If you want to insert a video clip within your PowerPoint slide, spare a thought for why you would insert video clips in the first place. Most of
the video clips are just added to grab attention. Before we show you how you can add a video clip to your slide in
PowerPoint 2016, let us explore a few good reasons to add video clips:
- You need to show how a machine process works, and a recorded video clip is far more simpler to insert than animating the entire sequence.
- An important person cannot attend an event and sends his or her message as a recorded video clip. You insert this on the first slide.
- You want to show recorded video coverage to strengthen your point-of-view.
- Finally, the video clip should add value to the presentation and be beneficial to your audience.
Some points that you should consider while inserting a video clip in PowerPoint are:
- Your presentation should have been saved at least once before inserting the video.
- Your video clip should be in a PowerPoint friendly file
format.
- Preferably, copy any movie/video file you want to insert to the same folder which includes the presentation. (important only if you want to
link videos from your slides).
The last option ensures that your video links always work. Yes, this is less of a problem with PowerPoint 2016 since this version embeds any
inserted videos as part of the presentation itself; we explain this further later on this page. Now, follow these steps to learn how to insert a
video clip into PowerPoint 2016:
- Open your presentation and navigate to the slide where you want to insert a video clip. From the Insert tab of
Ribbon, click the lower half of the Video button to
bring up the drop-down menu shown in Figure 1. Within the drop-down menu choose the Video on My PC option.
Figure 1: Video on My PC option
- This brings up the Insert Video dialog box, as shown in Figure 2. Locate the folder where your videos are
saved, and select any video clip you want to insert by clicking on it.
Figure 2: Insert Video dialog box
- You can now click the Insert button (refer to Figure 2 above), this option adds the movie to the slide and
also embeds it as part of your presentation file. This of course can balloon the file size -- to avoid this you can just link the video or movie
clip rather than embedding it by following the alternative option explained next.
To link rather than embed, click on the down-arrow next to the Insert button (see Figure 3). This brings up a
menu with three options:
- Insert (which is the same as discussed in the preceding paragraph).
- Link to File which links the video. Note that if you choose to link rather than embed, always copy your video or movie clip to
the same folder as your presentation before you insert it within your slide.
- Show previous versions allows you to open a previous version of the video (if it exists). This option is based on native
functionality available in Microsoft Windows.
Figure 3: Link to File option
- Whichever option you choose (as explained above), PowerPoint will place the video on your slide as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Video placed on slide
- Click on the video to play, or use the Play button on the Player Controls below the video clip, as shown in
Figure 4 above. You can also set the video to play automatically during the
Slide Show. To do that, select the video. Selecting the video brings up the two
Video Tool contextual tabs on the Ribbon. Click the Video Tools Playback contextual tab of the
Ribbon to activate it as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Video Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon
This tab contains different options to control the playback of the video you have selected. Open the Start drop-down list as shown
in Figure 6, and select the Automatically option.
Figure 6: Option to start playing video automatically
- Save your presentation.
See Also:
Insert Video (Movie) Clips in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows
Insert Video (Movie) Clips in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
Insert Video (Movie) Clips in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
Insert Movies in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows
Insert Movies in PowerPoint 2003, 2002, 2000, and 97 for Windows
