Incorporating Video into PowerPoint

I know many educators use videos from YouTube or elsewhere on the internet during classes. I always want to have my videos downloaded so that I don’t have to count on the internet working when I want to show the video. I also like to trim them to show exactly the clip that I want my students to see. Here’s how to set up a PowerPoint so all your videos are ready to go.

Downloading what you need

If you want to download videos from YouTube or elsewhere on the internet, YTD downloader is a free software program that enables you to do that easily. (You could also check out 4K Video Downloader as an option.) Please be aware of copyright law and consider whether you are legally able to use that content for your purposes.

Gathering Recordings in one place

Make  sure that you have saved all the video you will use in a presentation IN THE SAME FOLDER as where you’ve saved the presentation.  We will only put a LINK to the video in the slide deck. If we insert the whole video in the slide deck, the PowerPoint becomes a massive file and has problems loading. Having the video in the same folder makes it more likely the link to the video will work as you intend.

If you’ll upload your work to google drive for someone else to use, make sure that when you upload the PowerPoint, you also upload all the videos  to the SAME FOLDER as the presentation they’re associated with and that they know they’ll need to access both the slide deck and the videos for the presentation.

Inserting video recordings – .mp4, .mov

Go to the slide where you want the video, then choose the insert menu, then choose “insert media” (on the right hand side of the screen) then choose video, then choose video on my PC. Find the file you want, select it, and then in the bottom right where it says “insert”, click on that little triangle to get the drop-down menu. Choose “insert link to file” instead of “insert” video. This will help keep your PowerPoint a manageable size – if you insert the whole video, the PowerPoint is huge, and that can cause problems with it running smoothly or being easy to upload.

Now click on the video image on the slide, and the playback menu will appear at the top. In the playback menu, choose “start automatically”. Set the volume to medium. (You’ll absolutely want to test the volume later to see how it sounds to your meeting participants, especially if you’ll use it on Zoom. Sometimes what sounds quiet to you will blast them.)

You’ll often want to choose “play full screen” but not always (like if you want to type lyrics on the slide to appear with the video of a song) and you may want to “hide while not playing” – that’s up to you.

If you want to show just a portion of the video, then click on “trim”. It will let you choose to start exactly where you want them to start, and end where you want to end.

When you’re done, run through the slide show to make sure it performs as you expect it to. I usually insert a slide before the video that has an image from the video and properly credits it. This gives me a chance to set up the video – what will we see, what should you pay particular attention to, why am I showing it. Then, when I’m ready I advance to the next slide and the video begins.

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