Adding A Sound and Video To A PowerPoint Presentation

The computer world is a multimedia world and has been for more than a decade. Data consists of more than just numbers and characters. Data is active, it’s audible, it’s visual.

Just as you can exceed a presentation with too many graphics, extra-fancy fonts, and excess animations, you also can put too much audio and video in your presentations that detract from the message you want to portray. On the other hand, however, never think that a presentation is inappropriate for such multimedia content—quite the opposite!

Sound and video can smooth up your presentation. You can add those multimedia elements to activate an otherwise-static presentation. Perhaps you get to a point in your presentation where you need to tell your audience about a new training video your company produces. Don’t just tell them but show them samples of the video as you express your offerings.

Request an Audio Clip
Click to display your Insert ribbon. To the right is a group labeled Media Clips. This is where you go to insert audio and video clips into your presentation.

Determine the Audio Source
Click the down arrow below the Sound button to display your audio options. You can insert sound from a sound file (such as a .wav file or an .mp3); insert a sound from Microsoft’s Clip organizer gallery, which includes not only clip art images but also sound and video files; play a CD audio track (the CD must be in your CD-ROM drive to play the track at the time you add the audio and give your presentation), or record a new audio file using a sound recorder (you must have a microphone or audio input). Select Sound from Clip Organizer to open the Clip Art pane.

Describe How the Sound Starts
A sound can begin as soon as the slide appears in the presentation or only after you, the presenter, click the speaker icon that represents the sound. PowerPoint asks which you prefer.

Adjust the Sound Properties
When you click the speaker icon that represents the sound, PowerPoint changes to the Sound Tools Options ribbon, where you can control how the sound plays. You can loop the sound until you stop it during a presentation, play a long sound across many slides (meaning that the sound for the current slide doesn’t stop when you move to the next slide), fix the sound’s volume for play during the presentation, and limit the size of the sound file so that extra large sounds (such as long MP3s) aren’t included in the presentation, which is useful if you send your presentation as an email attachment or perhaps if you send your presentation to a web page that needs to load quickly.

Request a Video File
As with sound, you insert video clips into a presentation from the Insert ribbon. By clicking the down arrow on the Movie button, you determine whether you want to insert a video clip from an existing file on your computer or from Microsoft’s online clip gallery.

Adjust the Video Properties
As with sound files, when you insert a video file into your presentation, PowerPoint needs to know whether you want the video to start automatically as soon as the slide appears during a presentation or only when you click the movie’s image. (The image will show you the opening cell of the video.) After you insert the video, or anytime thereafter when you click on the image that represents the video, your ribbon changes to the Movie Tools Options ribbon, where you can further refine the video’s properties.