PowerPoint & QuickTime
by Geetesh Bajaj, updated
November 30th 2006
...Continued from Page 1
QTVR ActiveX Control
QuickTime Viewer & Professional
Convert QuickTime To AVI
Convert QuickTime To Older QuickTime
Cross Platform PowerPoint
Disclaimer
QTVR ActiveX Control
You can insert any type of QuickTime content including QTVR panoramas
in a PowerPoint slide in Windows if you use the QTVR ActiveX Control
created by George Birbilis. There's a full tutorial on this
site:
PowerPoint and QTVR
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QuickTime Viewer & Professional
QuickTime Viewer and QuickTime Professional are the same!
The free QuickTime Viewer can be downloaded from quicktime.com
- just buy a key number to convert the viewer into QuickTime Professional.
Not surprisingly, QuickTime Professional has many aces up its sleeve.
It can join movies, save QuickTime movies to AVI or MPEG, change
the QuickTime codec from Sorenson to Cinepak and perform many more
tricks. At just US$ 29.95, QuickTime Professional is a great steal.
While installing QuickTime, make sure that you associate only
a limited number of media types. For instance, if presented with
options to choose your file associations, choose only Macintosh
type (see screenshot).
I remember this particular case when Jim Kost of Imaging Research
Laboratories of John P Robarts Research Institute wanted to know
how to get two QuickTime movies on a single slide to start at the
same time during slideshow? I did try to find solutions - but ultimately
he himself found the best one - here it is in his words (reproduced
with permission):
I found another solution - I combined
the movies with QuickTime Pro - now there is only one to worry
about.
Situations like these are not uncommon - on another occasion, I worked with
someone else to help them brighten an entire under-exposed movie within QuickTime
Pro. If you would like to learn more about QuickTime Pro, you might want to
check up this excellent
book from Peachpit Press written by Judith Stern and Robert A Lettieri
(you'll find a link to the book on the right column of this page).
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Convert QuickTime To AVI
There may be times when your PowerPoint presentation with an inserted
QuickTime movie will travel afar - to other Windows machines beyond
your control where QuickTime may not be installed. In such a situation,
it makes immense sense to convert your MOV/QT movie to the AVI
format - and trust me there's no other tool as simple and dependable
as QuickTime Professional to do the job. Here's how: (instructions
are using QuickTime Professional 5 - they should work similarly
in version 4)
- Open your QuickTime movie in QuickTime Professional.
- Choose File -> Export.
- In the Export drop down box in the resultant dialog box, choose
'Movie to AVI'.
- You may want to check the 'Options' button to experiment codecs
and other settings. Type a name and location for your AVI output
and click 'Save'.
- QuickTime Professional will convert the movie to the AVI format.
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Convert QuickTime To Older QuickTime
This can be helpful in a situation when you want to insert a QuickTime
movie into PowerPoint using its native format. For all the talk
about PowerPoint's acceptance of QuickTime movies upto version
2.5, there remains a certain undiscussed issue - an issue of codecs.
Compared to earlier versions, QuickTime 3, 4 and 5 have been breakthroughs
in the areas of codecs and compressions - largely due to the Sorenson
compression codec built into QuickTime. Were we to replace the
Sorenson codec with Cinepak, PowerPoint would have no problems
in playing it back. Here's how:
- Open the movie to be converted in QuickTime Professional.
- Choose File -> Export.
- In the Export drop down box in the resultant dialog box, choose
'Movie to QuickTime'.
- Click the 'Options' buton to edit the following settings in
the resultant dialog box. Your options should match this screenshot.
- QuickTime Professional will convert your movie to an older
QuickTime format which PowerPoint will understand.
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Cross Platform PowerPoint
PowerPoint as a presentation is a cross platform format that
plays back identically on the Mac and Windows. However, you might
have inserted a QuickTime version 5 movie with the Sorenson codec
using PowerPoint for the Macintosh. Thereafter, you may want
to display your presentation to colleagues on a Windows machine.
Guess what - none of your movies play back. If you've read this
entire page uptil here, you probably know the reason for the
hiccups.
In situations like these you might want to give the techniques
to convert to AVI or an older QuickTime movie a try.
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Disclaimer
This is just an experiment. No support can be provided for the
techniques listed here. Also, I don't suppose either Microsoft
or Apple would offer support on this subject.
However, newsgroups at Microsoft and Apple are well visited and
intelligent interactions are possible on the forums.
microsoft.public.powerpoint
QuickTime
Discussions
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