PPT2000: Cannot Play Movies from PowerPoint 98 Files

ID: Q201308

The information in this article applies to:

SYMPTOMS

When you open a PowerPoint 98 Macintosh Edition presentation that contains movie objects in PowerPoint 2000 for Windows, the movie objects will be missing. For example, you will see the following caption rather than the bitmap poster frame image:

QuickTime(tm) and a <Video> decompressor are needed to see this picture.
If you double-click this caption, you receive the following message:
The linked multimedia file is unavailable. Do you want to locate it yourself?
When you locate the original movie file, the movie may play; however, the bitmap poster frame will still contain the warning caption.


CAUSE

This error is caused by fundamental differences in the two Operating System platforms. When you insert a movie file into your Macintosh PowerPoint presentation, the location of the movie file is represented by something similar to:

"HARD DRIVE:Movies:Quicktime:Movie_File"
The same movie file location within Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows would be similar to:
"C:\Movies\Quicktime\Movie_File.MOV"
In addition, the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows use two completely different methods for playing movie files. PowerPoint 98 communicates directly with the Quicktime extension on the Macintosh, a low-level system extension. When this information is translated for Microsoft Windows, PowerPoint 2000 attempts to communicate with a low-level extension, and is unable to do so.


WORKAROUND

To work around this behavior, follow these steps:

  1. Copy the original movie files to the computer where PowerPoint is installed.


  2. Open the presentation in PowerPoint, and delete all movie objects.


  3. Re-insert each movie object. You can insert movie objects in any of the following formats:


All inserted movies will be linked to your presentation. If you show your presentation on a different computer, remember to also copy the movie file when you copy the presentation. If you do not, you will just have a picture of the poster frame of the movie.


STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.


MORE INFORMATION

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q183919 PPT98: Cannot Play Movies from PowerPoint 97 Files

Additional query words: powerpoint ppt9 9.0 plays playing movies clip motion mpeg mpg avi media player nothing happens error show slide slideshow click action settings animation builds 


Keywords          : kbinterop kbdta kbconversion 
Version           : WINDOWS:2000
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: June 28, 1999