PowerPoint playback

[Devin Johnston]

My firm still uses MS PowerPoint for all of their presentations, recentley I've noticed that the animations we play through PowerPoint don't look as good as if you were just playing them back through the windows media player. Does anyone know if there is a known problem with playback quality in PowerPoint?

[Claudio Branch]

My firm still uses MS PowerPoint for all of their presentations, recentley I've noticed that the animations we play through PowerPoint don't look as good as if you were just playing them back through the windows media player. Does anyone know if there is a known problem with playback quality in PowerPoint?

 

There is most definately playback quality issues within Power Point. If the file size is too great, (above 25 MB perhaps) it may not play at all through PP, even though the media player will handle it outside of PP.

 

I posted on this very topic awhile back and received several suggestions. I tried out a Mac Notebook and iWorks' Keynote presentation application. It played my very large Quicktime animation files (500 MB - 1 GB) without any issues. Keynote has identical functionality to PP, but with much more flair!

 

I have also noticed that the Quicktime format creates a much sharper image (at the cost of a larger file size) then other formats that I have used (at identical res) for Windows Media player playback.

 

Try out a Notebook with Keynote. You will not be disappointed.

[Trissel]

You could also try to use openoffice. It's an opensource version of microsoft office. Powerpoint is called OpenOffice Impress.