hi everyone kevin here today i want to show you a quick trick that’s sure to impress any audience you can insert video backgrounds in microsoft powerpoint the great thing is you don’t have to install any add-ins as long as you have powerpoint you can take advantage of this there is one caveat before we jump in to be able to use this you need a microsoft 365 subscription but if you have that you are good to go all right let’s jump on the pc and let’s check this out i’m in microsoft powerpoint and i have a blank slide and i’m ready to start inserting some video backgrounds i’ll show you two different ways that you can insert video backgrounds and the first way is pretty simple right up here on the home tab all the way over on the right hand side you’ll see an option for design ideas let’s click on that if you’ve never used design ideas before this is powerpoint ai recommending different designs to you that you can incorporate into your presentation it makes it really easy to create slides that look good here you can see just a few examples of what it’s recommending or proposing to me at the very top you’ll see that the first one has a video background so design ideas now also includes video here i can click on this and this will insert it directly into my presentation so now i have a video background now you notice there’s only one video background here out of this set but if i go all the way to the bottom of this design ideas pane i could also click on this see more design ideas and when i do that it’ll show me even more options and here’s another one with a video background and i can click on that and simply insert that into my slide as well design ideas is a really nice way to create a presentation very quickly and also to make sure that it looks very good now that i’ve added my video background to the slide i can add content on top of it here you’ll see that this is currently set to a title slide so here i can come in and let me add my name to the title slide along with simply typing in text here maybe i want to paste an image i’ll put in the logo of the kevin cookie company and i’ll position that right over there in fact i can go up to the insert tab and i can insert any type of content on top of this video background now that i’ve added a few things let’s jump into presentation mode to see what this looks like here within slideshow mode some of the things you’ll notice is it just immediately started playing so it’s set to start automatically also as the video plays it automatically loops so once it reaches the end it’ll just keep playing again and again and the good thing is the way the video was designed is it’s not really noticeable that the video is looping it just looks like one continuous long play and that tends to work really well for video background another thing that really impresses me if we look at the text here look at that transparency so the video continues to play in back of this object so overall this looks really nice back now on the main screen i’ll select the video background this is my currently selected object and when i select this you’ll see that there’s a new tab up on top called playback when i click on this one right in the center i have video options and here i can confirm that the video will just automatically start playing and it’ll continue looping until stopped now i would recommend leaving these settings this works extremely well for a video background now that we’ve looked at these settings let’s see how we can access even more video backgrounds up on the top tabs go over to the one that says insert and all the way over on the right hand side you’ll see an option to insert videos and within this menu there’s the option for stock videos let’s click on that one this opens up a prompt with stock videos and here you have a massive collection of different videos that you can insert into your presentation and along with videos there are all sorts of other stock content that you can also insert into your presentations for instance over here on the left hand side you can insert different images and here you have a ton of images to choose from you can even search for images so let’s say i want images that are red here i’ll type in red and look at that it gives me back all these different red images here i’ll cancel out the query i can also look at all the new images that were added or i could choose from one of these categories so it’s really easy to get to the type of content that you’re looking for up on top i could also insert icons into my presentation i could insert cut out people now the cutout people are really cool you’ll notice this grid background in back of them this is a transparent background so if you insert one of these images it’s really easy to integrate it into your slide to the right of cut out people i can also insert stickers maybe you’re a teacher and you’re reviewing a student’s presentation you can insert one of these stickers in and all the way over on the right hand side you also have stock illustrations that you can insert and here too just like all the other ones you have many different options one of the neat things about illustrations you’ll see that they all have this yellow incorporated into them you can change this color once you insert the illustration all right let’s jump back into videos and see what we could do here so look at all of these different options here if i hover over i can get a preview of what that video looks like here i’ll select one of these videos maybe i’ll go through and select another one and here you’ll notice you could select multiple videos to insert into your presentation i’ll pick these three and then i’ll click on insert i’ve now inserted my three video backgrounds and just to confirm that there are three backgrounds here here i can move them just a little bit and you can see all of these different video backgrounds i’ll undo that so they all just land in a stack again here when i select the topmost video if i click on the playback tab on top here too you’ll see that it’s automatically set to just