Inserted movies appear grainy when played in PowerPoint 2002, PowerPoint 2003, or PowerPoint 2007

When you insert a movie clip on a slide in Microsoft PowerPoint, it may appear to be distorted, grainy, or pixilated when you play it inside of PowerPoint. When you play the movie outside of PowerPoint, it appears fine.

In order for movies to play without distortion, they need to be scaled such that each pixel in the movie corresponds to one screen pixel. For example, if the movie was saved at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, then it would have to be scaled in PowerPoint so that it is exactly 320 x 240 display pixels in size when played, in order to eliminate any distortion.

In PowerPoint, your slide contents are always being scaled for editing or for a slide show, and the scaling during editing is rarely the same as during a slide show. This is why a movie might look just fine when played in Slide view but appear distorted when played in Slide Show view.

PowerPoint adjusts the movie clip in Slide view so that it will appear at the correct size in Slide Show view.

PowerPoint can help you resize a movie so that it will look best in Slide Show view. If you know at what display resolution you will be showing your presentation, you can follow these steps:

PowerPoint 2002 and Power 2003

1. Select the movie.
2. On the Format menu, click Picture.
3. Click the Size tab.
4. Click to select the Best scale for slide show check box.
5. Choose your target resolution in the Resolution list.
6. Click OK.

PowerPoint 2007

1. Right-click the movie, and then click Size and Position.
2. Click the Size tab.
3. Click to select the Best scale for slide show check box.
4. Choose your target resolution in the Resolution list.
5. Click Close.

You may have to reposition the movie object after resizing it.

NOTE: This only works if you know your target display resolution and you are delivering a full screen slide show by using PowerPoint. For other slide show methods, you must resize the movie differently to get the best quality, because the slides are scaled differently when shown. Other methods of showing slides which would require you to resize the movie differently include:

• Using the Microsoft PowerPoint 97 Viewer
• Using the Browsed by an individual (window) slide show setting.
• Viewing a slide show in a browser
• Viewing as Web pages.