Page 72 - AV Presentations - Student Textbook

You don’t get the start/stop and Poster Frame options of a MAC, but as long as your video is one of the
following, you should be good to go:

• for PowerPoint 2010: .avi, .mpg, and .mpeg
• for PowerPoint 2013: .mov and .mp4 videos (with H.264 video and AAC audio encoding)

Tricks with movies

I have a habit of inserting a slide with black background before every video. These are the only slides
that are completely black in my deck, so I know a video is coming next. I do this because I know I will
want to set up a dramatic segue to showing the video, and I don’t want to accidentally start the video
before I’m ready. Once I click past the black slide the video starts automatically.

When you present at a large venue you’ll need to help your A/V crew present your slides without a
glitch. A simple trick is to have your PowerPoint or Keynote file loaded on a memory stick. So far so
good. If you’re using PowerPoint you should load both the files with the slides (.ppt file) and video files
into one folder. And instead of inserting the video file, click Insert > Video from File, but use the drop-
down arrow on the Insert button and select “Link to File.”

Keynote seems to travel well and I’ve never had a problem with videos, once inserted, playing on other
machines. Having said that, I always have separate video files on my memory stick.

Mistakes to avoid

After having made all of the following mistakes (on your behalf) I want you to avoid them – here they
are:

• too long – the clips I use are all between 30 seconds and 1.5 minutes long. More than that and
I’m pushing it and risking my audience will tune out.
• not relevant – nothing wrong with a good chuckle, but it still has to be relevant. I show a
hilarious clip from a Bud Lite commercial (I think it was actually banned from showing at the

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