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As long as they are meaningful and pertain to your presentation, movies and animated GIFs are a great way to make the audience say, "Wow!" Movies, however, can also look amateurish on slides if they aren't set up properly. Take into consideration these caveats before putting a movie on a slide:
- Make sure that the sound capabilities of your computer are up to playing sound if the video clip you intend to play has sound.
 | - Movies are linked to the PowerPoint presentation file, not embedded in it. When you insert a movie on a slide, you merely give PowerPoint instructions for feeding the movie into the slide. The movie itself is not part of the PowerPoint presentation. For that reason, put a copy of the movie in the same folder as the presentation file and don't move it elsewhere. If you do, PowerPoint won't be able to locate the movie file and the movie won't play.
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- Movies are played on Windows Media Player. The Media Player appears in slides as the movie plays.
- Movies can look terribly grainy when they appear on a big computer screen. Unless you're a grain merchant, preview your movie to make sure it is suitable for showing on a PowerPoint slide.
Inserting the movie
Here's how to place a movie on a slide:
1. Place the movie on the slide, depending on what kind of slide and what kind of movie you're dealing with, as follows:
• If the slide layout has a Media Clip placeholder: Double-click the placeholder. The Media Clip dialog box appears. Select a clip and click OK.
• If the movie is in the Microsoft Clip Organizer: Choose Insert --> Movies and Sounds --> Movie from Clip Organizer. The Clip Art task pane opens. Locate the movie and double-click it.
• If the movie is on your computer or network: Choose Insert --> Movies and Sounds --> Movie from File. Then locate and double-click the movie file in the Insert Movie dialog box.
• If the movie is an animated GIF: If the GIF isn't stored in the Clip Organizer, choose Insert --> Picture --> From File and locate the GIF in the Insert Picture dialog box. Otherwise, choose Insert --> Movies and Sounds --> Movie from Clip Organizer and locate the animated GIF in the task pane. You can choose Preview/Properties on the GIF's drop-down menu to see what the animation looks like.
2. Click the Automatically button or the When Clicked button when PowerPoint asks how you want the movie to start on the slide.
Do you want the movie to play as soon as the slide arrives on-screen or when the presenter clicks the movie image?
The movie lands on the slide, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: A movie on a slide.
3. Right-click the movie and choose Play Movie to see how (or whether) it plays.
In the case of an animated GIF, the only way to see what the animation looks like is to click the Slide Show button and view it at full-screen size.
Fine-tuning the movie presentation
The next step is to make the movie just-so:
- Changing the movie's size and position: Click the movie and drag to change its position. To change its size, drag a corner selection handle.
- Continuously playing a movie: Right-click the movie and choose Edit Movie Object. Then select the Loop Until Stopped in the Movie Options dialog box. The movie will play continuously until you go to the next slide.
- Hiding or displaying the movie on-screen: You can arrange things so that the movie doesn't appear until it starts. Right-click the movie and choose Edit Movie Object. Then select the Hide While Not Playing option in the Movie Options dialog box.
- Changing the Automatically or When Clicked status: If you change your mind about whether the movie should play automatically or play after it's clicked, choose Slide Show --> Custom Animation. Then select the movie, if necessary, right-click the movie's name in the task pane, and choose Start On Click or Start After Previous.
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