Solution to PowerPoint video problems
Boy oh boy. I’ve been spending the last 2 hours trying to get my video clips to work in PowerPoint. In the process, I’ve searched half the web (OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration) without finding a solution to my problem. Now that I’ve finally found a workaround, I thought I’d share my solution with the rest of the PowerPoint-video-problem-plagued community out there. So without further ado, here it is.
The Problem
When playing a video clip in PowerPoint, the clip’s placeholder only shows a black (blank) screen, although audio works perfectly.
The Solution
Use an embedded Media Player object instead of the built-in PowerPoint method.
What do I need/What effects does this have?
I tested this solution on a computer running Windows XP, Office 2003 and Windows Media Player 11. The procedure should be the same if you’re using something different, but Media Player 11, or at least 10, is quite essential. The disadvantage to this solution is that the movie clips you insert in this manner are embedded into the presentation. This increases the file size quite a bit, which means that if you were planning to send the presentation with e-mail, you can’t embed a movie clip of 20 MB. If you’re planning to show the presentation on your own computer/laptop and you have got enough space, this is the easy solution to a very, very irritating problem.
For PowerPoint 2007, scroll to the bottom of this post.
How do I do it?
In PowerPoint, click on “Insert” > “Object…”
Click “Create New” on the left, if it isn’t already selected.
From the list that appears, select “Windows Media Player”. Make sure that “Display as icon” (on the right) is not selected.
Click “OK”.
A blank Windows Media Player instance should appear in your presentation. It should look something like this:
Now, right click on the Windows Media Player object and click “Properties”.
In the dialog that appears, double click on the “Custom” entry in the list.
A nice GUI appears where you can set all options easily. In the “Source” section of the new dialog, select the movie clip that you would like to have displayed. Set all the other options in the dialog and press “OK”.
Your movie object should now be able to play. Yah!
UPDATE FOR POWERPOINT 2007:
Thanks to visitor ‘Jackie’ for adding the instructions for PP2007.
For those running PPT 2007 on Vista – here is step by step how to access this control. Click the Windows icon, click PowerPoint options. Check the box for “Show Developer tab in the ribbon” and click OK. Click the Developer tab. In the center section is Controls. Click More Controls. Select Windows Media Player. Click OK. Now (and this is the full instruction that was missing) you have to use the cross-hatch tool that appears to DRAW a box for your Windows Media Player. Once you do this you can activate the properties as detailed above. Click custom and then click the … box next to it to pull up the custom properties. It took me a few times to realize that I now had to draw a box for the media player – many people may be expecting the media player to just appear.
Thanks, I was geting very frustrated because powerpoint doesn’t display the format that my new HD camera generates, I was going to try a file format converter but your sugestion works great for my application.
13 July, 2008 at 23:10Also the instructions were perfect and simple.
Thanks and keep the good work.
Luis
Glad it helped you. I got so frustrated with the problem that when solving it, I couldn’t let everyone else suffer as much.
15 July, 2008 at 08:41Thanks for the post. I can now get my videos to play using your solution. The problem that I am now having is that even though I select the full screen option, the videos seem to go back to a non full screen view at random. When I go back and check the properties, they have reverted back to default. Any suggestions?
9 August, 2008 at 02:57I haven’t had the time to experiment with this further, so I’m unsure what’s causing the problem. Have you tried resizing the video object in PowerPoint to the full size of the slide?
11 August, 2008 at 15:21I have tried resizing the video, but if I backtrack in the slide show or start over after viewing once, the video reverts to small size. Any suggestions would be great.
12 August, 2008 at 02:36Johannes, My spirits jumped when I saw your posting – I too have been having a major headache and many hours of frustration in getting some of my videos working in PowerPoint. Than I crashed. When I open Insert/Object/Windows Media Player – I don’t have Windows Media Player listed. I have downloaded what I think are the latest PowerPoint 2007 updates and it just isn’t there – any ideas. Thanx
21 September, 2008 at 18:44Frank: Have you also got the latest Windows Media Player (or at least v10) installed?
21 September, 2008 at 19:48Yes – I have version 11.
Just fell into a fix while surfing the web – my hardware acceleration slider was too high.
They now play without a problem – hope this helps you
Went to:
21 September, 2008 at 20:34http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00129.htm
from
http://www.echosvoice.com/tshoot_video2.htm
In other words, does the multimedia in PowerPoint work now?