start playing and then also to loop until stopped so it has the same settings as the original video background that we inserted now let’s say that i want to evaluate which video background looks the best with my content i can use the selection pane to help me with this here i’ll go over to the home tab up on top and all the way over on the right hand side there’s the option that says select if you’ve never used this before this is super helpful as you’re organizing different shapes on your slides here i’ll click on this and i’ll select the selection pane now as a quick shortcut key this is one that i recently learned about and it is extremely helpful here i’ll close the selection pane you can press the alt key together with the f10 key and that’ll also open up the selection pane so very quick way to get back to this within the selection pane whatever item is at the top is the topmost layer and whatever item is at the bottom is the bottom most layer here if i select video 25 i’ll see that it’s this video with the bubbles and if i click on video 15 well this is the original video that i added we can’t see it because it’s behind everything else right now now let’s say i want to evaluate these different video backgrounds in back of my content here i’ll take the three videos that i added i’ll press the control key so i could select all three of them and i’ll simply drag it underneath all of this other content but i’ll put it ahead of video 15 which is the original video so i’ll place them there and here now i could evaluate what they look like so i could go through each one and i could click on this show or hide icon and so i could hide that and i could view the next background and here i could go through and decide which one i like the most now i personally think the original one looks the best so here i’ll select the three video backgrounds that i added i’ll press the ctrl key once again to highlight these three and i’ll press the delete key to remove those different selections and here i am back to my original video background i thought this one looked pretty good let’s say that you want to use this video background somewhere else maybe you want to use it outside of powerpoint well you could very easily do that here once again i’ll select the video background and you can right click on it and then go down to save media as when i click on that that’ll open up the windows save as dialog here i can type in a name for this video clip and it’ll save it as an mp4 once i’m done with that i can then click on save back now on the main screen i want to show you some other things that you can do with these video backgrounds now right now the background is set so it uses up the entire slide however i can resize this so maybe i just want a video background behind one of the elements on the slide so maybe i’ll just place it behind the logo right here when i launch into presentation mode here you’ll see that the background plays just like it did before but now in this specific area not only can i resize it but when i click on the video clip and go to the top tabs i can click on video format and here i can select from all of these different formatting options over here i can apply a video shape when i click on this i don’t know maybe i go with this banner down here and that will adjust it to a banner right up here i could also apply different video effects so maybe i’ll add a let’s say a reflection i’ll throw in a reflection and let’s once again jump into presentation mode and look at that it now applies that shape to my video and plus it applies a reflection and look at that the reflection also plays the video so you could do some really fancy looking things lastly and this is a good one i want to show you how you can play your video in a custom shape here once again i have the video selected and previously we went to video format and we applied a video shape to this video but next i want to show you how we can play the video in i don’t know maybe a cookie here i’ll go up to the insert tab up on top and earlier to get to the stock video i clicked on video and i selected stock videos but there are many other entry points let’s say i want to insert a stock image here i’ll click on pictures and i can select stock images or if i want to select a stock icon here i could click on stock icons so once again many different ways in i’ll click on stock icons and let me search for cookie here’s a nice picture of a gingerbread cookie i’ll select that and then click on insert i’ve now inserted my gingerbread man and here i’ll resize him so he’s a little bit larger and i’ll place him in front of this video next i need to convert this from a vector image to a shape i’ll select the gingerbread man and go to graphics format over on the left hand side here i can convert to a shape i’ll click on that so now it’s just a standard shape next i’ll select the video and you want to make sure you select the video first then press the ctrl key and select your object on top in my case it’s the gingerbread man right up here in the search field i’ll type in merge and here you have the option to merge shapes so we’re going to merge this shape with the video and we have different options but we want to select the one called intersect and when i select that look at that the video now fills up the gingerbread man with the gingerbread man selected go to the top tabs and click on playback and over here let’s set it to start automatically and let’s also loop until stopped with those options configured let’s go down and play the slideshow and check out that our video now plays within the shape these tips are sure to impress whoever you’re presenting to all right well that’s how easy it is to insert a video background let me know down below in the comments are you planning on using this and maybe if you did already what was the reaction of your audience if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing all right well that’s all i had for you today i hope you enjoyed and as always i hope to see you next time bye [Music] [Music] you