Include YouTube Videos in PowerPoint

To show a YouTube video in PowerPoint, it should be as simple as copying and pasting the URL, right?  Unfortunately, it is often not that simple.  While there are plenty of tools out there to download videos from YouTube that you can insert into your deck, it isn’t exactly legal to do so.  If you are looking to include videos at work, you probably don’t want to go around violating copyright law. 

Instead, you can use the follow the instructions below to play the video from YouTube through your PowerPoint presentation.  While this keeps you compliant with copyright, it also requires you to have access to YouTube (Internet and permission in your web filter) when you wish to play the video.

Previously, in PowerPoint 2010, you could select Insert >> Video from Website and use the YouTube ‘old embed code’ to have the video play instantly.  However, there is no longer the button to display the old embed code for YouTube videos.  If you are interested, the old embed code is included at the bottom of this post, with the video URL portion bolded.  You can use that code (replacing the video with your own selection) to try the previous method.

Although complex, the following method will allow you to link to YouTube videos from PowerPoint 2010 (PC):

Set up your Ribbon

1. File >> Options >> Customize Ribbon
2. In the right column, check the Developer box
3. Click OK

If you are looking to fully customize your Ribbon and create new tabs, Tom Kuhlmann of The Rapid eLearning Blog has a fantastic post to show you how to create a tab with all your most frequently used eLearning tools. 

Insert the video

Now that you have the Developer tab available, the following steps will help you insert the video.

Image linked from iSpring

1. In the Developer Ribbon >> Controls Section, click More Options (the wrench and hammer icon)
2. Select Shockwave / Flash Object
3. Click OK
4. Draw a rectangle to hold your video (you can resize it later)
5. Right click the rectangle and select Properties
6. Make the following updates to the Properties
1. Copy the YouTube URL and paste it into ‘Movie’
1. Your URL looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_dsh18xPhs
2. Modify the middle portion of the URL to remove watch?v= with v/ to have your URL look like this: http://www.youtube.com/v/m_dsh18xPhs to allow it to play in PowerPoint.  Note, you can also include commands such as ?autoplay=1 after the URL to include additional actions that are available for YouTube videos.
2. Change ‘Loop’ to false (assuming you don’t want to loop your video)

That’s it.  Your video will now be played from YouTube through PowerPoint 2010.

Aside from a typical single video within a deck, you can also use this method to include several slides of videos to play during class breaks.  To do so, you’ll want to have the slides auto-advance at an interval just slightly longer than the video for each slide (as it takes a few seconds to load a video, depending on your connection speed, and the timer begins counting immediately.  

Additional Notes:

The same process can be used to add a Flash SWF to your PowerPoint presentation: http://www.ispringsolutions.com/articles/how-to-manually-insert-flash-into-powerpoint-2010.html

Old Embed Code (the URLs are similar to what is described above and bolded for quick identification):

<object width="640" height="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ m_dsh18xPhs?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ m_dsh18xPhs?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>