loop' function when the movie is imported. BUT. When PowerPoint converts from 2004 to 2008 it breaks this setting.

Re-saving as .mov wouldn't be too bad but three things prevent this from being easy solution:
1 - many AVIs have duplicate names.
They are all of ECHO or TEE or TTE heart valve diseases to us untrained folk they all look the same.
2 - Some AVIs don't have links in PowerPoint Info window because PowerPoint broke them.
3 - And some are missing.

Is there a 3rd party item like PERIAN fix to PowerPoint video loss of autoplay and looping, and directory? It adds AVI support to QuickTIme 7+ but what is needed is Quicktime video support within PowerPoint 2008.

Thanks,
John
 
tri3limited said:
Powerpoint (Windows and Mac) is a pain in the ass! MPEG 1 is the only real guaranteed codec that'll work.
Click to expand...

John,
Yes, MPEG-1 works and is added to Leopard and QuickTime 7 and above with Perian freeware. . .

But doggone it, how to get PowerPoint not to break it's own links!

John
 
I fixed a very similar problem 2 days ago, only on a MUCH MORE smaller scale (only a few ppt files with 5-10 videos each one).

What I did was convert the .avi videos to .mpg ones with VisualHub, then reimport it to each slide.
 
volume

Calvin,
The quantity of movies and is too great. The problem remains PowerPoint breaks it's own links.
Lisa
 
Try using a win98 bottle in Crossover and play the native ppt files using the version it was made with.
 
crossover ideas

Do you think this circumvents PowerPoint's inadequite conversion/updating process from older .ppt files to the latest release format? The 2008 application simply neglects to maintain imported movie links of a certain length.

Peace said:
Try using a win98 bottle in Crossover and play the native ppt files using the version it was made with.
Click to expand...
 
When you say "older ppt files" just exactly what version were the ppt files created with ? 2003 ? 2000 ? win98 or win95 ?

If the originals were created using a version of MS Office that ran well in Win98 or Win95 Crossover might be able to play the old .AVI files that were done by MS back in the day.

Do you have access to the original ppt files and the version of Office they were made with ? If so Crossover might do it.
 
powerpoint details

HI - I read your message but don't see your logic.

Yes, I do have original files on the original drive; but both Win powerpoint and Mac 2008 PowerPoint convert the Mac version of PowerPoint 2004. In all cases it is not good. When using the OSX move user files features, with the same internal drive name when setting up the new machine, PowerPoint does not have the ability to find imported AVI files in the same original path. Snme of AVI links are lost by the conversion of PowerPoint where it drops other features like transitions too.

Given the fact that PowerPoint can't keep the directory straight when opening old files in correct directory a new release, I really don't follow your logic. Microsoft is exceptionally lazy given other applications excellent history of tracing imported image directories. Like QuarkXPress.

Crossover has no reason create a feature not programmed into PowerPoint.
The missing feature being not deleting the AVI location path when it is more than two nested folders away.

Please do your own test and let us know.
 
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