Artbeats FAQs

Yes. QuickTime clips can be used as elements on a slide; however, PowerPoint does not support the use of a clip as a background. There are also a few other issues to consider.

PowerPoint for Macintosh will accept any QuickTime clip, but PowerPoint for Windows will only accept clips compressed with certain codecs. When you read a QuickTime movie, a Video for Windows decompressor decompresses the QuickTime files. If the decompressor does not support the compression method used by the QuickTime movie, it cannot render the movie onto the screen. The best workaround for this is to recompress the Artbeats clip to a different QuickTime format (DV compression or Cinepak work well) or convert it to an AVI.

Additionally, you must ensure that the clip will playback smoothly from within your presentation. This is normally accomplished through recompression and the compression settings will vary depending on the target of your PowerPoint presentation (i.e., is it playing from a fast or slow computer, from a CD or from the hard drive, etc.) A few experiments with any video compression tool will quickly find the best settings for your situation.