Thomas Wallace: Lectures and Resources - A collection of website design lectures and resources

Converting Web video for Powerpoint I

The goal of this exercise is to allow you to use video from internet sites like YouTube.com in PowerPoint Presentations. There are many ways to achieve this goal, but I wanted you to be able to do this without the purchase of any additional software for your computer. In order to embed video in PowerPoint we'll need a video clip in the .wmv format. this is the standard Windows Media Player format and is the only format I have found to run consistently in PowerPoint. Unfortunately, most internet video sites do not use this format for their video. Most popular internet video sites use the .flv format (Flash Video), so in order to use these videos we'll need a way to extract this video and then convert it to the .wmv format so we can use it in PowerPoint. Here is an overview of the steps in this process:

1. Find an Internet Video clip we would like to use and extract the URL of video from the site
2. Convert video to the .wmv format
3. Embed the video in PowerPoint

Find an Internet Video clip we would like to use and extract the URL for the video from the site:

1. Browse to YouTube.com
2. Use the Search Feature or Browse by Category to find the video you would like to use.
3. When you have found the video you want to use, copy the URL from the site

Convert the video to the .wmv format

There are many ways to convert .flv format files to .wmv format but most require additional software that you must purchase, download, and install. We're doing this project on a budget so we want to be able to do this for free and without installing anything on our computer. We will convert the video file to a format that PowerPoint can understand. Here is the process:

1. Browse to http://www.zamzar.com/
2. Select the Download Video tab
3. Paste the URL of the Video you copied in the previous step
4. Select WMV as the converstion format
5. Enter your email address
6. Press Convert
7. Wait for the upload to finish

You will receive an email in 15 minues with the video file. Please follow the instructions in the email and download the video to your computer. Once you have downloaded the video to your computer, rename the file and then move it to your PowerPoint folder. You'll only have 24 hours to download the file so please do this as soon as possible.