A Look Back to: Automatically Moving a Slide Forward After A Video Ends
It’s hard to believe it’s been almost nine years (9!) since we talked about this PowerPoint tip (the original post was published on March 11, 2016). Back then, embedded video was not as common as it is today. While some things have changed, this little trick still holds up so well!
So, let’s revisit this tip!
The Magic Auto Advance Shortcut
Using PowerPoint’s auto advance transition feature is pretty straightforward… but trying to calculate the exact duration of a video just to time a transition? That part can be exhausting.
Fortunately, there’s good news: you don’t actually need to know how long your video is! Why? Because PowerPoint will not auto-advance a slide mid-video – even if your timing says it should.
Is that good or bad? That depends on the desired action you want PowerPoint to do. Because the TLC Creative presentation design team has been at this for a long (long) time – we expect PowerPoint, and auto advance slide transition to work this way, so we exploit it in our slide design.
Basically, when an embedded video plays, PowerPoint patiently waits until the video finishes playing before doing an auto slide transition, if it has been set to auto transition. Of course, if an earlier slide transition is needed, your best option is to trim the video (eg. make it shorter) or advance the slide manually.
The 2-second Auto-Advance
Here’s how it works:
In our example, we want slide 1, which has the embedded video, to automatically advance to slide 2 once the video ends.
Set the slide 1 transition to auto advance after 2 seconds. This assumes the video is the only animation on the slide and set to start automatically.
PowerPoint will go to slide 1, play the full video, ignore the auto advance at 2 seconds setting, complete the video playback, then automatically advance to slide 2!
No need to match video duration and slide auto advance duration perfectly. This built-in behavior makes a simple and reliable way to create a smooth transition to the next slide that feels professional, vs. sitting on the last frozen frame until the presenter clicks to advance.
Want to see it in action? Here’s a quick video demonstrating how this setup works (still a great video – and slide setup, from our work in 2016!):
Still one of our favorite PowerPoint “tricks,” even years later.
– Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team
Add a Smart Phone Demo Video to a Slide
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
Add Live Camera to Slides
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
A Look Back at What Has Not Changed – The PowerPoint Slideshow Video Playback Bar
Nine years ago in 2016, we made a PowerPoint Blog post about Microsoft PowerPoint’s video playback media bar. Back then, the playback bar could be seen in slide edit view when selecting a video. It provided all the standard video controls; click to any point, scrub, pause, volume control, and the ability to see the time code.
When in slideshow mode, the media bar would be activated by any mouse movement over the video, and its functions were then seen while presenting, displaying on the slide while in slideshow mode. However, once the mouse was moved off the video in slideshow mode, the bar would disappear.
There were a few differences between the edit view experience and the slideshow experience. The most visible was the position of the media bar. It is below the video in edit view and overlaid on the video during slideshow. However, in slideshow mode, there are fewer control options (no fast forward or rewind buttons, and no time code is displayed).
One important note was that if you were presenting with Presenter View, the media bar was activated when the mouse moved over the video either on the slide OR in the Presenter View window.
Now nine years later, there have been no real changes, updates, or improvements to the video playback bar – and no changes to the media interactions and information in PowerPoint!
Here is our wish list for the Video Playback Bar (hey Microsoft PowerPoint Dev Team, are you listening?) in the form of a mockup of what we are dreaming about.
- First, while we realize this is not related to media control it’s something we strongly believe is sorely needed so we want to continue bringing this request to the top of the conversation – PowerPoint needs to support alpha channel video (eg. transparency), please!
- And when the media controls to play, pause, stop, rewind, and mute show up on the slideshow screen when triggered in Presenter View, we should have the ability to hide them from the slideshow screen (because we do not want the audience to see those controls)
- Make large, easy-to-use informative media controls in Presenter View (see above UI mockup)
- A live countdown showing duration until the video is complete
- Scrubbable timeline
- Duration of video displayed
- Pause, reset to the beginning, jump to end, loop, volume control
- The Loop icon would be color-coded to indicate if the video has any type of loop applied, and can be dynamically turned on/off by clicking the icon
- Finally, a user-selectable option for “no media controls on the slide if presenting with Presenter View” (because the media controls will be available on the Presenter View window now).
If anyone on the Microsoft PowerPoint Dev Team is reading this, thank you! Here’s hoping we’ll see improvements to PowerPoint’s video playback bar in the future. For everyone reading this post, I hope this is helpful information.
-Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team
New Podcast Episode Available! “Navigating Change: Insights on Presentation Design Over the Last Decade and SlideRabbit’s Big Transition Bethany Auck”
New episode of The Presentation Podcast now available! In this episode of The Presentation Podcast, the hosts are joined by Bethany Auck, founder of SlideRabbit, for a candid and insightful conversation. The group reflect on the past decade of transformation in presentation design. They also talk with Bethany about the journey of building SlideRabbit, and its recent acquisition and transition to new ownership.
Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.
PowerPoint has a Video Problem – Optimizing Ends at 4K
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
A Look Back at Layering Video with Static Images
It’s summer, and let’s be honest, during a blistering California summer, looking at some chilly mountains can be good therapy!
Back in July 2020, we created a post about this dynamic slide, which utilized creative layering of static images and an embedded video. One thing to note is that we used PowerPoint’s native background removal tool – which has remained unchanged for years. Overall, this is a great effect and can be repurposed to use in a number of presentations!
The Design Process
- First, we started with a static image: a mountain range with a blue sky.
- With some effort, we were able to use PowerPoint’s Remove Background tool to remove the blue sky so the mountain stood alone.
- Then, we found a great video of moving clouds. Of course, our slide shows a snow-covered mountain and the video we found shows a grass covered field. However, because the static image of the mountain range will be in front of the video, effectively blocking the grass, it works great for our slide! (But also, the video could be cropped to remove the lower grass from being part of the playback).
- Layered on the slide, everything blends together great! The moving clouds in the video add subtle motion to the scene, while the grassy portion of the video is not seen.
- Finally, we layered some stylized PowerPoint text on top of the mountains to complete the slide design.
The result? A visually compelling slide with a natural, fluid feel—made entirely in PowerPoint. But what’s wrong with this picture? Exactly…it’s a low-res image and not a video! Let’s blame it on Covid, but we weren’t able to find some of the original files from this post, so let’s recreate this layered effect again today.
How We Recreated a Similar Cloudy Mountaintop Today
We found the mountain scene jpg, but since PowerPoint’s background removal tool hasn’t changed and we don’t want to spend that much time again, we’re going to take the image into Photoshop and use Photoshop’s generative tools to remove the sky quickly and create a .png image.
Using a different but similar video of moving clouds (this time with no grass in the foreground) we layered the cloud video and mountain graphic in PowerPoint and added stylized text. Now we’re back to where we started!
This time, however, we can show you the final results in video form. Overall, this is a great effect and can be repurposed in a variety of ways to use in a number of presentations!
Feeling a little relief from the heat? We hope you can use this layering technique sometime by following the same steps!
– Troy @ TLC