[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Clearly we have some utter MS Office gurus in this place.....SO....here's one for you...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...age_problem.ppt


Simple powerpoint file - a large JPG imported, and I want to scroll the JPG up (or more often in a MER case.....along) for added OOoooo factor. You can see the custom animation I've added, a simple motion path upward.....but there's a problem

Try playing the presentation

click - image fades on......lovely.

click - image begins to scroll along.....lovely - but watch what happens at about the point where what was at the bottom of the screen reaches the top.....BAM...the image stops showing - it'll keep scrolling for the duration of the custom anim - but it gives up trying to show the image.

I've got a fairly powerfull laptop here, 2 gig of ram in it...SURELY I should be able to scroll an image like that without Powerpoint just throwing its hands in the air and giving up?

Any pointers to solve THAT one..

What I often have to end up doing is just showing little bits of large images, and that...well....SUCKS I mean really, I should be able to scroll say a 4000 x 768 pixel image shouldn't I ?

:0

Doug

[jaredGalen]

Not a PP guru, don't even use it but did have a look at it in Open Office and the problem seem to persist, so it's not a resource problem There's something funky going on there alright.

I'm sure someone here will have some more enlightening thoughts

[helvick]

Doug,

Interesting problem. I don't have the time to get stuck into this right now but I think you should be able to resolve your problem using sequenced custom animations but when I try it I still have blanking problems even though I get further than in your example.

You can definitely get a smooth scrolling effect by splitting the image into sections and scrolling in each one in sequence with the effect transition timing set to "Start after previous".

[djellison]

That's an interesting point - if I make, say, 5 1024x768 images and just line them up next to one another - will that work...I'll try it

Doug

[Leither]

Doug,

For me (using Powerpoint 2003) it scrolls in the OPPOSITE direction from what you've specified in the second animation --very odd -- but then that's MS Office!!

Will have a play with it this evening, but not hopefull


Aye

[djellison]

It should scroll UP.

Doug

[djellison]

Well - this works...

it sucks ( you can see seams )

But it sort of works

But SURELY.....I should be able to do this the easy way in one go?

I'm looking forward to Keynote 3 being unveiled early next year - this single issue, if solved with that, would actually push me onto the Mac platoform...

Doug

Attached File(s)

 large_image_problem_attempt_2.ppt ( 762.5K ) Number of downloads: 228

 

[helvick]

I've had a quick look now that I'm not distracted by the real world.

I can get more of the image to scroll in by editing the animation detail but I then very quickly run into an effect where the bulk of the image below a set point is simply missing. At a guess I'd say that Powerpoint is not fully buffering the image but is instead buffering some fraction\multiple of the display area for animation effects so that it can have items off screen that smoothly move in following the animation rules.

As a test I changed the page size settings to 9"x32" so that the whole image fits (more or less) on a single ribbon like page and then it will scroll in and out smoothly but it is completely the wrong shape for the screen so it just appears as a narrow stripe in the centre of the screen in slideshow mode. The fact that it works in this mode though makes me suspect that it wont be possible to get it to work in a traditional 4::3 or 16::9 slideshow display. I can't be certain of that yet but I'd very surprised if I'm wrong.

That leaves a couple of options. As I said earlier you could split the image into parts and animate in\out each pair of sections in a coordinated way to fake a smoothly scrolling effect. I tried this and it isn't as easy as I thought because PPT seems to paly around with the scroll speed for these custom animations but I think you could do it if you had some patience. I think the best solution though would be to animate this using something else to scroll the ribbon and capture the result in an AVI\MPG\ that you then embed in the PPT. I've no idea what that would be though.

[helvick]

Well - this works...
it sucks ( you can see seams )

I don't see any seams on my system. Maybe I'm just getting blind in my old age but it looks pretty good to me, much better than I was able to manage.

[odave]

I can see the seams, they're very thin and light, but they are there.

I've been running the Office 2007 beta for a couple of weeks (I know, I'm taking a giant risk with an MS Beta ), and they've changed quite a bit in the interface and functionality. While I'm not a PPT guru, I'll take a look and see if they've improved anything that might help...

EDIT: No dice, the 2007 beta is acting the same and there doesn't seem to be any useful new features or settings...

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Didn't notice the seams but it looks like there a very small pause between each... Not a Powerpoint specialist myself, although working a lot with MS Office Sharepoint Portal Server

[odave]

I did a crude version of Helvick's second suggestion, which was capturing an AVI of the scroll then inserting it into PP.

To do this, I opened the jpg in Paintshop Pro, sized the window appropriately, then used an older version of HyperCam to define a capture region and record an AVI. To do the scrolling, I just held the PgDn key while HyperCam was capturing.

The results look close to what you're going for, but you end up with the movie controls at the bottom of the slide and some extra clicking. I'm sure it could be refined with some more thought.

I'd post the file, but the AVI is 24Meg (even at low res), and that might attract the attention of my company's IT cops

[djellison]

Oh - I can do the whole after-effects-scroll-an-image thing to make a WMV or whatever....BUT.....imagine a PPT with 20 such things......it's half a gig in size before you've even started - and I've never been 100% happy that powerpoint, movies, and projectors run from laptops are a 'safe' combo in a 'live' environment.

It seems as if the capacity to do what I want is within the limits of Powerpoint, if they'd just let it.

Doug

[helvick]

One (final) suggestion. Not ideal but it sort of works and stays within Powerpoint's limits.

If you right click the image, select format and in the size tab change the scale height from 50% to 33%.
Now edit the Custom Motion Path and move the end point (the red triangle) to the top of the image (roughly).
Modify the background to suit.

[djellison]

Yeah - in the past with pancam mosaics I've been trying to show - I've ended up showing a smaller version that I pan across - and then select sample pieces at full res......but I'm basically re-producing my range of talk presentations and was hoping I could come up with something a bit better.

I've found some answers over at Msoft's site....but they're mainly the same ones we had here...slice'n'dice'n'animate, and there's a VBA script that can move large images - BUT - with no control on speed etc.

It's a right royal pain in the ass.....damn MER and MRO with their large image products...

Doug