Convert YouTube Videos For Embedding in PowerPoint

Dawn Baird, Partner — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:00:52 +0000

YouTube is a powerful medium. PowerPoint can be a powerful medium, if used correctly. To aid your visual learners, who prefer to see something, rather than listen or do, add YouTube videos to PowerPoint presentations and play them without need of an internet connection.

Stage 1

This set of instructions assumes you use Mozilla Firefox as your web browser. If you don’t you’ll first need to download it from here.
Download the Fast Video Download addon from here.
An icon will appear on the status bar of the browser. It is this that you will use to download YouTube videos in the first instance.

Stage 2

Open the Mozilla Firefox browser. Go to www.youtube.com.
Navigate to the video you want to use in PowerPoint.
Click the video downloader icon in the status bar.
Choose a Save As location and click Save. The file will automatically save in the .flv file format.

Stage 3

You now need to make use of a tool called SUPER.

If you need to, download SUPER from here. This will automatically add a shortcut to your desktop.

Open SUPER. You may first get a message stating that your PC does not have the minimum requirements to run SUPER. Once you click OK, this message will disappear and SUPER opens anyway. As my friends across the pond mighy say, Go Figure!

Check that tooltips are working (yellow hints that appear when you hover over any element of the window). If not, right click the grey part of the window and choose Show Useful Tips.
Open the folder where the original video download is located. You should have both this folder and SUPER visible on the screen at the same time.
Click and drag the video download from the Output folder to the DROP A VALID MULTIMEDIA FILE HERE box in the SUPER window. It appears as shown.
Choose .mpeg from the first option in the top left corner of the application.
If familiar with SUPER, choose any other options that are relevant.
Click Encode (Active Files).
A green progress bar will start moving across. When it disappears, your file is converted.
SUPER does not allow you to choose where the converted file (output) is saved. In Windows XP, this will be C:\Program Files\eRightSoft\SUPER\OutPut. If you do this alot, I’d advise creating a desktop shortcut to this location for convenience.

Stage 4

Navigate to C:\Program Files\eRightSoft\SUPER\OutPut. The file you converted will be located there.
Open the PowerPoint presentation into which you want to embed the video.
Navigate to the appropriate slide. (The rest of the instructions assume use of PowerPoint 2007. Use your initiative for earlier versions of PowerPoint.)
From the Insert tab, select Movie>Movie from File.
Navigate to the converted video. Select the video and click OK.
PowerPoint will ask how you want the video to appear. Choose either Automatically or When Clicked. I recommend the latter option.
The video appears on the slide.
Right click and choose Size and Position to resize the video, if appropriate.
Run the presentation. Test the video – click in the centre (or press F5) to play.

I hope this has been useful. Let us know if you run into any problems. Better still, let us know if you’re successful, or if there are any fantastic YouTube video links you’d recommend to other readers. Happy presenting!

In The Pink

Allen Baird, Partner — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:00:58 +0000

I was reading through the latest copy of The Training Journal (as one does) and I came across a familiar name.

From 2-5 of December this year there will be a big event in London about leadership. Some of the usual suspects will be there (Daniel Goelman and Rudy Giuliani) as well as a few curve balls (Garry Kasparov). One of the more interesting speakers is Daniel Pink, who will conducting a masterclass on ‘Building An Innovative & Creative Organization’.

I’ve blogged on Dan’s books before, and yes, it’s still my favourite book in the business/psychology field. Heck, I liked it so much I emailed the author with a few of my thoughts. And I was surprised to receive a fairly prompt, fairly substantial reply. Not many international speakers and writers could be bothered to do something like that, so well-done Dan!

See him in action on YouTube.

Another good one is