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Showing a YouTube Video in a PowerPoint Presentation

youtubepoint

[Caution: Please use YouTube judiciously.]

Instructional Purpose: When displaying PowerPoint slides to students, it is often inconvenient to display a YouTube video by exiting the slideshow and opening up a separate browser window. If you have an active internet connection (and are using Microsoft Windows), there is a technique for pointing to the YouTube video and having it run right inside your PowerPoint slide. Just follow these easy steps (a video demonstration is available at the end of this description):

Step One: Select the YouTube video.
Find the desired video on YouTube and copy its URL.
Step Two: Prepare PowerPoint.

  1. Open up PowerPoint and make sure that the developer tab shows up in your ribbon. If the tab is not there, click on the Windows logo in the upper left hand corner, click on “PowerPoint options” (at the bottom of the displayed list), and check the “show developer tab “box.
  2. Select the developer tab and “more controls” (the icon that looks like a hammer and wrench). Scroll down and choose the “Shockwave flash object” option.
  3. Go to the slide where you want the video to appear and draw a box. You can edit the size of the box anytime so don’t worry about the ideal size now.

Step Three: Link YouTube video with the slide.

  1. Right click in the box you just created and select “properties”.
  2. Paste the YouTube URL In the box to the right of “movie” and edit it as follows: change “watch?v=” to “v/” (deleting “watch?” and replacing the “=” with a “/”).
  3. The property “playing” controls whether the video starts automatically when the slide is displayed, and “loop” controls whether the video will continually start over it finishes playing. Set these values to “true” or “false” according to your desires.

Step Four: Play the video.

  1. Exit the properties by clicking on the red X in the top right hand corner.
  2. Save your PowerPoint presentation and run the slideshow. The YouTube video will run within your PowerPoint slide, accessing it via the internet, without having any copy of the video on your computer.

Click here to watch a YouTube video that shows the procedure described above.