Presentation Fanatic

The developers from Russia made a great success on PowerPoint to Flash conversion technologies called FlashSpring in recent years, which seems really rock solid on the conversion quality. Days ago, they leveled up the simple but powerful converter technology to a series of exciting solutions on PowerPoint to Flash, iSpring. And I had a great test drive of iSpring Pro from its Giveaway of the Day promotion.



I don't care about the such features like "Insert Flash" or "Resources", because its Flash presentation competitor in leading role Articulate Presenter already has better and utility ones. The program instability and output quality is gorgeous on iSpring, also the great compression to output originals PowerPoint to a 10% compaaible file size of Flash. However, it has some backs, such as PowerPoint 2007 support, which looks like what it said in promotion: just "works fine". My PowerPoint 2007 crashed many times, and most animations on SmartArt are not applicable in output. But do you know, iSpring has a iSpring Free available beside its US$199 Pro.

By the way, the iSpring menu buttons were non-intrusive making working with PowerPoint simple. The cool ribbon and tech for PowerPoint 2007 got another full-featured competitor PPT2Flash Professional, who may has a little better support on PowerPoint 2007, at least the instability as I know. If you need more on this point, just give more than a try.



William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

You probably will like this way: a live window within a slide in PowerPoint, which displays the live Webpage, not just a pop-up Internet Explorer when clicking a hyperlink. Actually it's easy to do so, at first you should add a Microsoft Web Browser control to a slide, and then run a macro as an action to the live Webpage in PowerPoint.



1. Show The Control Toolbar In PowerPoint
    In PowerPoint 2003 and earlier versions, point to View -> Toolbars, and click Control Toolbox, now the box shows up;
    In PowerPoint 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button -> PowerPoint Options -> Popular, click the Show Developer tab in the Ribbon check box, and then click OK, now the control group is in the Developer tab.

2. Draw The Web Browser In A Slide
    Click "More Controls" button, and then click "Microsoft Web Browser", and then draw the control on your slide. The Microsoft Web Browser ActiveX control now appears on your slide.

3. Make A go2URL Macro For Presentation
    Launch the "Visual Basic Editor" in PowerPoint:
    In PowerPoint 2003 and earlier versions, go to Tools -> Macro -> Visual Basic Editor; in PowerPoint 2007, go to Visual Basic in the Developer tab;
    On the Microsoft Visual Basic window, point to Insert -> Module; just specify the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) as you like in the following code, and paste the modified code in the new Module window, which will run the browser, opening the URL:

Sub go2URL ()
Dim varURL as Variant

varURL = "http://www.yahoo.com"
Slide1.WebBrowser1.Navigate varURL
End Sub

    Then close the Visual Basic Editor.

4. Add An Action To Run The Macro
    Type any texts or insert any shapes you like, then add the actions to the live Webpage on them: make the texts or shapes selected, and point to Insert -> Action; in the tab of "Mouse Click" or "Mouse Over" as you like, select "Run macro" -> "go2URL", and OK.

Now preview or save the presentation with macro, you can activate the live Webpage in the PowerPoint slide with a mouseclick or mouseover on the link.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran

Days ago I came across a cute idea called “PowerPoint Karaoke” on http://lemill.net/methods/powerpoint-karaoke by Hans Põldoja. It introduced a method that can be used in presentation trainings as social activity to improve presentation skills for teachers or other presenters. The main difference between PowerPoint karaoke and real karaoke is that people give PowerPoint presentations instead of singing.

Certainly it's kind of funny to do so, but actually it’s really an efficient practice like so for your better performance in the future. A PowerPoint karaoke needs to search from Google or Slideshare for random PowerPoint files, and list presentations on different topics to be chosen for participants. If there's really such a leisure activity with group wisdom and inspirations, any participants can gain more techniques and experiences from others and themselves like a superstar is born in normal karaoke contest.

William Peterson
Presentation Verteran

Maybe not everyone loves YouTube, watches and uploads videos on YouTube, but in the world's most popular community, sometimes you would like to add a favorite video on YouTube to your next presentation. Many people have tried various methods to make YouTube video in their PowerPoint. Here I just review these great ideas, and express the clear fact in my words.


