PowerPoint 2016 exported mp4 video "jerks" on some slide transitions

I am having the same problem.  I noticed that I could eliminate the flicker by re-exporting the mp4 using CyberLink Director.  I simply took the mp4 produced by PPT, imported it into CD, and then exported it as a new mp4.

This is additional evidence that the output from PPT is flawed.

Thanks. I agree with everything you say except "reply of mine is not adding any value". :) To me, your reply has lots of value. I also found things frustrating, but as you did, found alternative methods to accomplish needed tasks, figured out how to use the great parts of PPT and work around some of the surprising glitches. Again, dear moderator, unless some novel idea is proposed to change the current conclusion, the conclusion stated in my previous post, I would like to close the thread on August 6th. Anybody else want to say anything?

Thank you very much for your reply. I am deeply moved by the efforts put into writing out all details contained in all of your replies.  I am sorry that the thing that worked for me didn't work out for you, and I never expected it to work for all the cases but a few.

I am just a user, just like you, and I understand how frustrated we become by these annoying problems since we often work in deadlines, and wasting two hours (two days or weeks in some cases) on fixing a small issue gets to our nerves. 

To be honest, the PowerPoint I was working on was made by my 10- & 11-year-old kids. And, they themselves solved it by following some screen recorder software. And, they prefer Google slides and other free Google products for all their online assignments ( I am also gradually moving all my simple needs away from MS to open source or freer solutions, as I have been continually beset by issues in Outlook and Windows credential manager also).  But, I just gave it a shot by doing what I wrote in the earlier message.

This reply of mine is not adding any value, I just used the occasion to thank you and to vent out some of my frustration.

Thank you.

I appreciate very much your post, especially because I had not tried the combination you mentioned. I'm glad the change solved the problem for you. However, it did *not* for me, and I do not believe it to be a general solution, as explained below.

I tried the following (test A): 1) Set [no sound], duration 5 seconds, "on mouse click" checked, after 5 seconds, apply to all. 2) Export to mp4, using recorded timings. 3) Play in windows media player. Jerks occurred around 50 seconds, at tenth slide or so.

Also tried the following (test B): Same, but "on mouse click" unchecked. Unfortunately, jerks still occurred around 50 seconds, at tenth slide or so.

I do not doubt that you were able to solve whatever it was you were seeing. But I cannot see your examples and it did not work in my tests.

Moreover, and more fundamentally, the solution is not logical, think about it. The jerks as reported here occur on a *few* transitions, at around something like one minute, two minutes, etc. You can see from the files posted. If it was a problem with the way transitions are set up, as you suggest, the jerks would occur at *each* transition. There must be something else going on within ppt to cause the jerks. It does not seem a simple matter of the transition settings.

At this point, I would like to *soon* close the thread, as the moderator pressured me to do months ago. Let's say one more week for any final words from Tathagat Tao or anyone else.

I appreciate that the moderator, though incredibly clueless in many ways, I will not repeat my initial remarks, did agree to keep the thread open for quite a long time. It took a while and some convincing, but ultimately he listened to and respected the customer, which I appreciate.

I must say I had a miserable time with Microsoft "advanced" (sorry, did not seem very advanced to me) support. FWIW, it was some engineers in India. I have nothing against Indians, they can be very talented software people, but in this case it was definitely not the case. In very brief, 1) they begged off being able to test the problem themselves, insisting there was no way they could access a windows 7 computer. Incredibly dumb. 2) When I finally agreed to do testing for them, on my computers, they logged in remotely, their "tests" were an insult to any logical thinking person. We wasted many hours with for example flash and silverlight, which have nothing to do with the problem. It was incredibly tiresome, like a bad dream. 3) After finally admitting that ppt indeed produced the jerks, they refused to call it a "bug". Whether they choose to *fix* an obvious bug is their call, but mangling the language in this way is incredibly embarrassing and dumb. 4) They lied to me about a significant issue, I would rather not get into the details here, but they finally admitted their error after wasting their time reviewing the recordings of the conversations.

The only positive thing about Microsoft support was that they were consistently courteous. Well, that is something, but I would prefer more competence, which there was very little of.

I have struggled with and researched this issue for I suppose six months, carrying out many tests, some of which are posted in this thread, others done with Microsoft support. I have come to the very strong conclusion that for making an mp4 of a ppt slide show, it is best to use a screen recording software to record the slideshow being played. I have never experienced a bug with the slideshow. In contrast, I have found the mp4 export mechanism to be buggy. It basically works, and never crashes, but it beset with glitches such as 1) the jerks on a few slide transitions, and 2) interruptions in the background music playback at transitions. PPT is intended to be a professional software producing a clean presentation, but in my strong experience, as partly documented in this thread, PPT falls down big time in the video import section, which seems to have never been fully optimized and debugged, perhaps because video was an add-on, not the main use case of PPT.

Again, my strong conclusion, as some others have noted before, is to use PPT for the narration and slide transitions, which work great, but use screen recording software / video editing software  to convert to video and add background music. If making an mp4, do not use PPT to add music or export the video. Using the screen recording software and video editing software are not that difficult, so I am satisfied with the workaround. I would rather not recommend a particular screen recording or video editing software. I am sure there are many that can record the slideshow and add music. I would note that I use ffmpeg for some parts of the video production process.

Note: these conclusions are almost totally limited to office 2016 / windows 7. It is possible that other combinations might work satisfactorily, although I also did observe some glitches with office 2016 / windows 10. I would rather not get into details here, since I have already expended more than enough effort and am disappointed that Microsoft is so reluctant to take up the effort.

Thanks to the moderator and all posters. I would like to close the thread in about one week.