Tweet Search PowerPoint presentations from within the PowerPoint

PowerPoint search engine SlideFinder has released Add-in for PowerPoint 2007 which lets you search the web for presentations and slides from within PowerPoint. The SlideFinder Add-in also enables you to add the slides you find to your current presentation.

Download Add-in from http://tools.slidefinder.net/addin-en.aspx and follow steps below to search PowerPoint presentations and insert slides from search results to your presentation.



Install SlideFinder Addin on your machine

Click on search for Slides. A warning message about copyright will appear. Presentations are searched from web so they may be copyrighted. Make sure that slides which you download and insert are not copyright protected.

Clicking ok will open a new window to search PowerPoint files which doesn't seem to be a good idea. SlideFinder should have kept search box somewhere within PowerPoint window. Opening a new window is as good as searching in a browser. On the top of that Google ads make the search experience more unpleasant.

Search for any keyword and SlideFinder will display PowerPoint presentations available on the web for download. Select the slide(Tic the check box) which may fit in your presentation and click "Add Slide to presentation" button.

SlideFinder will download and insert slide in current presentation. Certainly SlideFinder has brought web within PowerPoint. There is still room for improvement in Add-in but the idea of PowerPoint search within PowerPoint is brilliant and will help PowerPoint users a lot.

Tweet authorSTREAM now lets you convert PowerPoint files in WMV, AVI ,FLV or MP4

authorSTREAM the only online PowerPoint sharing platform converting PowerPoint files in video today updated its PowerPoint to video conversion engine. Now you can convert your PowerPoint presentation with timings(set to advance at its own) in different video formats like WMV, AVI, MP4 or FLV.

PowerPoint presentations below 5 minutes duration can be converted for free only in MP4 format and will have authorSTREAM watermark on it. To convert your presentation in file type other than MP4 or to convert a presentation above 5 minutes duration and without authorSTREAM watermark, you have to purchase video credits. One video credits costs $2 and can be used to convert single PowerPoint presentation to video of maximum 45 minutes duration. You can find more details at authorSTREAM blog or FAQs.

Tweet Insert or embed videos in PowerPoint files

Similar to audio, video can be inserted in two ways in PowerPoint. Either you can insert video from your computer or you can use flash embed of some video sharing website like YouTube, Vimeo, Revver etc. Contrary to audio, embedding of video file is not possible in PowerPoint. Video files are always linked and play from the path stored in PowerPoint slide.

Steps to insert movie file/video in PowerPoint

1. In Normal view, click the slide to which you want to add a movie.
2. On the Insert tab, in the Media Clips group, click the arrow under Movie.


3. Do one of the following:

• Movie from File, locate the folder that contains the file, and then double-click the file that you want to add.

• Click Movie from Clip Organizer, scroll to find the clip that you want in the Clip Art task pane (task pane: A window within an Office program that provides commonly used commands. Its location and small size allow you to use these commands while still working on your files.), and then click it to add it to the slide.

For more details visit Microsoft office online help.

Embed YouTube, Vimeo or Revver videos in PowerPoint
Problem with inserting video in PowerPoint is that when you share such PowerPoint files; video don't ship with PowerPoint file until you send a zip file containing video file and zip file having a video is always so big in size that sharing it through email is almost impossible. In most cases users are not aware of the fact that video file which plays fine in PowerPoint sideshow on their machine will never play on other machines until video file is sent along with PowerPoint and is saved on same path(say c:\desktop\video\abc.wmv) to which slide refers to(i.e. the path from where original video was inserted by creator of presentation).

Solution:

Upload videos to be used in PowerPoint on some video sharing websites like YouTube, Revver, or Vimeo. Get the video URL from video sharing website and insert in your PowerPoint as described in Presentation below and share:

Embed Videos in PowerPoint Presentations

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by Slideshows | Upload your own presentation

Alternatively you can use authorSTREAM Desktop to embed YouTube or Vimeo videos in slides. authorSTREAM desktop works well with PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 2010.