NO VIDEO PICTURE

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tonya
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Tonya

I just completed my first PowerPoint presentation. This
presention included video (nothing like jumping into the
deep end before you can swim.) We had the same experience
as Rich this past weekend, the video displayed on laptop
perfectly but was just a dark box on the screen. When
asking for advice from other PP users, they came up with
two ideas, neither of which seemed to solve the problem.
The first thought was the bulb in the projector wasn't
powerful enough. The second thought was that the media
player on the computer was not the latest version. (The
computer is a IBM Think Tank, not yet one month old.) I
searched the PP Help Menus and the MicroSoft PP tutorial
book and did not find the problem addressed. We NEED to
use extensive video in future presentations. How do we
fix this problem?
 
Tonya said:
I just completed my first PowerPoint presentation. This
presention included video (nothing like jumping into the
deep end before you can swim.) We had the same experience
as Rich this past weekend, the video displayed on laptop
perfectly but was just a dark box on the screen. When
asking for advice from other PP users, they came up with
two ideas, neither of which seemed to solve the problem.
The first thought was the bulb in the projector wasn't
powerful enough. The second thought was that the media
player on the computer was not the latest version. (The
computer is a IBM Think Tank, not yet one month old.) I
searched the PP Help Menus and the MicroSoft PP tutorial
book and did not find the problem addressed. We NEED to
use extensive video in future presentations. How do we
fix this problem?
Click to expand...

Seen this many times. The problem looks like the video card in your
laptop. Modern ones are getting too clever for their own good, but not
quite clever enough. Your laptop has effectively got two video card
'outputs' (lets ignore the TV/video out for now...), the laptop's own
screen being the first & the 15-pin VGA external socket on the back
being the second, where you plug the projector in. The video card then
has a few different modes of operation, "Mirror" or "Twin" where the
external output is exactly the same as what's on the laptop screen;
"Dual" where they show separate images - PowerPoint handles this very
well by allowing you output the slideshow on the secondary screen
(usually ext. out) whilst letting you see the "Standard" view with notes
etc. on your primary display (laptop screen) but most video cards won't
allow video on the secondary (although mine will!).
Then you have "Clone" mode, which I think is where your problem lies,
this pretends to mirror the laptop screen to the output BUT WON'T SHOW
VIDEOS!!! (Or flash, come to that) All you get is the black box.

Could you tell us some more info? Like version of Windows & PowerPoint
as well as the details of your video card, i.e. make/model/driver
version - which you should be able to find by right clicking on a blank
bit of your desktop & choosing Properties->Settings tab->Advanced button
& exploring a little.

Please let us know.

Phill
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A bit more primative and basic than what others are
suggesting, but when I had this happen I simply clicked on
ctrl and the "f" key that controls the video screen until
they both synced...seemed like it took 2 or 3 "clicks" but
then both came on fine.
 
I have come across this a couple times as well (working
in an AV dept...you come across alot of things). My fix
is a bit different then mentioned here and on the listed
link (from a nother reply). Fortunately, I make
presenters test before they present at any of our
locations...and I have had time to "fix" the black
screen. I have taken the video clip and "redigitized" it
with a different codec and tried it again and this has
worked. My key thing is I always test and I test with
the equipment that is going to be used ahead of time..
 
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