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Vis > presentations > pptavi > Creating and Inserting an AVI Animation into MS PowerPoint

Creating and Inserting an AVI Animation into MS PowerPoint

Creating and Inserting an AVI Animation into MS PowerPoint

Animating Your Images with MainActor

  1. Create your image sequence.
    Create your sequence of images with Ferret, MATLAB, etc. and name the files with a pattern like frame###.png where ### denotes an increasing integer field.
  2. Get your files to an animation machine.
    The program used to compile the frames into an animation is called MainActor. The MS Windows version of the program is installed on the public machine running Windows NT, media1, located in room 316. The username and password is media. You'll need to FTP, e.g. LeechFTP, your images to a temporary directory local to the media1 machine. If you haven't already done so, please create a directory for yourself on the F: drive, in the "Users" subdirectory.
  3. Start MainActor.
    Fig. 1 shows where to find it.

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    Figure 1. Starting MainActor.

    Once loaded, choose the button or select from the menu "File->Open" (Fig. 2).

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    Figure 2. Loading the images.

    Choose the first file in your sequence of images. The program will realize that it's part of a sequence and will present you the dialog of Fig. 3. Click "Yes".

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    Figure 3. Loading the entire image sequence.

  4. Set the frame rate.
    Select the button (Fig. 4) or choose from the menu "Project->Global Timecode".

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    Figure 4. Choosing the frame rate setting.

    Enter the desired frame change rate (Fig. 5).

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    Figure 5. Setting the frame rate.

  5. Save the animation.
    Select the button (Fig. 6) or choose from the menu "File->Save As".

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    Figure 6. Saving the animation.

    You'll be presented with the dialog as in Fig. 7. Be sure that "AVI" is selected along with codec "Intel Indeo 5". The width and height should already be set automatically with your images' size.

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    Figure 7. Animation Save dialog. Choose "Options".

    Now set an attribute called "keyframe rate". Find this by selecting "Options" (Fig. 8), and then "Module Options" (Fig. 9). Set the "keyframe rate" to your frame rate as in the step above. Click "Accept", then "OK", and finally "Save...".

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    Figure 8. Options dialog. Now choose "Module Options".

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    Figure 9. Set the keyframe rate to your animation frame rate.

Getting the Animation into PowerPoint

In PowerPoint, go to the slide that will contain the animation. Select from the menubar "Insert->Movies and Sounds->Movie from file". Right-clicking the movie will bring up a menu with "Edit Movie Object". Select this item to (un)set a checkbox for continuous animation looping.

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last modified: October 07 2004.