I have been assigned to present two powerpoint presentations, one on Feb 4, the other on Feb 11. They were supplied to me and I tried opening them in Impress since I don't have MS Office.

The slides with JPG's work fine as do the slide transitions. But there are a few slides containing videos that I can not get to work. I saved one of the video files into the same folder as the PPT file, and tried putting it on a new slide. I can see the video in edit mode and it plays in a small window. But it will not play in presentation mode at all. Also on the video control, the scaling dropdown is grayed out so I can't set it to run full screen.

I did do a searches on Google and on LQ and found that other people have had the same problem, and some have seemed to get it to work, but none of their solutions has helped me.

Can anyone help me?

Well, this is a WAG:

I would try to convert it to OGG-video or even MPEG|MPG*. (ED: I see that Impress does not support WMV at all so deleted reference to it ...)

I also suggest using the Impress forum for OO.org http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewforum.phtml?f=4
..it does have Moderators.

ED:
If it is possible, perhaps you could designate another player for OO.org to use. VLC works for about 99% of videos ...mplayer and others not so much.
/ED

Those are the best options I know since I have not had that issue yet(... which figures since I have not used video in Impress! yet, ).

Good Luck ...let us know if you get it going. I, at least, am interested in knowing what was the problem and the solution.



* Sometimes videos are encoded in such a way that they just cannot be decoded (in Linux) ... conversion to another format with judicious choices might resolve that.
If you are getting the BSOD(Black Screen of Death, ) it probably does not understand the encoded format for the videos. Sometimes adding codecs will resolve that without a conversion ...sometimes both. Unfortunately I have had videos that I could not get to play on any Linux-based media player no matter what I tried ...not very many over the last ten years but some clearly required more expertise than what I had|have.

Thank you for the reply. I already tried converting to OGG and it makes no difference. I don't think it is a codec problem because I can play the video in impress edit mode.

Anyway I'll try the OO forum as you suggested.

I can't seem to find a way to designate an alternate video player. Where would I find such a setting in Impress?

Well I did say it was a WAG but am still sorry it was not helpful.
The embedding of the video player would have to be done at compile time -IF- such an option exists. I have not built OO.org in a very long time so don't know if it even exists. Probably too much work, huh?

It may not be helpful but i tried a few video files in Impress on WinXPx64 and had mixed results. I found that WMV is not supported and although MOV is supposed to be, Impress said they were the wrong format and refused to allow insertion. Both AVI and MPG played in a presentation without issues. None of the files that played were in the same folder as the presentation. As with your experience, it did not matter for the MOV. OO.org just did not like them.

I hope the moderators for the Impress forum respond to you and, at the least, provide some work-around. ...but don't hold your breath(based on the old posts I read last night...) or risk the boss getting red in the face.

Well, I've tried a bunch of stuff but nothing has worked. The frustrating thing is that the videos will play in preview mode but that doesn't help much.

I installed Libroffice hoping that they might have fixed the problem but it behaves the same way. I guess it's too soon to expect them to have fixed whatever my problem might be.

In the meantime I have arranged to borrow a Win7 laptop and use it.

The presentation I will be using is controlled by the Presentation Synchronizer, which shows your notes and slide thumbnails on the laptop screen that the audience does not see on the projected presentation. It is written especially for the Powerpoint API. My wish list for Libreoffice would be to include that functionality.

Thanks for trying to help.

In such a situation, I would try running a file carver on it and see if it can pick up the video, something like foremost.