Three cheers for Microsoft
for increasing the number of video file types that PowerPoint supports!
Presentation developers have long been frustrated by PowerPoint's
inability to accept certain file formats, but that problem is largely in
the past now. PowerPoint 2010 supports the formats listed in Table 1.
NOTE
What's the difference between a movie and a video? There really isn't any. PowerPoint uses the terms interchangeably.
PowerPoint treats most video types similarly, in
terms of how much control you have over their appearance and playback,
except for the final two in Table 1: Adobe Flash Media and animated GIFs. Both of these deserve a bit of special discussion.
Table 1. Supported Video Formats
| Format | Most Common Extension | Other Extensions |
|---|
| Windows Streaming Media | .asf | .asx, .wpl, .win. wmx, .wmd, .wmz, .dvr-ms |
| Windows Video | .avi | |
| Windows Media Video | .wmv | .wvx |
| MP4 | .mp4 | .m4v, .mp4v, .3gp, .3gpp, .3gz, .3gp2 |
| MPEG | .mpeg | .mpg, .mp3, .mlv, .m2v, .mod, .mpv2, .mp2v, .mpa |
| MPET-2 TS Video | .m2ts | .m2t, .mts, .ts, .tts |
| QuickTime | .mov | .qt, .dv |
| Adobe Flash Media | .swf | |
| Animated GIF | .gif | |
1. Adobe Flash Media
Flash media (.swf) is a very versatile format for
creating animated, and sometimes interactive, demos and games. Other
names for this format include Shockwave or Macromedia Flash. (Macromedia
was the company that developed Flash; they were acquired by Adobe.)
Flash media is commonly used in education because of
its interactivity. Not only can a Flash clip show movement through a
process, but it can accept mouse clicks from a viewer. So, for example,
after illustrating a process, the clip can offer a multiple-choice quiz
for review, with the viewer clicking on the answers.
Flash is unique in PowerPoint in that it is not embedded in the file like other video formats; by default it is linked.
PowerPoint does not offer a full set of controls for a
Flash clip; you can't trim it, for example, and you can't set it to
fade in or out. However, you can place a Flash clip on a slide, resize
it, and control many appearance aspects of it, such as frame color.
2. Animated GIF
Animated GIFs are not really videos in the
traditional sense. An animated GIF is a special type of graphic that
stores multiple versions of itself in a single file, and flips through
them in sequence, like an animation created by flipping the corners of a
book. When the file is displayed — on a presentation slide, a Web page,
or some other place — it cycles through the still graphics at a certain
speed, making a very rudimentary animation. You cannot control the
animation of an animated GIF through PowerPoint, nor can you set it up
to repeat a certain number of times. That information is contained
within the GIF file itself. PowerPoint simply reads that information and
plays the GIF accordingly.
PowerPoint's Clip Organizer comes with many animated
GIFs that have simple conceptual plots, such as time passing, gears
turning, and computers passing data between them. They are more like
animated clip art than real videos, but they do add an active element to
an otherwise static slide.
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It is possible to convert an animated GIF to a "true"
video format such as AVI. However, you can't do it using PowerPoint
alone; you need a conversion utility. Corel Animation Shop will do this (www.corel.com), as will many GIF-editing programs.
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3. Choosing a File Format for Your Video Recordings
You may not have a choice in the settings used for
the recording of live video or the file format. If you do have a choice,
AVI is among the best formats for use in PowerPoint because of its
near-universal compatibility. There may be compatibility issues with
video in some MPEG variants, such as MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, because you
might need to install a separate DVD-playing utility or a specific codec
to handle those formats.
On the theory that Microsoft-to-Microsoft always
works, the Windows Media Video format (.wmv) is also a good choice.
Because Windows Movie Maker creates its videos in this format by
default, it's a good bet that they will work well in PowerPoint.
4. Balancing Video Impact with File Size and Performance
Clip quality is usually measured either in frames per
second (fps), which is anywhere from 15 (low) to 30 (high), or in
kilobits per second, which is anywhere from 38 kbps to 2.1 mbps. You
might experiment with different settings to find one with acceptable
quality for the task at hand with the minimum file size. For example,
with Windows Movie Maker, a wide variety of quality settings are
available.
When you are recording your own video clips with a
video camera or other device, it is easy to overshoot. Video clips take
up a huge amount of disk space, and inserting large video clips into a
PowerPoint file can make that file very large. Even if you choose to
link the clips instead of embedding them, the clips still take up space
on your hard disk.
Depending on the amount of space available on your
computer's hard disk, and whether you need to transfer your PowerPoint
file to another PC, you may want to keep the number of seconds of
recorded video to a minimum to ensure that the file size stays
manageable. On the other hand, if you have a powerful computer with
plenty of hard disk space and a lot of cool video clips to show, go for
it!
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After you have completed the bulk of the editing work on your presentation, you may wish to use the File 
Compress Media command to decrease the resolution and/or increase the
compression ratio on the media clips in your presentation. Doing so may
result in a minor loss of playback quality, but may make the difference
between a presentation fitting or not fitting on a particular disk.
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If you are linking clips instead of embedding them,
place the video clip in the same folder as the presentation file before
inserting the video clip. This creates a relative reference to the clip
within the PowerPoint link to it, so that when you move both items to
another location, the link's integrity remains.
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5. Locating Video Clips
Not sure where to find video clips? Here are some places to start:
Your own video camera.
You can connect a digital video camera directly to your PC, or connect
an analog video camera to an adapter board that digitizes its input.
Then you use a video editing program to clean them up and transfer them
to your hard disk. Most video cameras come with such software; you can
also use Windows Movie Maker (free with Windows XP and Vista).
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If you have Windows 7, Windows Movie Maker is not included. However, you can download it for free from this link: http://download.live.com/moviemaker.
You might want to download it anyway, even if you have a version
already in Windows XP and Vista, because that way you'll get the most
recent version.
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The Clip Organizer.
When you're connected to the Internet, you get the whole collection as
you browse. Most of these are animated GIFs, rather than real videos.
The Internet in general.
There are millions of interesting video clips on every imaginable
subject. Use the search term "video clips" plus a few keywords that
describe the type of clips you are looking for. Yahoo! is a good place
to start looking (www.yahoo.com).
Some clips are copyrighted or have usage limitations, but others can be
used freely; check the usage information provided with the clip.
NOTE
Whenever you get a video clip from the Internet,
make sure you carefully read any restrictions or usage agreements to
avoid copyright violations. If you create a presentation using
copyrighted material in an unauthorized way, you or your company could
potentially get sued.
Commercial collections of video clips and animated GIFs.
Many of these companies advertise on the Internet and provide free
samples for downloading.
The Internet Archive (www.archive.org).
This site contains links to huge repositories of public domain footage
on all subjects, mostly pre-1960s material on which the copyright has
expired. Warning — you can easily get sucked in here and waste several
days browsing!
