We put an mp4 video in our presentation and it ran fine on a Mac, but we just got a black screen when played on an HP computer. What to do?

You may need to have Quicktime on the HP to see mp4 video.

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Microsoft PowerPoint MVP 2007-2023
Free Advanced PowerPoint Tips and Tutorials

This presentation will go to a few different offices and not sure what equipment they'll be using. Is there anyway we can feel confident that a video will run inside Powerpoint, or do you advise we go a different route, i.e., adding to the mp4 rather than trying to embed a video in Powerpoint?

You can't EMBED a video in 2007 it's always linked. Did you have the link available on the HP? Does it have Quicktime?

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Microsoft PowerPoint MVP 2007-2023
Free Advanced PowerPoint Tips and Tutorials

The link was on the same CD as was the Powerpoint document. And we won't know if the HP has Quicktime or not since it will be moved around, via CD, from one person to the next.

p.s. When we were in the offices yesterday and encountered the problem of the black slide instead of the video, it was Windows Media Player that opened. So maybe that answers your second question, about if the HP has Quicktime. I'm thinking probably not. And if not, would Windows Media Player not work, only Quicktime? And also, is there a way to link the video aside from the video not simply residing in the same folder as the PP?

I think if you convert it to Windows Media Video (wmv) format it well work.

Faasoft's great "Video Converter" is probably one of the best commercial choices though. I've been using it for a few years now.

You may try iDealshare VideoGo or Allavsoft to convert MP4 to PowerPoint supported format.

Below is difference between them:

iDealshare VideoGo is just the right MP4 to PowerPoint Converter which can convert all kinds of MP4 to PowerPoint supported WMV, AVI, ASF, MPG, SWF, MP4. Besides converting MP4 to PowerPoint, it also helps to convert any other video formats including MOV, M4V, FLV, F4V, MKV, 3GP, WTV, DVR, MXF, Apple ProRes, RMVB, DV, VOB, MTS, AVCHD, OGV, WebM, and etc to PowerPoint video or audio format. It even supports to convert FLAC, OGG, APE, 3GA, M4A, M4B, QCP, VOC, DTS, RA, AC3, CAF and etc to PowerPoint compatible AIFF, MP3, WMA, WAV, AU.

Allavsoft is the most convenient MP4 to PowerPoint converter, the more exciting point is that it can download YouTube and other online videos to PowerPoint or convert local videos to PPT.