YouTube Videos in PowerPoint

A question I frequently get from people outside of the University is, "My company blocks internet sites such as YouTube. How can I embed a YouTube video into my PowerPoint Presentation?"

There have been a variety of options to use for free and some nice ones to purchase. But I'm all about the "free." When one of my favorite presentations sharing sites, authorSTREAM, announced the authorSTREAM Desktop plugin for PowerPoint, I jumped on it.

It's a simple download and installation to add an authorSTREAM ribbon into PowerPoint 2007. It's so easy to use, you don't even need to read the instructions. There is a button to upload your active presentation into your authorSTREAM account. There is a search box for images and video. It opens a task pane to select from the search results. If you don't find it via the search box, there is a button to insert the video by URL.

I had a presentation I wanted a video in and decided to try it out. authorSTREAM found the YouTube video I wanted from the search. When I clicked to add the video, I got a white box with a black "X" in the middle. It doesn't look like much, but when I ran the presentation, the video appeared in the player window, just as it would as if you embedded it into a website. You can play, pause and view full size. Very seamless.

Personally, I had a small issue after the first time I used it and repairs suggested by the website didn't help. But after I repaired Microsoft Office, it worked again. I attribute the problem to me having Office 2007 and 2010 Technical Preview loaded on my computer at the same time which can cause problems with addins. So, I'm not faulting authorSTREAM for this.

To recap, if you want a simple and FREE way to embed YouTube video into a PowerPoint presentation, I'd suggest the authorSTREAM Desktop.