Video switcher emulator for PC?

[wolfman005]

Our school would like to make a series of promotional videos that will be displayed at a breakfast fundraiser. I will be making the movies using an iPad and iMovie. I can't change this because as part of the promotional aspect, they want to say it was all created using technology implemented in the classroom. I can handle this part.
What I don't know how to do is make a system to play it back. Let me clarify that. The hotel this will be at will provide a projector and screen or our school will use theirs. Either way I will have a VGA feed from my laptop running to a projector. What I'm looking for is some preferably free software that I can use to cue 4x 3-4 min long movies in .mov format and when not displaying the video, can go to some sort of a static background. No need for cameras. I considered a PowerPoint because this is all gonna be pretty basic stuff, but I'd like something more professional if it is still relatively easy.
Right now the laptop I will run this off of is a Asus running Windows 7. Anyone have any ideas? Am I over thinking this? I have a pretty good background of lighting and sound but projection is still new to me. I realize this is a theater forum but so far after reading some other post, you guys have had the best feedback compared to other sites I've looked at.
Thanks in advance-
-Aaron

 

[cpf]

PowerPoint will get the job done quite fine for this. Just make sure to test, test, and test again, it might just be me but I find videos embedded in powerpoints to be quite finicky.

You could also consider http://cpfx.ca/theatre/index/vlcpresenter/ this free app (which I made: shameless plug alert) that will let you seamlessly present videos and show a still image in between.

Or, there are a number of high-powered video playback systems available, just have a search around here for "windows video QLab" - QLab is one of the big players in this area, but it's Mac only, so plenty of people have gone looking for a windows equivalent.

 

[wolfman005]

The link didn't work but I took "/this" off the end and I got this site VLC Presenter 2 - cpf's theatre things
I will download it while I'm in school and check it out when I get home. Thanks cpf I think this is exactly what I'm looking for!

 

[JohnHartman]

Multiplay has the capability to handle video, I do not know if it can handle .mov format as I do not have one handy to test it with. I usually only use it for audio, but the video function seems to allow you to "take over" a specific monitor.

 

[wolfman005]

I have downloaded multiplay before but never actually used it. I'll check it out too. I could convert the output of the file to a .avi but I'd like to keep it .mov or .avi so we can easily share data. The people I'm collaborating with don't have extensive IT backgrounds. Most are lucky to attach a file to an email.

 

[cpf]

Orr, for bonus use-of-technology points: get an iPad VGA adaptor and run the entire thing from Keynote - no worries about video formats then.

 

[wolfman005]

That was another thing I had thought of but I was worried about it crashing. Also the VGA adapters our school has are rather finicky. You gotta hold em just right. Would Apple TV work? The features if offers are probably not nessisary well actually I just changed my mind about the Apple TV since it lags horribly. Thanks for all the suggestions I'll probably try them all and see which one works best. I'm actually leaning towards the ipad keynote idea since it will probably be the easiest to do.

 

[dbaxter]

Since you asked for Windows software to run videos I'm allowed to refer you to my Cue Player line of software. You would need the Premium Plus version. If you don't already have a good .mov codec, I can recommend the CoreAVC 3.0.1