22 September, 2008 at 07:55It works great without even a burp. I kept reducing the acceleration slider until it stopped going black and didn’t flicker while the audio continued. Had to go quite a ways down. Nothing else seems to be affected but I don’t use the computer for much other than PPT, e-mail and Word documents. Hope it works for you.
Frank
22 September, 2008 at 19:43Thanks so much, I couldn’t get the videos to display properly no matter what I did the other way. No idea why. The only downside here seems to be that you can’t have the video play on click – it plays as soon as you go to the slide. Not that big a deal, but I prefer to be able to introduce a video before I play it (since the audience tends to be mesmerized by them and ignores me once it’s playing).
14 November, 2008 at 21:05Yes – I have the same problem. What I normally do is to put the video in a separate slide. That way, you can introduce your video with some notes and then show the actual video by going to the next slide.
15 November, 2008 at 10:14This looked like an easy fix until I got to the list of “object types.” Windows Media Player is not on the list. Media player is installed in the system, but does not show up on the object type list.
21 November, 2008 at 20:18I’m using a crappy Dell Vostra operating under the crappy Vista OS. Any suggestions???
Dell support was no help other than referring me to your site.
I haven’t tested this on Vista, so I’m no tech expert, but I’m guessing that Vista’s Media Player is not registered with PowerPoint. You could try re-installing Media Player, which should re-register the object. Are you running PowerPoint 2003?
21 November, 2008 at 20:55Running PPT 2007 as part of Microsoft Office Home edition.
22 November, 2008 at 00:20I think that Vista is part, if not all of my problem.
I’m thinking about installing XP.
Funny thing. I have a Macbook with Leopard installed and opened the PPT in their Keynote PPT clone and it worked perfectly, with drag and drop efficiency.
That explains a lot. I’m not so sure whether the problem is with Vista, but it could be. Also, I’d guess the fact that you have PPT 2007 also has a big influence. I haven’t tested this solution on PPT 2007/Vista. Have you tried re-installing Media Player yet?
PS. Never compare a Mac with a PC, especially if it’s running Windows. There is absolutely no match.
22 November, 2008 at 08:09Thanks – spent an hour trying before !! You fixed it in an easy 5 mins!
27 November, 2008 at 18:20Obrigado!!!
Boy oh boy. I’ve been spending the last 12 hours (sorry the “plagiarism”) trying to get my video clips to work in PowerPoint. My problem was different because movies smaller then 10 Mb played well, but greater don’t play. No sound and no image (a big black hole appears instead).
I use the Permalink’s solution and woks fine
Thank you very very very much.
(Muito obrigado)
VermeJC
15 December, 2008 at 19:27I right click the Object as you recommend, but the menu shows no button “Properties”.
18 February, 2009 at 11:32Rod: Which version of Media Player do you have installed?
18 February, 2009 at 15:02You are a legend… iv been looking for a solution for days!
Thanks a million
22 February, 2009 at 19:51hey johannes,
3 March, 2009 at 12:38first thing great info..however in PP2007 i did not find the Media player option in the insert object list. A little more exploration online disclosed that the media player option is now sitting comfortably in the developer ribbon.
so for all of you who are struggling to find that option ..make sure you have the developer ribbon active from the powerpoint options and then just click the more contnrols button to get access to the media player.
Hi johannes;
25 March, 2009 at 22:01I would just like to thank you for the work around to insert a video clip into Power Point. I have trying for over a week to try to find a solution and yours does the job. I installed Vista and I guess that is the problem so will likely be going back to XP. One of the features that I liked about inserting video clips into Power Point is the ability to pause a clip by just clicking on it. That is not available in your example. I wonder if there is a way to do this as well. Again many thanks for your solution.
Walter
Walter: You could set the ‘Controls layout’ to ‘Mini.’ This will show play, stop and volume control buttons. I haven’t found a way to assign events to the whole object when it’s clicked anywhere.
26 March, 2009 at 07:18Hi Johannes;
I have found that by selecting the full”default” in the Control layout that it is possible to pause and restart the video as often as may be needed. With the left mouse clicking on the play, starts the video if you select the play button again with the left mouse it pauses the video. Tried many times with Vista and works great. Again many thanks Johannes.
Walter
26 March, 2009 at 19:04thanks for the help, i was getting frustrated with this…
many greetings
12 April, 2009 at 22:14WMPLAYER.EXE
IS NOT PRESENT IN THE OBJECT MENU,
HOW CAN FORCE SELECTION OF MEDIA PLAYER FROM THERE?
