Video doesn't just belong on YouTube. You can easily add video clips to your PowerPoint 2016 presentations and play them at will. Adding a movie motion clip to a slide is similar to adding a sound clip. A crucial difference exists, however, between motion clips and sound bites: Video is meant to be seen (and sometimes heard). An inserted motion clip should be given ample space on your slide.
If you think that sound files are big, wait till you see how big movie clips are. Ha! They consume hard drive space the way an elephant consumes veggies. The whole multimedia revolution is really a conspiracy started by hard drive manufacturers. (Be aware that you may have trouble sending a PowerPoint presentation bloated with large video files to your friends and colleagues via email because many email servers have limits on the size of email attachments.)
The following steps show you how to add a video clip to a slide:
Find a good movie and, if needed, download it or upload it to your hard drive.
The hardest part about using video in a PowerPoint presentation is finding a video file that's worth showing. Use Google or any other search service to find a video to insert. Then, download the video to your computer. Or, you can create your own videos using a camcorder and video-editing software.
Move to the slide on which you want to insert the movie.
Hopefully, you left a big blank space on the slide to put the movie in. If not, rearrange the existing slide objects to make room for the movie.
Open the Insert tab on the Ribbon, click Video in the Media group, and then choose Video on My PC.
The Insert Video dialog box, shown here, appears.
Inserting a video.Select the movie that you want to insert.
You may need to scroll the list to find the movie you're looking for or navigate your way to a different folder.
Click the Insert button.
The movie is inserted on the slide, as shown here.
A movie inserted on a slide.Resize the movie if you want and drag it to a new location on the slide.
When you resize the movie, try to do it by using one of the corner handles. If you drag one of the side handles, you distort the image.
To play the movie while you're working on the presentation in Normal View, double-click the movie. During a slide show, a single click does the trick, unless you set the movie to play automatically. In that case, the movie runs as soon as you display the slide.
You can also insert a video directly from an online source by choosing Online Video rather than Video on My PC in Step 3. Then, you can search for a video online. Note that this option inserts a link to the online video, not the video itself. That means that you must have a working network connection to play the video, and if the owner of the video removes the video, the link won't work.