Active window during a presentation

Question

I created an animated logo and put it on the first slide of a PPT to use in webinar presentations so that people would see something other than a static slide when they join the webinar a little ahead of time. Works fine except one of my expectations with this was that I could work in other windows (because I am sharing just the PPT presentation via my webinar tool) before the webinar actually starts. But when I move to another window, even though the webinar is still seeing that first PPT slide, the animation on the gif stops. PowerPoint will only let the animation work if the show is the only active window on the system apparently. Any way around this?

Answer 1

No difference I'm afraid. I also exported the animation as a movie file and tried playing it in a photo viewer instead. I got the same problem When it's not in focus, it doesn't play smoothly.

Answer 2

You might try some other browsers to see if you get different performance.

Answer 3

Hmmm. While this works, the playback is stuttured unless the browser is in focus.

Answer 4

Thanks John. I knew there was another word I was missing here: focus. So OK, that would work I guess though I was hoping for a more fluid process where I didn't have to change what I was sharing in the webinar. But I'll fiddle with this approach. Thanks much.

Answer 5

PowerPoint stops animating or playing when it loses focus, so switching to another format like video won't help. You could place the GIF and a link to the presentation on a HTML page, then display that in a web browser. That keeps playing even if it doesn't have focus.