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.