text over video in powerpoint

The big question everyone has and the one downfall of powerpoint seems
to be: how on earth do you put text over video in powerpoint? The
answer is: powerpoint does not support text over video. But there are a
couple of ways around it so that you can in a sense get text over video
in powerpoint. One is the fact that you can use animated gifs in
powerpoint and you can lay text over animated gifs. You must insert the
gif as an image and it will display as an animation in the background
of text. However, animated gifs are small and really cant be used as
backrounds. To fix this, you need a program that can convert video to
animated gifs. I reccomend Alchemy Mindworks' Gif construction set. The
website is: http://www.mindwork.shop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html What this
program does, is it extracts the frames from any .avi or .mov file and
displays them and allows you to change color, resize, crop your video
file and save it as a .gif format. It also allows you to compress the
file by removing unwanted frames, and reducing the color palette. This
program also allows you to create your own animated gifs out of
pictures and text. You can then open your saved animated gif from
within powerpoint and it runs without choppiness.
Another way to do text over video is through creating a video with
Windows Movie Maker (Windows XP only) and putting it into powerpoint.

I have tried a couple of other products such as Powerplugs:Video
Backgrounds, but they do not allow split screen mode, and are full of
bugs. They also are very choppy when playing back a powerpoint with
many different video elements in it at once. It also doesnt allow the
playback of other formats of video along with the motion backgrounds.

So, if you are up for it, animated gifs seem to be one of the only
reliable ways to display text over video in powerpoint that I have
found. I am hoping, eventually powerpoint will include this feature so
that you don't have to bother with all of this, but until then, this is
a good solution. Hope it helps!

Nice idea to use animated GIFs ... BUT:

- If I click on the link you provided, I get a "Page not found".

- I have a MPG-File of 21 sec, 480x360 pixel, which has 3.1 MB. If
converted to an animated GIF, which file size would it have?

- How do you solve the problem, that GIFs only have a color depth of 256
colors?

Kind regards,
Ute

--
Ute Simon
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team

Ute;

The link should read http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html

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Michael Koerner [MS PPT MVP]


"Ute Simon" wrote in message
...
Nice idea to use animated GIFs ... BUT:

- If I click on the link you provided, I get a "Page not found".

- I have a MPG-File of 21 sec, 480x360 pixel, which has 3.1 MB. If
converted to an animated GIF, which file size would it have?

- How do you solve the problem, that GIFs only have a color depth of 256
colors?

Kind regards,
Ute

--
Ute Simon
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team

The link should read http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html


Thanks for the correct link, Michael. Did you test this software? As far
as I can see, there's no test version on their website. And I am not
willing to pay money for something, which Animation Shop (which comes with
Paint Shop Pro for free) can do also.

Kind regards,
Ute

--
Ute Simon
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
und PowerPoint-User-Team
Tipps, Tricks und kostenloser Newsletter auf www.ppt-user.de

I used to have earlier version of Graphic Workshop during the Windows 3 era,
which included the GIF construction stuff. But have not used it since then. I'm
like you, I use Animation shop for the little stuff I do.

--
Please post all follow-up questions/replies to the newsgroup
Email unless specifically requested will not be opened
Do Provide The Version Of PowerPoint You Are Using
Do Not Post Attachments In This Newsgroup
Michael Koerner [MS PPT MVP]


"Ute Simon" wrote in message
...
The link should read http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html


Thanks for the correct link, Michael. Did you test this software? As far
as I can see, there's no test version on their website. And I am not
willing to pay money for something, which Animation Shop (which comes with
Paint Shop Pro for free) can do also.

Kind regards,
Ute

--
Ute Simon
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
und PowerPoint-User-Team
Tipps, Tricks und kostenloser Newsletter auf www.ppt-user.de

I'm sorry for the confusion on the link. The link should be
http://www.mindworkshop.com/al=ADchemy/gifcon.html
As far as the size of the files, a gif is much larger than a mpeg to be
sure, but you can compress the file using a compression utility in the
program. I used about the same size movie; uncompressed it came out to
a huge size of 50MB, but when I fooled with frames, and deleted
unneeded ones, I got the file size down to 4MB.
On the color issue: The gif format does limit you to 256 colors. This
is a problem if you are using a large movie with many changing colors.
However, if you are using a movie that has subtle movement and not too
many changes in color, 256 is plenty of colors because a gif chooses
from the palette of millions of colors and shades, but only selects 256
most necessary ones for your clip. Hope this helps