In previous versions of PowerPoint, converting presentations to movies could be a bit of a laborious task. PowerPoint 2010 has a new feature allowing presentations to quickly and easily be saved directly to .wmv (Windows Media Video) format .
- Open the presentation within PowerPoint 2010.
- Do a run-through of your presentation to make sure there is an adequate amount of time between slide transitions and any animation effects you may have added and make any necessary changes.
You won't be clicking your mouse to continue the presentation once it is a movie and you may find that the default transition time goes too fast (or not fast enough) for your liking.
- Choose File > Save As.
- From the Save as Type drop-down menu, select Windows Media Video (*.wmv).
- Click Save.
- Notice the Creating video progress bar appears at the bottom of your screen. Sometimes this can take a while. Do not close the presentation before the progress bar indicates that it is finished. If you find that you don't want to wait, you can click the red X button to cancel the process.
And that's all there is to it!
The good news: In PowerPoint 2007, not only did you need to go in to Windows Movie Maker to convert your presentations to movies, but in doing so you lost any transitions or animation effects you may have added. When you use PowerPoint 2010 to Save As a .wmv file, all of your transitions and animations stay in tact.
The not so good news: If you use PowerPoint 2010's new feature allowing for embedding videos from a website, you will find that when you try to save the presentation as a .wmv file, an error message will appear alerting you that this content will not display in your movie. All is not lost. Following these directions, you can take the long way to insert videos from YouTube into your presentation. Using this method will allow you to make a movie from your presentation in which the video will play.
Related article: PowerPoint 2007: Adding Voiceover Narration to Presentations Converted to Movies.
About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."
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