I’m trying to put together a video of the photos from our photo club. We are having an open day on Saturday and I want a looped presentation running on a TV that does not need looking after. I thought I had the answer in Powerpoint - all set up with transitions and titles and nicely set to loop back to the beginning again. Exported as a ppsx file. Unfortunately our TV cannot read a ppsx file. So I saved it again as an mp4 video file, which our TV can read but which does not recognise the loop command in the presentation. So it only plays once, which will be a nuisance to have to keep going back to the TV remote to start it again.
The photos in the presentation are just all JPG files (200 of them).
I’d be grateful for any thoughts / suggestions for a solution. Thanks.
PP’s great, used to use it for all my art history lectures post 35mm slides.
Can can you find someone in the club who has a data projector or an up to date TV. Might the commune (mairie) or the local library, or school have a data projector that you can borrow and plug into a laptop?
It’s not an immediate solution but it might be worth buying one for the club - there’s plenty under €100.
Do you have a laptop that you can run the PowerPoint file on, and hook up to the TV? Most modern laptops will have an HDMI output and all modern TVs have an HDMI input.
A lot of modern TVs do have a “loop” or "repeat option for playing videos - the Hisense TV that I use when I have a stand at a business expo or wedding fair certainly does. Have a poke around in the menu before you give up on the MP4 option.
Otherwise yes go for playing back the PPT file from a laptop into a TV or borrowed projector (connect via HDMI as Mark and Gareth suggested).
Incidentally I would not buy a very cheap projector for club use - they are usually only 800x600 or 1280x720 pixels resolution, despite the claims to be “HD compatible” - and are typically very dim - usable only in a fully darkened room at a fairly small projected screen size. The ones sold on Amazon often make highly inflated claims for the number of lumens they put out - check the rating in ANSI lumens not just “lumens”. OK for use in a bedroom at home perhaps.
A budget 43" 4K TV will be better value in the under €500 price range. For decent projectors IMHO you have to go up to €700ish and above.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. Fortunately we have two TVs given free to the club, so maybe one of them will have a menu option so that I can plug a memory stick straight into the back. I tried on our Samsung smart TV and couldn’t find a menu option to enable me to loop the video.
If not, then it will be a PP presentation on my clunky old laptop plugged in the back - was just trying to keep it looking neat. @ChrisMann Also, fortunately, the mairie has a decent projector which we borrow.
On my Samsung TV, you start the video playing, then press the down arrow on the remote to access the menu, then press the right arrow to move the cursor across to the right - there is a “repeat” icon - click on that and the video will loop.
Especially if they have a very monotonous voice when talking and aren’t animated when presenting. Bonus points if they’re presenting immediately after I’ve had lunch and am starting to feel a bit sleepy anyway.
The worst offenders in universities are former lecturers who became Managers (highly overpaid bureaucrats) before PP became a standard teaching tool and never learned how to make an interesting PP presentation.
My other PP hates include people using crappy clip art as a substitute for humour, ornate serif fonts that look dreadful when pixelated and last but not least, over-elaborate transitions where the slide spins round or loops the loop.