How do you put a YouTube or Google video into a PowerPoint presentation?

There are 3 activities that must occur in order to accomplish the task:

1. Download the video

2. Convert the video to a file format that PowerPoint understands

3. Import the movie into PowerPoint

Although there are many variations on doing this, here is one set of steps that will do the job.

1. Download the video

All by themselves Safari, FireFox and other web browsers don't let you download the videos. You need an add-on of some kind. There are a lot of such add-ons available.

If you use Mozilla's FireFox web browser you can see many add-ons for downloading these videos in the FireFox add-ons collection.

I tried Fast Video Download and it worked just fine for YouTube. There's another add-on by rpoccMeucmep for Google videos. Both add-ons are free, but the author humbly accepts donations, which I encourage you to give if you use these products often. The products do not pester you for donations.

These are easy to install and use. Just let a video load into your browser, then you can save it as a file by clicking the little button that the add-ons put onto your FireFox toolbar.

2. Convert the video to a file format that PowerPoint understands

The downloaded file might be one of two formats. If it the file has .avi extension then you don't need to convert it. PowerPoint understands .avi.

But most videos will probably be in .flv format. These will need to be converted to .mov or .avi format. To do the conversion you will need more software. Apple's QuickTime Pro ($30) is capable of doing the conversion, but first you need another secret ingredient.

QuickTime does not come with a "codec" (set of unscrambling instructions) for .flv files. Vertsiontracker.com has a list of programs that deal with .flv format files. I chose Perian because it is free and had 5 stars. After installing this, Quicktime played .flv files really nicely!

Once you have QuickTime Pro and the Perian coden installed, you can now open .flv files in QuickTime and, most importantly, save those files in a variety of formats. There are two formats that PowerPoint understands.

If you need to be cross-platform with Mac and Windows turn the .flv file into .avi. Do this by opening the ,flv file in QuickTime Pro. From the FILE menu choose EXPORT. In the "Save as Exported File" dialog box that appears, set the "Export:" pop-up to MOVIE TO AVI and use DEFAULT SETTINGS.

But if your presentation will need to play only on Macintosh computers, then use .mov format because the quality is much higher and the file size is much smaller. Do this by opening the .flv file in Quicktime Pro. From the FILE menu choose SAVE AS. The SAVE AS A SELF-CONTAINED MOVIE button should be checked, then click the SAVE button.

3. Import the movie into PowerPoint

Getting the movie into PowerPoint is a cinch. In PowerPoint, turn on the Movie toolbar by using the VIEW menu. From the VIEW menu choose the submenu TOOLBARS and then MOVIE. The first button on the toolbar is INSERT MOVIE. Click it, select the movie in the dialog box, then click the CHOOSE button.