PowerPoint: embedding YouTube video

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I’ve often been asked how I embedded a video from YouTube in my presentations, so I thought I’d put a simple guide together, based on one I found a while back but can’t find now!! Typical, huh?

So, let’s begin …

  1. Find the YouTube clip you want to use before doing anything else. I’m going to use this one: my old favourite Guinness ‘white horses’ advert – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcdDg30VBgo
  2. If you have any link that is longer than this, like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcdDg30VBgo&feature=related then delete everything after the ‘&’ sign (including the & sign). You don’t need that and in fact it get’s in the way later.
  3. Get to the point in your presentation where you want the YouTube clip to be played. I like to dedicate a whole slide to it, but there is nothing stopping you doing it how you like.
  4. toolbar1Make sure you can see the ‘Control Toolbox’ toolbar.
  5. Select the ‘hammer / spanner’ looking icon and then select ‘Shockwave Flash object’ from the subsequent menu list.
  6. Then drag the cross-hairs into a square area you want the video to be shown in. You’ll end up with a white box on the screen with two diagonal lines from corner to corner.
  7. Right mouse-click in this box and select ‘Properties’ from the list.
  8. In the empty ox next to the heading ‘Movie’ paste the URL of your YouTube clip. You will need to edit this link, so this bit is important …

If your clip URL is – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcdDg30VBgo – you must change it so it is http://www.youtube.com/v/zcdDg30VBgo.

You remove the “/watch?v=” and leave it as simply “/v/” .. got it?

Now all you need to do is test it.

I’ve uploaded my test PPT file for you to see, if you’re interested – DWYT-YouTube.ppt and hit F5 key to view in proper PowerPoint presentation mode.

If you use SlideShare, the video wont show. The really good thing is, once you’ve uploaded to SlideShare and published you can go back and edit the presentation and add a video placement holder … see more on this presentation.