Alpha channels and animation/video clips (again?)

From: Alon Amit (alon.amit_at_gmail.com)
Date: 11/27/04 

Date: 27 Nov 2004 15:25:00 -0800

I'd like to get some video clips into my PowerPoint slides. The clips
have a lot of transparency, and it would be VERY useful to have other
elements on the slide (text, background) show through those transparent
regions. I realize that PPt insists on playing video on top of
everything else (which is also a real shame), but at least it could
allow the things underneath to stay visible?

As far as I can see, it seems that animated clip art supports this, at
least partially: I don't know if you can have transparency in the
middle of the frame, but at least the areas around the animated object
are transparent, so you're not forced to have a rectangular white or
black background. Perspector (www.perspector.com) also creates
animations with this feature, I'm not sure about the format but they
seem to be animated gifs.

My clips are larger, longer and somewhat more sophisticated than what
I've seen on animated gifs, but perhaps they can be converted into
ones? I'm using a variety of tools to create the animations, including
some rather heavy machinery like Mirage (from Bauhaus) and occasionally
even Alias|Maya. I'm also creating Flash in Swift 3D. All of these
tools can export to many different formats, e.g. AVI with Alpha channel
or Flash, but it seems that PowerPoint ignores this alpha channel when
the AVI is imported.

I'm currently using Office XP (2002) but will gladly upgrade to 2003 if
this would help.
Thanks very much for any thoughts, hints and ideas.

- A. A.

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