PPT2002: Use of Custom Animations in Movies Makes Both Skip (278582)

SYMPTOMS

If you add custom animation to a shape or to a movie, and then set the animation to run while the movie is playing, the animation and the movie both may stutter or skip frames. In the worst case, neither the animation nor the movie play at all.

CAUSE

This problem occurs when you set any animations to start with or play during a movie that you insert into PowerPoint.

PowerPoint plays movies by using the Media Control Interface (MCI) of Microsoft Windows. While MCI creates the window to play the movie, PowerPoint skips any custom animation effects.

In addition, if you attempt to run an animation while MCI is starting, both MCI and PowerPoint may skip animation frames, causing a jerkiness effect in PowerPoint.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use any of the following methods.

Reduce or Eliminate Animations That Are Set to Occur While the Movie Plays

Set your animations to play either before or after the movie plays. Do not apply emphasis effects to your movie that are set to animate while the movie plays.

If you apply entrance animation effects to your movie, set the movie's Start setting to After Previous, not With Previous.

Adjust the Set Up Show Settings

Adjust the performance settings in the Set Up Show dialog box to maximize slide show performance (on the Slide Show menu, click Set Up Show).

For example, click to select the Use hardware graphics acceleration check box, and click 640x480 in the Slide show resolution box.

Run the Slide Show on a Faster System

Although any system has a limit to how complex a slide show can be, you can increase that limit by running your slide show on faster system (faster CPU, more RAM, faster hard disk, and so on).