Chapter 17. Incorporating Motion Video

PowerPoint creates complete multimedia presentations, which means that not only can you include pictures and sounds but also movies and animations. In this chapter, you'll learn how to select the appropriate video type, how to insert clips, and how to control when they will play

Understanding Video Types

Let's begin at an obvious starting point: figuring out how you are going to get a hold of the videos you need. Not all videos are live-action recordings; some are digitally created cartoons (either 2-D or 3-D). PowerPoint can show both kinds. The difference is not that important once you get clips into PowerPoint, but when you are determining how you will acquire them, it is helpful to make the distinction. The following sections discuss the types of videos that PowerPoint supports.

Animated GIFs

When is a video not really a video? When it's an animated GIF.

As you may already know, GIF is a file format for static graphics files. One of the advantages of it over other graphic file formats is that you can create animated versions. These are not really videos in the traditional sense; they are a collection of still graphics stored in a single file under one name. When the file is displayed — on a presentation slide, a Web page, or some other place — ...

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