Saturday, August 11, 2007

What is FlashBack?

FlashBack is a free PowerPoint add-in from Shyam Pillai, a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP that rewinds a Flash movie so that it plays from the starting frame when shown again in the same presentation. You can learn more about why rewinding is required here...

FlashBack automates a lengthy process that requires some coding in a VBA environment. You can download a free copy of FlashBack from Shyam's site...

Remember though that FlashBack is machine specific, not presentation specific. If you need to add the rewinding code to a presentation that will be distributed, you should use the VBA route...

Learn how to install and disable FlashBack...

And here's information on how you can use FlashBack...

Labels: add-in, flash, flashback, insert, powerpoint, rewind

Rewind Flash Movies Using VBA

I already discussed why you would want to rewind your Flash movies, the ones you insert into PowerPoint slides.

Now let me show you how you can do that with a little VBA code. Remember though that this code is dependent on ActiveX controls that are not supported by both the free PowerPoint Viewer on Windows, and PowerPoint on the Mac. So this will only work on PowerPoint 97 or higher for Windows.

First, create a backup copy of your presentation, just in case.
Open the presentation in PowerPoint -- this presentation must have a Flash movie inserted as per the instructions provided here...
Make sure that the Loop option in the Property Pages dialog is left unchecked.
Save the presentation.
Press Alt F11 to bring up the Microsoft Visual Basic window (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Visual Basic window is where you add code in PowerPoint.
Choose Insert | Module. This adds a new module in the left pane, as you can see in Figure 2.

Figure 2: A new module has been added.
In the main window, add the following code, while making sure that the number in the 3rd line after the word "Slides" is the number of the slide in your presentation that contains the Flash movie.

Sub OnSlideShowPageChange()
Dim obj As ShockwaveFlash
Set obj = ActivePresentation.Slides(2).Shapes("ShockwaveFlash1").OLEFormat.Object
obj.Playing = True
obj.Rewind
obj.Play
End Sub

Figure 3 shows you the main window after the code was added:

Figure 3: Code has been added.

As you can see, the code simply sets the Playing property to true, rewinds the movie, and plays it.

Also, if your presentation contains more than one Flash movie, you'll need to repeat this process for each movie. However, change the numbering in the 3rd line again after the word ShockwaveFlash, so that you name them ShockwaveFlash1, ShockwaveFlash2, and so on. Then, in the Properties window, give the object the same name in the Name row, which is just under the Custom row (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Match the object names in the Visual Basic window, and the Property window.
That's all you need to do -- return to your presentation, save it, and play it to test.

Remember, your macro security settings may stop the VBA code from executing. In PowerPoint, choose Tools | Options | Security | Macro Security, and make sure it isn't set to High. In addition, coding in the Flash file itself may stop the movie from playing.

I wish to thank Ellen Finkelstein, author of How To Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 for providing the VBA code used in this tutorial. You can visit Ellen's site here...

Labels: insert, rewind

Friday, August 10, 2007

Rewind a Flash Movie?

Why would you want to rewind a Flash movie placed in a PowerPoint slide? That's because in certain scenarios, the Flash movie you insert might not play right from the beginning of the movie:

When the Flash movie plays for the first time you present the slide, it plays right from the beginning. But if you proceed to the next slide (or any other slide) in the PowerPoint presentation before the Flash movie has finished playing , it just stalls the Flash movie and moves on. Get back to the slide that contains the Flash movie again, and it plays from where it got stalled.
Or maybe you are viewing the slide that contains the Flash movie, and then exit the presentation. Of course you haven't shut down PowerPoint altogether, and you reopen the presentation and play the slide that contains the Flash movie. Again, the Flash movie plays from where it got stalled.

These issues may not be very troublesome if you inserted a static Flash movie, or even a Flash movie that plays for a very small duration. In other scenarios, this can be downright irritating!

Fortunately, you can automatically rewind these movies. There are two ways to do that:

You can get over this problem by inserting a little VBA code, and this is easy to do if you follow this tutorial...
Or you could get a free PowerPoint add-in called FlashBack, which does this automatically for you.

Remember: The stalled Flash movie problem does not happen if you shut down PowerPoint altogether, and then launch it again.

Labels: insert, rewind