This short blog will quickly go through what you need to do to embed your YouTube video directly into a PowerPoint presentation. That is, the video will appear directly in the presentation slide and not just be a link to the video.
Before we go any further, the following works as of July 2013. Things change very quickly and there’s no guarantee that it will continue to work in the future. Sorry about that!
Step One
Locate the YouTube video you want to embed. Under the video you will see some information about the number of views, how many people have liked the video and so on.
Click once on where it says Share and then click once where it says Embed.
Make sure the box which says “Use old embed code” is ticked. I personally like to untick the other boxes, but it’s your preference. You now need the code that’s in the box. If it’s not highlighted, click once in the box and then either drag your mouse (with the left button pressed down) over all the code or press Ctrl and A on your keyboard. Once the code is selected, you need to copy the code. You can do this by clicking the right mouse button and selecting Copy or you can press Ctrl and C on the keyboard.
Step Two
Open up your PowerPoint presentation and go to the slide where you wish to embed the video. On the top ribbon, click once on Insert. There should now be an option for Media (with options for Video and Audio). Click on the small triangle underneath Video to get the small drop down menu and then select Video From Web Site.
You will get a small pop up box appearing. Click once inside the box and then paste the code you got from YouTube. You can do this by either right clicking the mouse and selecting Paste or pressing Ctrl and V on your keyboard. Don’t click Insert just yet! You need to make some small changes to the code in order for it to work properly.
Add http: before the //wwww part in the code. That is, change //www.youtube.com/ to http://www.youtube.com/
Change version=3 to version=2
The above changes will appear twice in your code, so make sure you change both occurrences.
Here’s an example. It looks pretty scary, but you only need to make a few changes so take a deep breath and jump in!
Original Code:
//www.youtube.com/v/AWLjISE2wo0?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0
Modified Code:
Now click on Insert and (fingers crossed) it should work. Some people have reported that if the above doesn’t work then remove “version=2” entirely from the code and try again.