H264 in Powerpoint.

I'm working on a series of short videos which will be projected from a Macbook Pro as part of a Powerpoint presentation at a conference. The original material is anamorphic 720x576, 23.976fps.

I'm exporting each clip from FCP as an SCQT and then transcoding to 1024x576, H264 with compressor. The total bitrate on the H264s is 7,527 which seems pretty minimal.

The client has QT 7.6.9 installed on his 3 year old Macbook. The H264s play fine in QT, but there is a degree of stutter when played out of Powerpoint. The stutter is most evident on panning shots.

From searching this forum, I've learnt that upgrading to QT 7.7 and quitting all other programmes (sorry, programs) might help. From searching the web in general, I've found a number of people saying that videos in Powerpoint are always problematic and that whenever possible it's better to play them natively.

Any suggestions as to how I might get these to play better would be greatly appreciated. Does Keynote handle video better than Powerpoint ?

Many thanks,

Mike

I think I may have partly answered my own question. I'm doing this job on my Dual 1.8 G5 at home. The G5 has always had trouble playing H264s - they always stutter playing in QT 7.7. Curiously, I've now found that when I import one of these conference H264s into Keynote, it plays perfectly. Is there anyway that can make sense ?

I've also been experimenting with different codecs, and I've found that transcoding to JPEG-100 delivers files which play without any stutter on the G5. At the moment I haven't got access to the clients MBP and powerpoint, but I'm figuring that if it plays better on my machine there'll be a similar improvement on the MBP.

The JPEG version is a much bigger file of course - 2.37Gigs as opposed to 300Megs for the H264. The Prores export from FCP is only 1.55Gigs, but I'm assuming that won't play at all on the MBP. The bitrate on the JPEG versions is 60,746 - way higher than the H264s.

The client is flying half-way around the world to the conference in two days time. I really want him to have the best quality that can be delivered - so, as always, any comments or advice would be much appreciated.

Mike