A Video Action in PowerPoint is something that causes an event for any inserted movie/video clip -- these are
simple events such as Play, Pause, Resume, and
Stop. Although PowerPoint classifies Movie Actions as an animation type, these are not
strictly animations. However, since Movie Actions can be accessed through the Add Animation
gallery, we have included this tutorial in our Animations section. Once you add these Media Actions to your
video clips, PowerPoint will allow you to make these Actions interact with other animations, including
Triggers.
To access Video Actions, you must
insert a video
(movie) clip within a slide. When a video is inserted within
PowerPoint 2013, by default it is set to play
On Click, and also, a Pause video action is added. Thus you click the
video clip itself once in Slide Show mode to play it, and then click again to pause it. How do these play and pause actions happen? And how
can you apply more Media Actions to the video clip? Follow these steps to learn more:
- Make sure you select the video clip on your slide, as shown in Figure 1. Note that we
have used a blank slide with a white background for this tutorial, as you can see in
Figure 1. Your slide may look different if you have more slide objects or placeholders.

Figure 1: Selected video clip on the slide
- Now, access the Animations tab of the
Ribbon, and click the
Animation Pane button, as shown highlighted in red within
Figure 2. Remember that this is a toggle button -- so, if your
Animation Pane is already visible, then clicking this button will make the pane disappear.

Figure 2: Animation Pane button within the Animations tab
- This brings up the Animation Pane, as shown in Figure 3. Note the
Pause symbol (highlighted in red within
Figure 3) placed in front of the name of the video within the animations list. PowerPoint
added this Trigger for the Pause action automatically when you inserted the video clip on
your slide. Remember that when the video is inserted on your slide it is actually in a paused state. You need to
click on the video to play, or use the Play button on the Player Controls
(below the video clip, as shown in Figure 1, above). Once the video clip is playing in
Slide Show view, clicking on it
will pause the video. Go ahead and test if your video clip plays and pauses.

Figure 3: Animation Pane displaying animation event of the selected video clip
- Back in
Normal view, with the video
clip on the slide still selected, click the Add Animation button (highlighted in
red within Figure 4, below) within the
Animations tab of the Ribbon.

Figure 4: Add Animation button within the Animations tab
- This brings up the Add Animation gallery that you can see in Figure 5.
Note that the typical Add Animation gallery shows the
Entrance
animation effects on the top area (refer to our
Adding an
Animation tutorial). But in this case, you have an extra section on the top area of the gallery called
Media, as shown in Figure 5. This section shows up only if you have a
video or audio clip selected on your slide.

Figure 5: Media section within the Add Animation gallery
Options within the Media section are explained below:
- Play: This is the default media action - and is used to play the video.
- Pause: This action is to pause the playing video.
- Stop: This action is to stop the playing video.
- Seek: This action may be grayed out, as shown in Figure 5. This action
is only available if you have added Bookmarks for Video
Clips.
- Since we already have a Pause Media Action in our Animations list (highlighted in
red within Figure 3, shown earlier on this page), let us go ahead and add
Play and Stop Media Actions. With your video clip still selected, click
the Play option within the Add Animation gallery's Media
section (refer to Figure 5, shown earlier on this page). This will add a Play Media Action in
your animations list, as shown in Figure 6. Also note the Play symbol
placed in front of the name of the video in the animations list (highlighted in
red within Figure 6).

Figure 6: Animation Pane displaying Play media action added to the movie clip
- Again, with your video clip still selected, go ahead and add a Stop Media Action as
well -- this will also show in your Animations list, as shown in Figure 7. Also note the
Stop symbol placed in front of the name of the video in the animations list (highlighted in
red within Figure 7).

Figure 7: Animation Pane displaying Stop media action added to the video clip
- Save your presentation -- in our
Add
Trigger for Sound and Movie Actions in PowerPoint 2013 tutorials, we will explore how you create
Bookmarks, and set Trigger animations that result in Media Actions such as Play,
Pause, Stop, etc.
See Also:
Media Actions for
Video in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
Movie Actions in PowerPoint
2007 for Windows