Embedding Video

Published Sat, Jan 20 2007 1:01 | tohlz

Embed Video in PowerPoint
To insert video, you can click Insert > Movies and Sounds > Movie from File. Unfortunately, they are always linked. This causes link breaking issues when moving your presentation from one computer to another. The best solution would be to embed these videos. But how?

The first step
Insert it as an object. To do so, click Insert > Object > Create from file. Click Browse and look for the video you want to insert. Once you are done, click Ok twice.

Playing the video
Now here's the tricky part. To play the content, you will need to activate it using Custom Animation. Click Slide Show > Custom Animation. This will bring up the Custom Animation pane. Select the video that has been inserted. Click Add Effect > Object Actions > Activate Contents. If you want to play the video automatically during Slide Show, set the "Start" to "After Previous". Take note though, that the video will not be played in PowerPoint. Instead, the media player will be launched and the video will play from there. So far, this works for .mpg and .wmv video format. On the other hand, .avi will still be linked. Hence, if the video is in .avi format, you will need to convert it.

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Comments

# D.Joseph Design said on February 7, 2007 2:19 PM:

A problem with this method is that it is entirely NOT cross-platform compatible, and it's extremely complicated for the average PowerPoint user.

Xvid-encoded AVIs are the best way to go quality and compatibility. Yes, these will be linked. But as long as the AVI is located in the same folder as the PPT file that contains it, the file will be linked relatively. But PowerPoint 2007 has a new relinking feature that is great.

# yara said on March 7, 2007 4:15 AM:

fantastic tip...thanks a lot!

I give trainings here at my company and people are going to LOVE this...how to fit videos in PPT occupies a big portion of their brain!

# jon said on September 25, 2007 4:59 PM:

I have no problem with linking videos; if you move the file, just remember to copy the video there, too. My problem is with the text. I assist with the Powerpoint presentations at our Church, and we are trying to get text over the video. I searched the Internet and found out how to do it, but it involves using Visual Basic if you don't want to pay a high price. I am not always available, so is there an easier way to accomplish this? (You cannot simply use the "move to front" command for the text.) Right now, I have a slide made up and other users must copy it and then modify it, but it is still too complicted for most of them.

# Custom web design studio said on October 9, 2007 3:14 PM:

Nice and simple tip!

Thanks

# Paul KAITO said on November 2, 2007 7:42 AM:

This will be nice if i try my classmates might be happy and focus to what they were watching more efficient not like moving fonts, flying pictures, fading pictures makes it worst damn that all but this time its great thanks! for info! How about font! in other computer?! hounto daiyo ne?! Shimatta! Ano paano!

# danw said on November 17, 2007 5:13 AM:

hi - ive found that the movies that I could play OK in 2003 just show a blank whote screen in a 2007 slide show -it is the same result if i open the old ppt show or create a new one - i've tries simplt inserting the movie as automatic or inserting the movie by boject. the movie is a mpg that will play in windows media player. can anyone help please - dan

# DS Fletcher said on November 28, 2007 9:48 AM:

I am having issues with embedding a 2 min mpeg1, mpeg2 in PPt07.  The result is that the program crashes.  An .avi file will only play the audio and I have the proper codecs installed.

The only file that will play is a .wmv but the image is too small for the big screen that it will be projected onto.

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

dave@fdbc.org

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