Make a Video from PowerPoint

I’ve just made a five-minute video on my blog site and thought I would share how I did it in PowerPoint.

Using Microsoft PowerPoint can be much easier than most video editing software. The new “Record Slide Show” feature allows you to voice over each individual slide, then you can export to a video file. The final video is a seamless transition of your slides and is one of the quickest ways to create a professional looking video.

Let’s face it, any video editing will take some time if you don’t work with it every day. Microsoft offers an easy to use “Video Editor” (access this program by typing in “Video Editor” in the start field at the bottom left of windows). This works really well if you record a video from your phone and need to crop or overlay some cool effects. I highly recommend trying this free video editor for your quick videos.

However, when you are working on an extensive video and want to add more content including transitions for graphics and utilize notes to read for each slide, I recommend PowerPoint.

While I provide a short video on my editing experience – you could just go straight to one my favorite YouTube Microsoft MVPs, Kevin Stratvert to learn from one of the best. His videos are excellent – he is always to the point and his tips and overall recommendations are noteworthy. I’m providing his video below which is a more comprehensive recording session at 6 minutes and 44 seconds. He illustrates the video narration option and other rich content options. I often watch the videos at 1.5 speed so the video length can be reduced by 2 minutes. It’s worth a review.

A quick overview of how I made my recent video is shown below and contains similar (but less detailed content than Kevin). My video does not include the self video recording option – only audio. Let me just disclose that it’s so much easier to dress for an audio recording…

My video is two minutes less time than the video above. You’ll see both my monitor screens and notice that I had Google Earth Pro open (globe image) on my second screen while not using PowerPoint. One topic not mentioned in my video that is a helpful option – if you insert a phone video into a PowerPoint slide by selecting “insert” then the video icon to the right of the ribbon, you are able to crop the video inside of PowerPoint. You can crop the start and the end of the video. After you insert a video into your slide, left click the video and a “Playback” will appear and you’ll have a “trim video” option among other features.