YouTube into Powerpoint – Wikihow has advice

I have never successfully been able to get a YouTube .flv video to play in a PowerPoint presentation. We have a Library PowerPoint that runs through a large television and we have often wanted to embed videos from YouTube into this. Our workaround has been to use a converter like keepvid to shift it from .flv format to .avi format so that they will play in PowerPoint.   

I followed a link tonight from Dai Barnes onTwitter that took me to an article from the School Library Journal written by Joyce Valenza.  It was called, ‘When YouTube is blocked (eight ways around)’ and is worth reading if you work in schools facing problems accessing YouTube. One of the links had me intrigued re the PowerPoint solution and I ended up at ‘wikiHow  – The How-to Manual that you can edit’.  The article in question was called, ‘How to Embed YouTube Flash Videos in Your PowerPoint Presentations‘  and step by step instructions were provided. I haven’t tested them as yet, but come my return to work I’m sure I’ll be putting them to good use! According to instructions at the bottom of the page you can embed the article in its entirity into your blog. Their creative commons licence makes them very generous. Hence, the following; 

 

How to Embed YouTube Flash Videos in Your PowerPoint Presentations

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

YouTube is considered to be one of the world’s most popular online community. YouTube is known for its fast video download rate, making it the number one choice for presenters when it comes to the video aspect of their presentations.

Steps

Play YouTube Flash Video Online in PowerPoint with Internet Access

1. In PowerPoint 2003 and earlier versions, go to View -> Toolbars -> select “Control Toolbox”. In PowerPoint 2007, go to PowerPoint Options -> Popular -> tick “Show Developer tab in the Ribbon”.
2. In the Control Toolbox, click the last icon “More Controls” which is displayed as hammer plus wrench. In the set of controls available on your computer, select “Shockwave Flash Object”. Then use your mouse to draw and resize an area in the slide as you like to place your YouTube video.
3. Go to the YouTube video page you’d like to add, and check the URL in the address bar of your Web browser. You’ll get an address like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4 Change the phrase watch?v= to v/, and now the address become http://www.youtube.com/v/hChq5drjQl4
4. Right click the area you drew which is displayed as a big cross, select Properties and go to Properties tab. Copy and paste the YouTube video address in the field as value of attribute Movie; set the value of attribute Playing and Loop to False. Close the Properties tab when everything is done.

Get YouTube Flash Video Offline and Add To Presentations
When you don’t like the live YouTube video way, which requires live and reliable Internet connection, you may download YouTube video to your hard drive, and insert the video into presentation offline. It’s also very easy to make in a few minutes.

1. Go to the YouTube video page you’d like to add, and check the URL in the address bar of your Web browser. You’ll get an address like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4. Then try some online services like KeepVid or other offline tools to retrieve and download the original Flash video file from the address. Rename the downloaded YouTube Flash video file from “get_video” to “xxx.flv” as you like in FLV format.
2. Now you need to decide in which format of YouTube Flash video you’d like to add in PowerPoint presentation. If directly inserting the Flash video in FLV format, you have to ensure the FLV file could be properly played back at first. It’s recommended to install VideoLAN VLC media player to play YouTube Flash video files in FLV format.

1. Find the hidden Control Toolbox out in PowerPoint and go to “More Controls” as the way in the first steps of online YouTube section above. Select “VideoLAN VLC ActiveX Plugin v1/v2” in the set of controls available, then draw and resize the displayed area with mouse in the slide as you like. Right click the area you drew and go to Properties tab, and complete the value of attribute “MRL” with the path of the YouTube Flash video file, like D:\Temp\2008\temp.flv, then close the tab. Now the YouTube Flash video in your hard drive is ready to play in the presentation.

— Insert YouTube Video As Common Video

Besides, you may also try to convert your YouTube Flash video in FLV format to other common video format like AVI, MOV, etc with some online services such as vixy.net or other offline video conversion tools. Then you can directly insert these converted video in your hard drive via “Insert Movie from File” in PowerPoint.

— Insert YouTube Video As SWF Flash Movie

Generally speaking, to avoid video codec problem with different computers, and ensure the properly video playback in PowerPoint, Flash video in FLV format and other video formats is not recommended to be inserted in PowerPoint. Based on the popularity of Adobe Flash player, which is widely installed on most computers in the world, Flash movie in SWF is highly compatible cross-platform and properly played back. You may try some video to Flash conversion tools, such as WebVideo Author, to convert FLV or other video formats to SWF format.
The Flash movie file in SWF format could be inserted into PowerPoint presentation as “Shockwave Flash Object” in Contorl Toolbox like the way in the first steps of online YouTube section above. And you can embed the SWF Flash file in your presentation through setting the attribute “EmbedMovie” to True in Properties tab.
By the way, some presentation authoring tools, such as PPT2Flash Professional (http://www.sameshow.com/powerpoint-to-flash-pro.html), Articulate Presenter, offer the shortcut to insert SWF Flash files quickly, and finally output the PowerPoint presentation with YouTube Flash video as Flash movie in SWF format. Flash-based presentation is kind of great solution to avoid compatibility issues from video codec, PowerPoint versions and operating systems, and easy to make Web compliance.
Maybe the total guide for YouTube video in PowerPoint is a little of complicated for everyone. Google’s PowerPoint killer in Google Docs is highly expected to add the feature to add YouTube video in online presentation instantly, if Google really wants to be the killer. After all, YouTube is a great video treasure for everyone, we can make better use of it with our works and life.

Related wikiHows

• How to Make Guitar Hero Notecharts on PowerPoint
• How to Burn a PowerPoint Presentation to DVD with Acoolsoft PPT2DVD
• How to Make a Story You’re Telling More Interesting
• How to Design an Event Flyer That Gets Attention

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Embed YouTube Flash Videos in Your PowerPoint Presentations. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

(The grammar in the final paragraph suggests English is not the native language of the contributor. What is wonderful is that people are willing to share their knowledge across language barriers.)