The New PowerPoint Media Experience

Thanks for this valuable information! One question: Is there no sound on your video? (Or is there something wrong with my soundcard?)

The multimedia capabilities are one of the big advantages of the new version. I am working in an international advertising agency. A business where we need to use video, audio and flash daily. Currently a large portion of IT support calls is caused by multimedia problems in PowerPoint. I expect that PowerPoint 2010 will solve many of those problems. Thank you!

This looks great! I have a few questions: 1) Will you be able to do live annotations over the video while it is playing? (With Powerpoint 2007 you can only do it over still images or animated gifs.) 2) I dont use Apple's Keynote, but one thing that I like about what I've seen of it are the cinematic quality effects that they have for slide and text transitions. - It looks like you have covered the slide transitions, but what about text transitions? - Also Keynote provides photorealistic renderings for their graphs. Any plan for this PPT2010? 3) Finally, any support for embedding Flash videos or flash animations with transparency effects? Looks great and looking forward to the release!

Ute - Nope, no sound on this video, nor was their sound on the original video. And we're glad to hear that you're looking forward to our new features. Kurt - 1) I'm not entirely sure what you mean (do you mean captions or shapes over the video?), but video will "behave" like any other shape in PowerPoint. So, it will no longer jump to the front and cover everything else up during playback. 2) We have a post coming up re: transitions, so hopefully that'll be able to provide you some answers. 3) We have the ability to import Flash videos like other videos, but they'll still have the behavior they had in the past (no transparency and no effects, and jumping out to the front). Hope this helps!

Allen Huang, PowerPoint Program Manager

I have the PowerPoint 2010 Technical Preview and when embedding video (which, by the way is great that you can EMBED video), it only gives me the option to embed .avi, .asf, .mpeg, and .wmv files from my hard drive. What about inserting video from an online site? What about other video formats (.mov, .swf, .mp4)?

To Eric: You can insert online video. To do so, you must have 32-bit Office, Windows Media Player 10+ and Flash Player 10+. Once you have those, you should see an online option when you go to Insert | Video and click the bottom half of the button to invoke the dropdown. SWFs must be inserted using an Active X control. Instructions can be found at http://www.flashgeek.com -- the Control Toolbox is on the Developer tab in PPT 2007 and 2010. In 2010, you turn this on by right-clicking on the Ribbon and choosing Customize the Ribbon -- there's a "Developer" option to tick. I don't know about .MOV and .MP4, but I would bet they cannot be embedded. PPT and MOV have never played well together (which is irritating, to say the least), but I don't know what the deal with MP4 is.

Hey Eric, thanks for the feedback! Echo is right on about the requirements for online video and inserting Flash. As for .mov/.mp4, we've built native support in PowerPoint for these files as long as you have the QuickTime player installed and you're on 32-bit Office. Keep the questions coming! Allen Huang

PowerPoint PM

I read the rendering engine is now based on DirectX. Do you use native code to implement all this new stuff?

I inserted a FLV-Video in my PowerPoint 2010 TP, i started the slide show, the video was playing, but the sound wasn't. The original video has the sound. Is it a bug???? or there is something wrong in my PowerPoint????

Thank you

Just one question.

I use Powerpoint for worhip presentations at our church. Will you be able to show text over video backgrounds or will you need a third party program.

@Kerry

Absolutely! You can put text, shapes, even other videos over videos.

Let me just say one thing....... FINALLY!!!!!!!!!! I have been waiting for these types of features for the last 10 years. I will finally be able to rid myself of all the technical problems our sales team has with power point files and embedded animations. Thank you for listening to your customers. This is what a presentation program should be! This new version couldn't come soon enough.

PLEASE!!! Tell me that you are going to include an opacity/transparency option for images added to a slide? This is my #1 most glaring oversight of PPT 2007. Why can't I add an image and then change it's transparency level as I can with objects? PLEASE ADD THIS!!!! Otherwise Keynote still gets the nod. You add this...you win me.

Beni, did you ever get an answer to your question? I have the same problem over and over. My videos will not play audio in preview or in the slide show. I'm very frustrated. Thanks!

David

@Beni and @David - Our media depends on the DirectShow codecs available on the computer. On Vista and XP machines, that means anything that works on Windows Media Player should work in PowerPoint. In Beni's specific case, there's no native support for FLV in any Windows, so I'm presuming you have some sort of FLV player/codec installed? If you can let me know what that player is, we can take a look to see if there's something wrong on our side. Sorry for the troubles, definitely let me know, and we'll do what we can. Allen Huang

Program Manager

@Mike - Thanks for your feedback. We've definitely heard about adding image transparency (and video transparency now). I can't speak to future plans, but customer feedback is an important factor in driving what we do from release to relase. That said, you can accomplish image transparency by inserting a rectangle and giving it an image fill. Then the transparency options act similar to other shapes. Let me know if you need some more help with that. @Beni and @David Pendergrass - It might be worth trying "Optimize media compatibility" from the BackStage, which is accessible via the File option.