Macbook Air, part 3
I have had the MBA for a while now and all seemed to be well until tonight. I uploaded a presentation I am doing next week which included 5 wmv files embedded in a Powerpoint 2007 presentation. The movies would begin to play and then freeze up PowerPoint. I thought it might be PowerPoint, and re-installed, but that did not work. (The movies played fine in Media Player and I even converted them to AVIs using Premiere Elements and that did not work, either.) (4/28/08 follow-up: I found out if I save the presentation as PDF with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional and embedded the videos as AVI or MOV (which are the only two choices) into the resulting PDF, the videos played pefectly in the PDF on the Windows side of the machine. Just a simple work-around...)
It took a while, but I found the answer was to decrease the hardware acceleration of the graphics card. To do this on XP, simply right-click on the desktop and choose PROPERTIES-SETTINGS-ADVANCED-TROUBLESHOOT. I had to drag the slider down to the middle of bar in order for the wmv movies to run within the PowerPoint presentation. This disables some things that apparently could cause problem with Direct X programs, but I need the videos to work right now. It is easy to set it back to full for all other applications.
This must be an interesting chipset. I found newer drivers, but hesitate to install them because of the Bootcamp/Windows/Mac thing. However, I did find a fix for those with the Intel 965 chipset (on any computer) who cannot seem to get Second Life to run. That post is here. I successfully followed these directions on a student's Dell laptop with Vista earlier this week and he is having no problems!
I promise not to continue with many more postings on the Air. However, people are reading and responding and asking me additional questions via email, so I feel compelled to share what I learn to save others some time!
Kathy "The Techno-Geek" Schrock
It took a while, but I found the answer was to decrease the hardware acceleration of the graphics card. To do this on XP, simply right-click on the desktop and choose PROPERTIES-SETTINGS-ADVANCED-TROUBLESHOOT. I had to drag the slider down to the middle of bar in order for the wmv movies to run within the PowerPoint presentation. This disables some things that apparently could cause problem with Direct X programs, but I need the videos to work right now. It is easy to set it back to full for all other applications.
This must be an interesting chipset. I found newer drivers, but hesitate to install them because of the Bootcamp/Windows/Mac thing. However, I did find a fix for those with the Intel 965 chipset (on any computer) who cannot seem to get Second Life to run. That post is here. I successfully followed these directions on a student's Dell laptop with Vista earlier this week and he is having no problems!
I promise not to continue with many more postings on the Air. However, people are reading and responding and asking me additional questions via email, so I feel compelled to share what I learn to save others some time!
Kathy "The Techno-Geek" Schrock
Labels: Kathy Schrock, Macbook Air
posted by Kathy Schrock at 8:21 PM
6 Comments:
Now I am interested to know this. of course i didn't think macs liked wmvs in general to begin with...you know the philosophical difference in media on a mac vs pc...couls that have been a contributing factor. PS-in presos i've done before where i used wmv in ppts (on a pc on those occasions) I attached an external hard drive (200gb/7200spin rate, 2.0 usb) to keep vids from struggling--with success. It only took one crash/burn in a preso to realize I needed the mem and speed. But I'm curious as to the solution on the mac side now that I'm a full fledged convert.
Your buddy Cathy from SC
Cathy,
The fact that PowerPoint is running on Mac hardware is not the problem. I am not running it in a virtualized mode, but under true Windows. I run three other Macs this same way and have not had a problem. I believe it is the Intel chipset and PowerPoint since this same problem is occuring in other Windows machines that are not running Bootcamp and are trying to do this in PPT. (The videos run fine if I just open them up in Media Player.)
Running it off an external drive would not work in this case, since the graphics card would still have to render the videos. I will give it a try on the Mac side. (I run software that does WMVs nicely on the Mac side, but I will convert them to AVI to get a real test.)
Thank you for your thoughts!
Kathy
If I open the PPT presentation in Office for Mac, and convert the WMV files to AVI with QuicktimePro, they will run in the PPT presentation on the Mac side of the machine just fine.
On the Windows side, I have to decrease the hardware acceleration for it to work with the video files.
Kathy
Meme: Passion Quilt
Hi, Kathy, since I am a huge fan, I had to 'tag' you in my blog post today.
Hi Kathy,
I am enjoying reading your blog and website. I am a graduate student in instructional technology at Bridgewater State and live here on the Cape.
Have you looked in to Flip4Mac? It instantly opens wmv's using Quicktime. I also use it to export wmv files from my Final Cut Pro editing system. It is affordable and works really well.
Mindy
Centerville
Mindy,
Yes, I have used Flip4Mac, but it will not open the movies within the presentation-- only in a new window, and this is a problem when doing a presentation in front of lots of people!
Thanks,
Kathy
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