18 April, 2009 at 07:01You’ll have to make sure that you have at least Windows Media Player 10/11 installed.
Which version of MS Office are you using?
Also, what operating system do you use?
22 April, 2009 at 19:55Hi. Many, many thanks on putting this on the net. You helped us a lot in our project. More power to you!
Azee
16 May, 2009 at 10:13For those running PPT 2007 on Vista – here is step by step how to access this control.
2 June, 2009 at 15:12Click the Windows icon, click PowerPoint options. Check the box for “Show Developer tab in the ribbon” and click OK.
Click the Developer tab. In the center section is Controls. Click More Controls. Select Windows Media Player. Click OK.
Now (and this is the full instruction that was missing) you have to use the cross-hatch tool that appears to DRAW a box for your Windows Media Player. Once you do this you can activate the properties as detailed above. Click custom and then click the … box next to it to pull up the custom properties.
It took me a few times to realize that I now had to draw a box for the media player – many people may be expecting the media player to just appear.
Thanks very much for posting these helpful tips.
This works for me, except my videos all shrink down to a small size AFTER they finish playing! I have “Full screen” set in the properties, and it does indeed work when it starts playing, but as soon as the video reaches the last frame, it shrinks down to about 50% of the screen. I really need it to just stay put so I can go to the next slide seamlessly.
Any ideas?
29 June, 2009 at 13:20I’ve been working on this FOR HOURS!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. Microsoft’s Powerpoint help is useless, but YOU were not! I LOVE YOU!!!!!!
8 July, 2009 at 20:29I just finished a PP presentation with video before I found this link, and had I more time, I would have used this info. As it is, I added the video the old fashioned way on PP by either clicking on the new slide on the add movie, or in the insert tab. Problem was, the original AVIs didn’t work because I guess they were too huge. But when I modified them to WMVs and inserted them, they worked fine. I had to do some playing with the stretching since I shot in widescreen and wanted to take up space, but that was ok. Problem is now that I am trying to use the projector’s remote from the audience, it will play the first video loaded, but will not advance. It keeps playing the same video. I wonder if this has happened with others? Will this new fix, fix my advancing problems? Anyone? Anyone? I used Prism to change the video format, but apparently, I have two versions, one on each of my laptops. One works well on one laptop, the other doesn’t. Ahh, conformity.
11 July, 2009 at 14:24Oh, I forgot to mention, my version works if you are sitting at the laptop and pressing the right arrow key to advance the slides, and since the videos are manually planted, they do not revert back to a smaller size randomly like it was revealed above. And, the WMVs are of decent quality as compared to its big brother AVI. Believe me, if it didn’t take another 2 hours to redo the presentation I did, I would attempt with the new info listed above. And since this is for an awards show for tonight, with no testing, I don’t trust me at all! lol Good luck, everyone!
11 July, 2009 at 14:32@Eric:
To my knowledge, this is normal. I suggest you resize the WMP object to the full size of the slide, as this will achieve the same effect as selecting the ‘full screen’ option, sans the video jumping back to its original size afterwards.
12 July, 2009 at 12:52Thanks…tried that, but unfortunately nothing I did worked — every situation caused the video to “shrink” after it finished playing.
I finally ended up doing it the normal way but added a black rectangle covering the entire slide which eliminated the “flicker” in the beginning.
All this in PowerPoint 2003 which is what our company has. I’m curious if 2007 works better.
13 July, 2009 at 14:59Forgot to mention that we were running the presentation on a system @ 1280×1024 when the actual WMV resolution was only 640×480…so it only displayed on about 1/4 of the screen — even though it was playing at 100% of the native size.
The client wanted it truly “full screen” which is where the problem is with our situation.
13 July, 2009 at 15:13First off, thanks to the OP, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this forever.
@Eirc
I was having the same issues with sizing, here’s how I fixed it:
1. Close Powerpoint
17 August, 2009 at 23:532. Open up Windows Media Player
3. View -> Video Size
3. Uncheck ‘Fit Video to Player on Resize’
4. Uncheck ‘Fit Player to Video on Start’
5. Change play size to 200%
6. Open Powerpoint back up
7. Re-size the WMP object to the full size of your slide (or however big you want it)
8. On the properties of your video:
9. Change stretchToFit to TRUE
THANK YOU! This really saved my life!
3 September, 2009 at 07:53My stretchToFit has a check box.. I do not see “TRUE” I can uncheck stretchtoFit, same prob. video goes back to regular size at the second viewing. I have XP.
