Video Formats

[timgayler]

Dear All

I wonder if anyone can help me with some more technical details on video formats that ActivStudio will play when embedded.

From looking at the forums the 3 formats that should play are (I believe) .mov .mpeg and .avi. My niggle is that .avi, at least, is merely a container format - the audio and video within it could be created using several codecs.

At present when I am creating .avi files for a flipchart I'm getting them wrong somehow - perhaps using the wrong codecs (eg xvid). The upshot is that they will not play when embedded.

Is there anyone out there (from tech support or otherwise) who can enlighten me as to what codecs are supported within the avi container, it would be appreciated

Yours
timgayler

[gkelley]

Install the following codecs:

Ensharpen and TSCC

http://www.techsmith.com/download/codecs.asp

[mrjdallen]

You could also convert the video to a wmv file either by using the online converter of ZAMZAR or inporting the video into Windows movie maker and making a wmv file

[timgayler]

Thank you for the kind answers so far, they are appreciated. So what we have so far is to use the ensharpen codec (which I have) for the video within the AVI container. Is that the only codec for it that will work - I'd like to know others, does anyone know what audio formats work within the AVI.

I thought .wmv would only play in an exterior player, so cannot be used as a placeholder (I might be wrong :-) )

Does anyone have any more details thanks in advance.

[mrjdallen]

i usually take a screen shot of the video and embed a video on the object ie screen shot or i usually a clipart item to embed a wmv video

I use wmv as they play on all machines (from my experiances) but with codexs i found that they are local to a machine so you would be able to watch the video embeded into a flipchart if the codexs werenot installed by another teacher on a different machine

[timgayler]

So what are the common codecs for a placeholder video (eg avi) that people are finding on most machines. My original problem is still what codecs to use in conversion of the video from other formats - techsmith is the one that's been mentioned so far

[Daniel Bunker]

Tim

Personally I'd avoid the avi format if I was converting a video from other format to use as a placeholder in a flipchart and I'd use the mpeg format. Generally speaking avi files are bigger than their mpeg variants.

However, any video when used as a paceholder can look choppy when played back in a flipchart and generally speaking, the bigger the video then the choppier the playback. So for this reason I'd use the placeholder setting only for shorter clips where I might want to annotate over them e.g. a clip in PE showing a particular technique. For longer videos (2 minutes or more) I'd link to the video and play it back in a window as it plays more smoothly this way.

Dan

[timgayler]

Thanks Dan - especially for the information about video length. Most of the material I'm using is 2 or 3 minutes anyway so I should be OK.

For the sake of clarity which of the mpeg standards will activboard handle - I'm commonly using mpeg-1 and mpeg-4. I'm guessing (for no particularly good reason) that it's mpeg-1

Cheers

timgayler

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And as an aside to explain more on why I need the info - I'm finding it very useful to stitch pictures together in Picasa 3 (free download http://picasa.google.com/) into a short .wmv video (effectively becomes a short slideshow of your pictures.
What I'm trying to do is convert that into a short clip that I can use as a placeholder for a short slideshow on a flipchart page whilst other things are on the page as well (e.g I had pictures of devastated rainforest, with lyrics from a Sting song on the page about rainforest devastation and the song playing in the background)

[davidlloyd]

That is such a neat idea!