The PowerPoint® Blog

Want to make your presentation pop by showcasing a video inside a realistic iPhone frame? Whether you’re creating a product demo, UI walkthrough, or simply want a sleek modern look, this step-by-step guide will walk you through how to insert a video into PowerPoint, crop it, modify it to rounded corners (yes, video containers can have rounded corners!) – all while fitting seamlessly into a PNG or SVG image of an iPhone. 

Step 1: Insert Your Video 

• Go to the slide where you want the video. 

• On the Insert tab, click Video → choose This Device (note, for some of the styling options being applied, it must be an embedded video, not a web-based video). 

• Browse and insert your desired video file.

Step 2: Change Video Playback Settings to Set the Video to Play Automatically 

• By default, when you insert a video in PowerPoint, it’s set to play “On Click” as part of the animation timeline.   

• NOTE: Because this video is going to be underneath the iPhone image, it will not be manually clickable meaning you can’t “mouse over” the video to click it to play or pause. You can leave the animation setting to “On Click” but for our example we want the video to play automatically when the slide hits the screen.  

Click on the video to select it. 

1. Go to the Animation tab on the ribbon. 

2. Change to “Play” vs “Multiple”.

3. Look for the Start dropdown. 

4. Change it from “On Click” to “With Previous.”.

Now your video will begin playing as soon as the slide appears in Slide Show mode—no click required! For our example here, the video we chose is 1920×1080 (the teal gradation you see below).

Step 3: Layer the Video Behind an iPhone PNG Image 

Now, let’s place a phone on top of the video: 

1. Source an image of a realistic phone (ideally a PNG with a transparent screen area showing just the phone “frame”) or edit your image to remove the background and the screen area of the phone.

2. Insert your phone image onto the slide. 

3. Resize and position it as needed. 

Step 4: Crop the Video to Align to the Phone Screen 

To fit the video inside the vertical screen area of a phone (typically portrait aspect ratio), you’ll need to crop the video. You can do it like so:

1. Select the video and resize the video as needed to fit the phone (for our example, we’ve chosen a simple gradient with no content, so resizing isn’t critical).

2. With the video selected, in the Video Format tab, click Crop. 

3. Use the black cropping handles to trim the edges and create a portrait orientation, aligning the edge of the video just inside the edge of the phone. 

4. Click Crop again to apply changes. 

Step 5: Add Rounded Corners 

Our video now fits nicely inside the phone but you can see the corners. The good news is that videos in PowerPoint can be changed to any (yes any!) of the PowerPoint shapes. For this slide, we need rounded corners, which is an easy customization to the video. Believe it or not, PowerPoint is easier for this than video editing apps!

1. Select the video. 

2. Go to Video Format → Video Shape → Choose the Rounded Rectangle shape. 

3. Now use the yellow shape modifier (dot) to adjust the rounded corners to match the iPhone image’s rounded corners  

• TIP: zoom in on the slide for better control of the rounded corner adjustment. 

With just a few clicks, you’ve created a high-end, device-framed video display — no video editing software required. Perfect for UI demos, mobile app presentations, or just leveling up your PowerPoint visuals. 

Let your slides scroll like a screen — and wow your audience!  

-The TLC Creative design team 

Make your PowerPoint presentations more dynamic and engaging by using a great PowerPoint feature to add a live camera feed directly onto your slide. Whether you’re hosting a virtual meeting, presenting at a live event, or recording a tutorial, showing your face in real time can help you connect with your viewers and make the message much more personal. 

Cameo

Cameo is a feature that was added to PowerPoint in 2022 and provides many design options. For your slide layout and design, keep in mind exactly where on the slide (or slides) the live camera will appear. Make sure it does not cover any elements or distract from the slide content itself. This is definitely something to test before presenting, not only to confirm the slide layouts work, but also that animations and transitions work – and, of course, the technical connection of the camera to PowerPoint works. 

Add a Cameo Live Camera to a PowerPoint Slide 

To add a live camera feed, we will be using the Cameo feature.  

