How can I auto play a movie in Keynote 6.6.1?

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Level 1

6 points

How can I auto play a movie in Keynote 6.6.1?

I have a presentation consisting of about 30 slides, one of which is supposed to be a movie, with sound, of a slideshow created with Adobe Lightroom CC. It is in MP4 format. The movie is 3 minutes in length. Each of the other slides is set to auto play and run for 10 seconds upon opening. I want the movie to play as soon as the slide comes up in the sequence, but no matter how I try to set it, it will not begin playing when the slide opens. If I click and force it to play, it only plays for a short duration before moving to the next slide.

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong or what settings to try to get it to play as desired? When it's working I will export the whole presentation as a .MOV file and have it playing on a continuous loop in a gallery, so having the embedded slideshow play automatically is crucial.

Many thanks,

Doug Earle

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Dec 12, 2015 10:47 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 12, 2015 2:05 PM in response to DEarle09

You haven't said what version of Keynote you are using, different versions require different procedures.

These suggestions are for Keynote 6.6.1 in Yosemite, so if your set up is different post back with the spec:

When exporting to QuickTime, its best not to apply any timings in Keynote as this has to be done in the Quicktime export dialogue box.

Enter 10 seconds for "go to next slide" then export.

The Quicktime export function will look after starting the video at the beginning and stopping the video at the end correctly.

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Answer 2

DEarle09 Author

Level 1

6 points

Dec 12, 2015 4:07 PM in response to Gary Scotland

Gary:

The header said it was Keynote 6.6.1, running Yosemite 10.10.5.

In the interest of trying to be clear and concise I may have not been clear in my primary question but your reply raises another which I'll ask below. First, the question I was trying to ask (along with some more detailed background)

1. I have a slide presentation consisting of 40 slides. The first 10 are text and are set to transition from one to the next, with "fade to color" transition, over a duration of between 10 to 20 seconds depending on the amount of text that needs to be read before moving on to the next. The next 35 slides are photos with a few simple text files interspersed, each transitioning with fade to color transition effect, over 10 seconds. Slide 31 is the one giving me the problem. It consists of a MP4 file of a slideshow with music created in Adobe Lightroom CC (latest updated version). I added this MP4 file by dragging and dropping from Finder. I de-selected the tick box "Start on Click" so that the file would play when that slide came up in order. However, it won't play automatically, and if I click on it it will begin, run for a few seconds and immediately go to Slide 32, without "fade to color" transition or anything. The MP4 file is good. I used it in another Keynote presentation where I wasn't trying to get things to Auto-Transition one slide to another. That was an oral presentation where I was clicking one to another. So, my first question is: "How do I get the MP4 to Auto Play when the slide comes up in sequence, then play all the way through, then transition to the next slide"?

Your reply about exporting raises a couple of questions. One, I understand what you said about doing the timings in the Quicktime export dialogue, but doesn't that mean they must all be the same transition time, e.g. ten seconds? Can't I have different transition times for different slides? Two: Wouldn't this mean that you couldn't proof the presentation by playing it in Keynote before exporting it?

Hope you can give me some help.

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Answer 3

Dec 15, 2015 5:58 AM in response to DEarle09

Well I'm running 6.5.3, but the chances are it's no different in 6.6.1.

I read that you have already done this, but for anyone else reading this, it's important . . . one annoying feature of 6.5 onwards is that movies dropped into slides automatically took on an Effect called Start Movie whereas before you set that and the default was to start automatically. So the first thing to do is to get rid of that effect if you still have it - so the tip is: when you drop in a movie and its still selected, go to the Format palette/Movie and right at the bottom is a little check box which you can click to stop this Effect. Alternatively, go the the Animate Palette, select the Build Order button and delete the effect.

Next, select all the slides which require your 10 sec duration and open the Animate palette and add the Transition type you want. Set the Start Transition to Automatically and the delay to 10 seconds. This will show each slide for 10 seconds before the transition to the next slide begins, so effectively it's a slide duration. You can have different Transition delays for each slide.

For the slide with your movie, do the same thing, but this time set the Delay to a couple of seconds longer than the length of your movie. Thus, when the previous slide is finished after 10 seconds, it will transition to the movie slide and the movie will start automatically. This slide will stay on view until the delay is completed (i.e.: the length of the movie), at which point it will transition to the next slide. You might have to adjust the timings to get it perfect, as you may have set a duration for your transition and this needs to be added to the time for the length of the movie.

There are probably other ways of doing this, but this way works for me.

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