Digital Workshop

Hi, I've had a lot of private help from Mack today, and have probably used up enough of his time, so perhaps someone else can help solve this:

I've got a wmv file within an Opus 7 presentation.

The whole presentation is scaleable.

The wmv is set to On top.

If it's size is "fixed" (at exactly the same size it was rendered at) it plays perfectly.

But if the presentation is scaled down, the video, of course, does not scale.

If it's size is set as " scale to fit", then, even when run at the correct size, I see some corruption of the file along the bottom and right hand edges. This isn't there in any other player programme.

The alternative is to set it to Chroma key, where "scale to fit" gives perfect results on my pc, but I'm less sure about everyone else.

Advice welcomed.

Linda

Does the video have to be in wmv format?

Well... it's got to be played by the most pcs possible.

In years gone by, I always used mpg1. But now we're on Adobe CS5, mpg1 is no longer an output option.

So in the knowledge that mpg2, 4 etc all need other codecs, I went for wmv.

Linda

What about .flv or .swf? Those should play on any computer with decent Flash support, which theoretically should be close to 100%.

FLVs are out due to lack of navigational control. SWF is an interesting beast. In practice, VP6 video is H.263 quality and therefore you should be able to get good quality video at DVD resolution but just trying to load an FLV in Flash throws out errors about not trying to use SWF for anything but short simple videos preferably without audio! When you do get a decent working output, Opus is generally happy to play / control them well.

My question that I've not answered, is if the flash player is required for playing SWF files in Opus, can changes to the Flash player causes these file to stop working?

Mack

It could do in theory, if Adobe decided to change the Flash player in a way that broke existing content. But hopefully Adobe won't do that.

Well, I ended up using Chroma key wmvs, and the client has just rung to say she's absolutely delighted with the work we've done, and more work is on the way.

So that's enough of a solution for today.

But, Dave, I'm interested in what DW themselves recommend as the best method of using video within a presentation.

Thanks, Linda