Movies show as Blackboxes (2000)

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I have links to quicktime movies in my presentation. In most places they work fine, but sometimes, with some projectors, my movie ends up as a black box in the projected image, but looks fine on my computer screen. This didn’t used to happen, but with a new laptop with a higher resolution screen, it happens often. I have tried decreasing the resolution of the laptop screen, but no joy. Can anyone give me a clue as to what is wrong or what to check? Those black boxes are nowhere as interesting as my “eye candy” movies!

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This still sounds like a resolution problem with the projector(s). If you have a laptop running at 1024×768 and the projector only supports 800×600 or 640×480 then you are likely to have strange things happen. Have you tried turning off the laptop display and using just the project in it’s native mode?

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Well, we finally got it to work, and it had nothing to do with resolution, but everything to do with “hardware acceleration” in the display driver. We had to slow it down considerably and then it interfaced fine with the projectors. But thanks for your suggestion, I would have tried it next!

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MS ought to change the description on the hardware acceleration slider so that it reads: “how much do you want to push your luck?” Although my current system hasn’t suffered any problems I attribute to that setting, I remember it well from a Windows 95 laptop I had once. For those who have no idea what we’re talking about, I attach a picture of where to find this setting on Windows 2000 (Advanced… button hidden behind the top dialog).

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I agree, but we should mention, this is a ATI Display card “feature”. Not all display drivers have this option.

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MS ought to change the description on the hardware acceleration slider so that it reads: “how much do you want to push your luck?”

You are SO not kidding! Kicking back hardware acceleration and updating (or sometimes reverting to older) video drivers resolves so many problems it’s scary. Too bad it doesn’t take care of all of them, though!

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You’ve gotten great advice in this thread, and I was really surprised to read that hardware acceleration took care of this for you. But it’s really great that it did!

I just wanted to toss out some info for anyone else who may run into this problem. Often it’s an issue with some projectors and some laptops–essentially the movie (AVI, QT, MPEG, whatever) will play on the laptop screen but not on the projected screen. Sometimes the easiest workaround is to set the projected screen as the primary monitor (of course that means the laptop screen would be the secondary monitor) so the video will play there. A black box on the laptop isn’t as bad as a black box on the version the audience sees, you know.

…just tossing out some additional info.

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Thanks ,
Just so the answers are all in one place,
Where are the options for setting the primary vs secondary monitor? Is it obvious (it isn’t to me, at least not when the laptop isn’t connected to the projector). I checked under settings, display….

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It should be under Slide Show/Set up Show. If you only have one monitor (i.e., not hooked up to a projector), the option might be greyed out.

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Thanks again!!! Does anyone have any experience with the “projector Wizard” I notice there? Would it have helped I suppose I could go and set the laptop back to its original settings, and give it a try…. but asking seems easier.

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I’ve not used the Projector Wizard in what seems forever. But if I have a chance to any time soon, I’ll play around and post back.

Probably the best thing to do, though, especially if nobody chimes in with better information than I’ve given you here (!!), is to just hook your laptop up to the projector and start the wizard. It can’t hurt anything!

Oh, and one thing to remember is to set your laptop back to primary when you’re finished. I’ve seen reports of people not being able to get PPT to “un minimize,” and it’s often because it’s still set to a secondary monitor.

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Hi Leanne
I have had the same problem with AVIs in PowerPoint. On older projectors, I sometimes have to drop the computer screen resolution down to 640 x 480 before the movies will play, and then sometimes drop colors to high color (or even 256 colors) and perhaps also change the screen refresh frequency to 60Hz.

On older laptops the movies often won’t project if the laptop screen and the projector screen are both on – I have to toggle the laptop screen to off so only the projector is working.

It’s pretty foolproof if you do all the above. On laptops and projectors that are less than say 1-2 years old, everything usually works fine without any of the above.

good luck

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Summary of thread: I asked-
We have a laptop with our PowerPoint presentations which include links to

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