embedded media in Writer files

users
#1

Using UbuntuStudio 20.04.1 with LO 6.4.5.2

I hoped to enhance a training document with some media so I embedded a short video clip, mp4, relevant to the text in Writer. This has caused me to run into 2 problems.

1. I cannot find a way to format the standard presentation to eliminate unwanted parts of the 'video screen'. The short video clip (12 seconds) only effectively occupies the top 40% of the video window presented in Writer. The lower 60% just uselessly occupies a part of the page with a white background. I would like the clip to be full page width for readability. Unlocking the 'ratio' and reducing the clip height just compresses the useful part and makes it useless (as I would expect).

With still images, I would just run the image through an editor and cut out its blank lower 'half'. I suppose, video is made to some fixed 'canvas' size 4:3 or 16:9 or whatever.  I'm afraid my video knowledge is pretty limited.

Does anyone know a solution for this, either inside LO or using external editors?

2. Second problem concerns exporting the document from Writer to pdf. On the face of it, the export goes well and the pdf opens nicely in a pdf reader. Clicking on the video clip causes it play with a pause control popping up. Then the trouble starts. It appears impossible to lose focus off the video clip and the trouble manifests differently whether one has scrolling enabled or whether one goes up and down page by page.

With scrolling enabled, the video clip display fills with random text from neighboring paragraphs so a reader can no longer refer to the still display of the first frame. When clicking up and down page by page, the video clip floats to the new page(s). The only way out seems to be to close and reopen the pdf. This is not a good solution.

I have tried the various settings offered by Writer for the export to pdf but nothing seems to change this behavior.

Any ideas or pointers to useful resources would be welcome, thanks?

Philip