How to Add Sound and Movement to PowerPoint Slides

Add video content to slides

Sometimes the best way to ensure that your audience understands your message is to show a video. For example, if your company has developed a short advertising video, it makes more sense to include the video in a presentation about marketing plans than to try to describe it by using bullet points or even pictures. To save you the trouble of switching between PowerPoint and a video player, you can embed a video recording directly onto a slide, and then play the video as part of presenting the slide show. This is a much smoother way of presenting information from multiple sources than switching between them.

You can insert a video onto a slide from your computer or a connected local storage device, from your Facebook account, from YouTube, or from a website that provides an “embed code” (basically, an address that you can link to).

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If a publicly posted video clip has an “embed code” available, you can link to the online video rather than embedding it in the slide show. PowerPoint uses the embed code to locate and play the video. As long as the video remains available in its original location (and you have an active Internet connection), you will be able to access and play the video from the slide at any time.

After you insert the video, you can format its representation on the slide in all the ways that you can other imagery. You can move and resize it, display it in a frame of your choice, and even adjust the brightness or color contrast.

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You can resize the video frame

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The changes that you make to an image on a slide also affect the video playback. So, for example, if you change the aspect ratio of the video representation on the slide, imagery in the video might appear to be skewed.

When working with local videos that you embed rather than online videos that you link to, you can fade into and out from the video playback, and manage the content of the video by trimming it to play only a specific portion. You can insert bookmarks to use as triggers for other events (for example, you might display a list of selling points as each is presented in the advertising video).

Set your start and end times to focus on the specific content you want to highlight

When you’re previewing or presenting a slide show, you can play (and pause) embedded audio or video, move around within the recording, and control the volume by using the controls that appear when the audio icon or video placeholder image is active. When playing back a video, you can display it at the embedded size or full screen.

Many of the processes for managing video clips are the same as those for managing audio clips:

• Restricting the playback of a video clip to a specific segment
• Fading into or out of a video clip
• Manually or automatically starting video playback
• Preventing a video clip from stopping when the slide changes
• Looping a video clip

See Also

For additional information related to the preceding processes, see “Add audio content to slides” earlier in this chapter.

To insert a video clip onto a slide

1. On a slide that includes a content placeholder, click the Insert Video button in the content placeholder to display the Insert Video window that contains links to all the video sources you’ve configured Office to connect to.

   

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   You can insert video clips from a variety of sources

2. In the Insert Video window, click the source of the video that you want to insert, and then follow the process to insert a video from the selected source.

Or

1. On any slide, on the Insert tab, in the Media group, click the Insert Video button, and then do either of the following:

   • Click Online Video to open the Insert Video window. In the Insert Video window, click the source of the video that you want to insert, and then follow the process to insert a video from the selected source.
   • Click Video on My PC to open the Insert Video dialog box. In the Insert Video dialog box, browse to and select the video file, and then click the Insert button.

To select an embedded video

1. Click the video image one time. Selection handles appear around the video image, the playback toolbar appears below it, and the Video Tools tab group appears on the ribbon.

To move the video image on the slide

1. Select the video, and then do either of the following:

   • Drag the video to the new location. Smart guides might appear on the slide to help you align the video with other objects.
   • Press the arrow keys to move the video by small amounts.

To resize the video image on the slide and retain its aspect ratio

1. Do either of the following:

   • Drag any corner handle. Smart guides appear on the slide to help you align the video with other objects.
   • On the Format tool tab, in the Size group, set a specific Video Height or Video Width, and then press Enter to change both settings.

To format the video image on the slide

1. Select the video, and then apply formatting from the Format tool tab just as you would for a picture.

See Also

For information about formatting pictures, see “Edit and format pictures” in Chapter 11, “Insert and manage simple graphics.”

To configure an embedded video to play back at full screen size

1. Select the video.
2. On the Playback tool tab, in the Video Options group, select the Play Full Screen check box.

To set the relative volume of a video soundtrack

1. Select the video.
2. On the Playback tool tab, in the Video Options group, click the Volume button.
3. In the Volume list, click Low, Medium, High, or Mute.