How to put a video in a PowerPoint directly

To make our presentations of Power pointFor both academic and professional types, it will always be more attractive and dynamic to insert a video as a complement to the texts and slides that have been traditionally used. Put PowerPoint video it is a very effective way to attract the attention of our audience and, consequently, to better convey our message.

The video in question could perfectly be one that we have saved on our computer or one taken from the Internet but that, for whatever reason, we consider appropriate to include in our presentation. In this post we are going to explain how to do it in each case clearly and in detail.

But first, let's recall some cool facts and highlights of PowerPoint here. A presentation program is very popular and widely used all over the world.

PowerPoint is a flexible and highly customizable tool. Your presentations have the ability to visually and effectively summarize key points from reports, surveys, and other studies on any subject. In practice, the use of Powerpoint is especially valued in two very specific areas: the teaching and business.

• In the Education- Almost all professors and teachers use PowerPoint presentations to add value to their lectures and notes. They also encourage and instruct their students to use this tool in their assignments, projects, and other course activities.
• In the company- It is very common for product and service sales professionals to regularly use this resource. Through attractive and clarifying PowerPoint presentations, they manage to show the content with which they want to inform, explain or convince their audience: managers, partners, clients, collaborators, etc.

This program was created almost four decades ago, although it was finally acquired in 1987 by Microsoft. Since then, new versions and updates have appeared that have been introducing constant improvements. This has meant that PowerPoint has been able to remain at number one, the most valued product within this type of program.

The latest and most recent version of PowerPoint was released on September 24, 2018. New visual effects, images, and multimedia elements were added to it. In addition, notable improvements were made to most of its functions. Some of these improvements refer to the subject that concerns us in this post.

Formats supported by video functionality

First of all it is important to know that not all video formats are compatible with PowerPoint. As a general rule, Microsoft recommends its users to use .mp4 files encoded with H.264 video and Audio ACC. In this way, most of the problems are avoided.

The list of formats compatible with the latest version of the program are as follows:

• .wmv (Microsoft recommended)
• .asf
• .avi
• .mov
• .mp4
• . Mpg

Having clarified this point, to put PowerPoint videos, the options we have are two:

• Insert your own videos, either produced by ourselves or by third parties, but that we have hosted on our equipment.
• Embed videos from YouTube or from any other website that offers content in this type of format.

We are going to analyze each of them:

Put PowerPoint video from your own computer

If the video we want to add is saved on our computer, there are two ways to do this: load the video directly or insert a link to it. Let's see how it is done in each case.

Upload video directly

The method to insert a video that you have saved on your computer is very simple. You just have to follow these steps:

1. First of all, you have to open PowerPoint and access the normal view mode of the program.
2. Next you have to click on the slide in which we want to insert the video.
3. To do this, you have to press the tab "Insert".
4. There again you have to click on the arrow below «Video» and choose the option "Video on my PC".
5. A dialog box will open. There you have to select «Insert video» and choose the desired video from the folder where we have it saved.
6. To confirm the action, press "Insert".

Once this is done, the video will be inserted into your PowerPoint presentation. Note that the video in question will occupy the entire slide. To see how it will look during the presentation, just go to the top menu, press the "Slide Show" option and there choose "Play from current slide".

Add a link

Another way to put PowerPoint video using the resources and content stored on our computers is through a link. Just as we upload a video to a presentation, we can also choose to link a video stored on your device. At the end of the day it is about performing the operation explained in the previous section, only this time using a link instead of a direct load in the program.

The only precaution we must take when doing so is that the video is still in its place, in the file or folder where it was saved. Otherwise, when we go to reproduce it, we may find ourselves with the unpleasant surprise that it does not work. For the rest, steps to follow they are quite similar to those explained above:

1. To begin, we must open PowerPoint and access the normal view mode of the program.
2. The next step is to click on the slide in which we want to insert the link.
3. Next we will open the tab "Insert".
4. Then you have to click on the arrow below «Video» and choose the option there "Video on my PC".
5. In the dialog box that opens, select «Insert video» and choose the desired video from the folder where we have it saved.
6. This is the step that differs from the previous method: here, instead of pressing «Insert» we will click on the option below: "Link to file".

This will make the video appear linked on the slide and can be played back in the same way as in the previous method. Keep in mind that This system will only work if we make the Power Point presentation with our own team, in which we have saved the linked videos. Naturally, there is always the possibility of taking the videos with us wherever we go, well stored on a USB memory.

Insert a YouTube video into PowerPoint

It is much more common when preparing a PowerPoint presentation to use videos from platforms such as Youtube instead of own videos. And it is that the latest versions of the program (PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 or PowerPoint 2019) offer us this possibility. If we have an "old" version, it can also be done from Microsoft Steam.

Inserting a YouTube or Vimeo link into a PowerPoint presentation is very easy. Its great advantage is that we have an almost infinite video bank of all the subjects that we can imagine. The main drawback is that It will only serve us if we are connected to the Internet when making the presentation. This is because, as it is not stored on our equipment, the video is played directly from the website.

If you want to put PowerPoint video from YouTube, you have to do the following:

1. First of all, you have to look for the video that interests you on the YouTube platform.
2. Once chosen, we will copy the URL to insert it.
3. Now, we open the PowerPoint presentation and we look for the slide on which we want the video to appear.
4. There, as in the methods explained in the previous section, we select the tab "Insert".
5. Then we will choose the option «Video" and then that of «Online video».
6. At this point, two options will appear:
   • «From a code to insert video»: If we choose this, we will only have to paste the previously copied URL.
   • "Youtube": the most comfortable option, as it allows us to skip the first two steps on the list. From here we can directly access the videos from Youtube without having to first copy the link. By clicking on this button a search engine appears to help us find the video we need for our presentation. Fast and easy.

Un important noteNot all online videos that we find on the Internet can be inserted into a PowerPoint slide. It all depends largely on the version that we have installed on our computer. The more recent and up-to-date it is, the less problems there will be.

Another thing that we must take into account when putting PowerPoint video is that, on some sites, these videos incorporate ads that can "creep" into our presentation.

Finally, and although it may seem obvious, it should be remembered that once the video has been inserted into your PowerPoint presentation, it is worth checking that it has been copied successfully. For this it will be necessary play the video and visualize it calmly, in order to detect errors and be able to correct them in time.