• Go to Insert > Cameo

• In the dropdown menu, there are two options – place a Cameo on “This Slide” or “All Slides.” Select the option needed.

• TIP: The live camera object that will be added can be adjusted or deleted from any slide, so “All Slides” is often the easiest workflow. 

Once selected, a placeholder for your camera feed will appear on the slide, as seen in the example below. By default, PowerPoint adds the placeholder in the lower right corner as a circle shape.  

Preview the Live Camera 

To preview how a live camera will look: 

• Click the placeholder  

• Click the camera icon 

• Use the “Camera Format” tab to choose your desired camera

• TIP: The camera you are using can be changed at any time – a common workflow is to test simply with your laptop’s built-in camera and then change to an external camera when you are setting up for the actual presentation (an external camera is usually of better quality)

Modify the Cameo Live Camera Object 

What is exciting is that the camera object can be modified like any PowerPoint shape. Moving, resizing, and changing shape are all options. 

• Select the cameo placeholder 

• Move and resize to fit the slide layout. For our example slide, we are moving the live camera to the upper left and downsizing it a little. 

In addition to moving and resizing, you can add styles, shapes, borders, and other effects to the video feed. Go to the “Camera Format” tab to add an outline, change shape, add a drop shadow, or soft edge. Be creative!

Presenting 

When going to Slide Show mode, the live camera will turn on automatically, and the live feed will be visible during your presentation. 

A Few Tips Before You Go Live

1. Always test before presenting – that means making sure your webcam or other camera is working and positioned properly.

2. Use lighting! Good lighting can dramatically improve how you appear on camera.

3. Limit the distractions. Before going, live consider turning off any video effects or anything in the background that might distract from your message.

4. Smile!!

Conclusion: 

Adding a live camera feed to your slides is possible – all using native PowerPoint features! There are technical considerations, yet in the right environment, this adds a nice visual touch and can be a fantastic storytelling tool.  

-The TLC Creative Design Team 

We love that PowerPoint has built-in video compression options, we really do. It’s a super handy feature when you’re trying to manage file size. But there’s one big catch: the compression is limited to a maximum of 1080p (HD)!

And let’s be real… plenty of modern presentations are being designed for higher resolution output these days. For example: 4K+ screens, LED walls, and wide-format displays. That makes this “HD-maximum” compression setting feel a bit dated. 

To make things trickier, PowerPoint doesn’t let you pick and choose which videos to compress within a slide deck. It’s all or nothing. Raise your hand if you’ve ever exported a single slide with video into its own temporary presentation, ran PowerPoint’s compression on it, and then reinserted the newly optimized video back into your original deck? Yeah. Us too. 

But let’s talk about video export. PowerPoint does a decent job here, too, offering resolutions up to 4K. But that’s where the options end. You can’t go beyond 4K. And again, for many modern uses, 4K just doesn’t cut it.

Presentations today aren’t just being projected in boardrooms. We’re using PowerPoint to build visuals for LED walls, wide-format stage displays, and custom resolution outputs that don’t follow traditional 16:9 rules. Where is the 3:1, 3240×1080 resolution option? 

What we’d love to see from Microsoft: 

• Preset export profiles up to 8K
• Or better, allow the end user to set the video resolution for export (please!)
• Ability to individually select videos within a slide deck to be optimized 
• And most importantly: support for higher-than-1080p for video compression and optimization
• The ability to create and save custom export profiles

Speaking of custom export profiles, we really like the profile system NXPowerlite has available to users! Here are the 7 custom profiles we have available on all TLC Creative computers:

PowerPoint is evolving into a tool for so much more than standard presentations. The video compression and export engine need to catch up with the creative ways people are using PowerPoint today (yes, those “unlimited” LED walls in the below image are higher resolution than 4K! And no, we were not able to optimize videos on these ultrawide resolution slides within PowerPoint). 

Until then, we’ll keep doing our hacks and workarounds and dreaming of the day we get a “Custom Resolution” button next to “Ultra HD.” 

-The TLC Creative Presentation Design Team