Talking head videos only play to half duration

[fairtex]

For some reason when I implement talking head vidoes into my presentation, they only end up playing for half of their total duration. I was able to fix this by using FLV format instead of SWF, but now the problem has returned, even with FLV format. Except this time, with FLV the video won't play at all, but with SWF it plays up until half duration. What's going on?

[johndaigle]

You have tripped over one of the "to do" list items for a future version. It's kludgy but the workaround is to insert "slience" for the slide equal to the length of your FLV. You can find that out by selecting the FLV in Windows Explorer and the length will show up in the properties. You insert the silence by going to the Presenter menu in PowerPoint, Select Audio Editing. Have your cursor at the beginning of the slide where you want to add silence. Click Insert Silence and put in the length of seconds for the FLV. Save it and Publish. This should work fine on a Connect Server. I believe FLVs do not work on a Windows 2003 server. Here's a Tech Note on the subject with a workaround http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_19439

Another item that is sometimes necessary is to make sure your FLV is injected with metadata. I have a tutorial on my website which explains this. www.showmethedemo.com

Hopefully that will help.
John

John Daigle
Adobe Certified Connect/Captivate/RoboHelp instructor

[shimrah]

If you expect the presentation to move forward without user intervention, by the way, the "silence" will have to be *exactly* the same length as the video, to the tenth of a second. If the video is slightly shorter, the slide will end when the video ends and stop the presentation. If the sound ends first, the slide will flip to the next one before the video is done.

Are you starting with a non-flash video file (e.g., wmv/mpeg/avi)? If so, I suggest the following:

1. use a program like "VIdeo MP3 Extractor" to strip an audio file from the video. This audio file will be the exact same length as the video (make it lowest quality to save space)
2. convert the video to FLV
3. add the video as "talking head" to the slide
4. add the MP3 to the slide

That should work. Keep in mind that if you're working with talking head, you'll still need to keep the entire presentation under 100 megs or you won't be able to upload it.

(I hope that greater control over the arbitrary 100-meg limit -- i.e., an option to remove it -- for licensed clients is also on the "to do" list for future versions of Connect...)