Video Playback Errors with PowerPoint

Symptoms

When playing a video in a PowerPoint presentation, you receive a video playback error either before or during the video.

Background

Playing videos in PowerPoint is not straightforward, and the ‘rules’ change from one version of PowerPoint to the next. If you can help it, it’s worth playing your video in a dedicated video player (such as Windows Media Player, Quicktime, or VLC). If you must play your video within PowerPoint then this article from Microsoft will cover the subject and potential problems much more thoroughly than we can.