5 September, 2009 at 19:04I did select True for stretchToFit in Properties (and in the second dialog box I left the check next to stretchToFit.).. still on the second viewing the video returned to smaller size. I double checked windows media player..and the setting are correct.. View -> Video Size
3. Uncheck ‘Fit Video to Player on Resize’
4. Uncheck ‘Fit Player to Video on Start’
5. Change play size to 200%
Advice needed. Tx.
5 September, 2009 at 19:45@sandy
I haven’t found a way to stop the video from resizing after the first viewing either, but there is a workaround.
Once you have finished the rest of your presentation, make checking the ‘stretchToFit’ box the very last thing that you do before you save the file. Once you check the box, immediately save the file without viewing the slide show.
Then, close Powerpoint. From that point forward, every time you open your saved file, it will be in the state where it can be viewed properly. If you want to re-view the slide show, just close Powerpoint and re-open the file. (But don’t save before you do!)
8 September, 2009 at 19:36I’ve designed movies with graphs using greenscreen. the movies play fine with PowerPoint text on top of the movies for labels. On the Mac, everything looks and works great. When transferring to my client’s PC laptop (running XP with PowerPoint 2007 using .wmv) everything looks great until the movie plays at which point all the text disappears as if the movie moves in front. Is there a fix?
thanks.
9 September, 2009 at 00:00For some reason when I try to pick the object type Windows media isn’t on there. Is there anyway to fix this? Sorry, I am not a frequent Powerpoint user. So if it is an obvious answer. sorry.
10 October, 2009 at 22:14I cannot thank you enough for posting this! I was having issues where I could view the video but any email recipients were left with a black box. I searched all over only to find no solution running on Vista until this came up.
THANKS!!!!!!!!!!
13 October, 2009 at 21:52What a wealth of information!! Thank you so much! I was successful on my laptop and excited to give it to the person who really needed it. However, when she tried to run it on her laptop it did not run! Nothing happens, no audio or video. I am on a Lenovo R61 and she is running on a R400. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
27 October, 2009 at 21:11Thank you–I had the same problem. On XP/PPT 2007, follow Jackie’s post. I had problems finding the custom panel at first. To get the customs panel, right click on properties and a Visual Basic Window will show up listing properties about the window. The very first property is Custom with a … beside it. Click on the … and you’ll get the dialogue box where you can insert your movie.
7 November, 2009 at 20:53Thanks a million, It worked like magic , I was scratching my head for couple of days doing this
Thanks
10 December, 2009 at 23:32You are an absolute star!!
26 January, 2010 at 22:52Thank you !
Thanks for your well invested time in the solution and posting it!!
16 February, 2010 at 20:45Thanks! THis was very helpful!
18 February, 2010 at 08:23Thank you so much! This works so much better than the embedded powerpoint movie player. I was going crazy with an AVI… the video and audio weren’t tracking. Now it’s perfectly sharp. You saved my life.
Oh, and thanks to Jackie for the 2007/Vista instructions.
25 February, 2010 at 23:01Thanks so much for you help and intructions, including Jackies, was stressing over presentation and now, thanks to you, its working fine
9 March, 2010 at 22:49I really appreciate all of your comments.
Eric/Lee/Sandy…
I am having similar resizing issues. I am guessing that the best bet is to always close the PowerPoint and re-open it to maintain the full screen. When I do a presentation I like to view it while it is open to double check to make sure all of my connections are good. Rather than leaving it up I will have to close it and re-open to first slide. If anyone finds a solution to this please post it. Thank you!
29 March, 2010 at 20:30I really have to thank you!!!
It was a very important project that I was working on, and you saved my face by helping me play my movie in the powerpoint. I tried different things and visited so many websites. but this is the only one that worked.
You’re a genius
a million thanks from the bottom of my heart.
10 May, 2010 at 09:15Johannes, thank you so much! What took me an hour of futzing with last night took me two minutes this morning after finding your post. Brilliant!
14 July, 2010 at 17:26Hi Johannes;
Well I upgraded to vista and should have know better.
While I ran XP my videos in Power Point 2003 worked perfectly Thanks to your previous excellent help. Well with Vista the procedure I used in XP does not work. I have media player 11 and keep getting the following error message,
Private Sub WindowsMediaPlayer1_OpenStateChange(ByVal NewState As Long) I have no idea what this means and hope you can help or as one of your other message reads perhaps it time to go to a MAC,
Thanks again.
Walter
End Sub
30 August, 2010 at 20:15