Play YouTube Flash Video Online in PowerPoint with Live Connection

If you're going to give a PowerPoint presentation under the environment with live Internet connection. You can directly embed your expected YouTube video into the slide, and play the video in your presentation from Internet like embedding YouTube video in a Web page. Just follow the simple steps below:

1. At first, you need to find the hidden Control Toolbox out in PowerPoint. In Normal View of PowerPoint 2003 and earlier versions, go to View -> Toolbars -> select "Control Toolbox"; for PowerPoint 2007, go to PowerPoint Options -> Popular -> tick "Show Developer tab in the Ribbon".

2. In the Control Toolbox, click the last icon "More Controls" which is displayed as hummer plus wrench. In the set of controls available on your computer, select "Shockwave Flash Object". Then use your mouse to draw and resize an area in the slide as you like to place your YouTube video.

3. Go to the YouTube video page you'd like to add, and check the URL in the address bar of your Web browser. You'll get an address like "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4". Change the phrase "watch?v=" to "v/", and now the address become "http://www.youtube.com/v/hChq5drjQl4". The address is what we need to link the video from YouTube.

4. Right click the area you drew which is displayed as a big cross, select Properties and go to Properties tab. Just copy and paste the YouTube video address like "http://www.youtube.com/v/hChq5drjQl4" in the field as value of attribute "Movie"; set the value of attribute "Playing" and "Loop" to False. Close the Properties tab when everything is done.

5. Now save the presentation, preview and enjoy the embedded live YouTube video in the slide with a Internet connection.


Get YouTube Flash Video Offline and Add To Presentations

When you don't like the live YouTube video way, which requires live and reliable Internet connection, you may download YouTube video to your hard drive, and insert the video into presentation offline. It's also very easy to make in a few minutes.

1. Go to the YouTube video page you'd like to add, and check the URL in the address bar of your Web browser. You'll get an address like "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChq5drjQl4". Then try some online services like KeepVid or other offline tools to retrieve and download the original Flash video file from the address. Rename the downloaded YouTube Flash video file from "get_video" to "xxx.flv" as you like in FLV format.

2. Now you need to decide in which format of YouTube Flash video you'd like to add in PowerPoint presentation. If directly inserting the Flash video in FLV format, you have to ensure the FLV file could be properly played back at first. It's recommended to install VideoLAN VLC media player to play YouTube Flash video files in FLV format.

3. Find the hidden Control Toolbox out in PowerPoint and go to "More Controls" as the way in the first steps of online YouTube section above. Select "VideoLAN VLC ActiveX Plugin v1/v2" in the set of controls available, then draw and resize the displayed area with mouse in the slide as you like. Right click the area you drew and go to Properties tab, and complete the value of attribute "MRL" with the path of the YouTube Flash video file, like D:\Temp\2008\temp.flv, then close the tab. Now the YouTube Flash video in your hard drive is ready to play in the presentation.

--- Insert YouTube Video As Common Video

Besides, you may also try to convert your YouTube Flash video in FLV format to other common video format like AVI, MOV, etc with some online services such as vixy.net or other offline video conversion tools. Then you can directly insert these converted video in your hard drive via "Insert Movie from File" in PowerPoint.

--- Insert YouTube Video As SWF Flash Movie

Generally speaking, to avoid video codec problem with different computers, and ensure the properly video playback in PowerPoint, Flash video in FLV format and other video formats is not recommended to be inserted in PowerPoint. Based on the popularity of Adobe Flash player, which is widely installed on most computers in the world, Flash movie in SWF is highly compatible cross-platform and properly played back. You may try some video to Flash conversion tools, such as WebVideo Author, to convert FLV or other video formats to SWF format.

The Flash movie file in SWF format could be inserted into PowerPoint presentation as "Shockwave Flash Object" in Contorl Toolbox like the way in the first steps of online YouTube section above. And you can embed the SWF Flash file in your presentation through setting the attribute "EmbedMovie" to True in Properties tab.

By the way, some presentation authoring tools, such as PPT2Flash Professional (http://www.sameshow.com/powerpoint-to-flash-pro.html), Articulate Presenter, offer the shortcut to insert SWF Flash files quickly, and finally output the PowerPoint presentation with YouTube Flash video as Flash movie in SWF format. Flash-based presentation is kind of great solution to avoid compatibility issues from video codec, PowerPoint versions and operating systems, and easy to make Web compliance.


Maybe the total guide for YouTube video in PowerPoint is a little of complicated for everyone. Google's PowerPoint killer in Google Docs is highly expected to add the feature to add YouTube video in online presentation instantly, if Google really wants to be the killer. After all, YouTube is a great video treasure for everyone, we can make better use of it with our works and life.

William Peterson
Presentation Veteran