Creating YouTube videos … using Microsoft PowerPoint

I am sure that I’m not alone in issuing a sigh of disappointment when the word PowerPoint enters the conversation. I suspect that we’ve all experienced what is termed ‘Death by PowerPoint’ and sat through long and tedious presentations … often where the presenter has read out loud what is on their slides on the assumption that the audience is too numbed by the never-ending slide show to be able to read it for themselves.

However, like some many Microsoft Office programs, most users only utilise a small percentage of the programs features … and one of these is converting a slideshow into an MP4 format that can be uploaded to YouTube.

So how does it work? To misquote Mrs Beeton, first create your slideshow!

Stage I: Create a presentation

I began by opening PowerPoint ...

... and creating a title slide ...

... before adding additional slides that suitably display the visual information and images I wanted to include in my video. (In this example, I used 'Design Suggestions' to format the slides.)

I always end with an exit slide. This is often based on the title slide.

Stage 2: Add Transitions and Animations

I then added the 'Transitions' (i.e. how each slide transits into the next) ...

... (In this case, 'Morph' 'Words') ...

... and any 'Animations' of text and/or images that I wanted to use.

These helped to make the video a bit more interesting to watch and helps maintain viewer engagement/interest.

It made sense to save the file at this stage and then test it by using the 'Slide Show' function.

Stage 3: Record the voiceover

Once I was happy with the slide show and I had my script or notes ready, I began the process of recording the voiceover.

I selected the 'Record' function ...

... and when I was ready to record, I pressed the red button at the top of the recording screen.

I used headphones with an attached lip microphone to record what I wanted to say (it helped to reduce the possibility of unwanted background noise being picked up) and the mouse to advance each slide as and when necessary. When I did this, it automatically saved the timing for each slide transition and how long each slide was displayed.

When I had finished recording the voiceover, I pressed the red button to stop the recording process.

It was important to remember that when I moved from one slide to the next, there was a slight recording delay and it was important to allow for this otherwise the end of a word and the beginning of the next might be inaudible.

If I made a mistake, I cleared any recording I had made on an individual slide or slides by using the 'Clear Recording' button on the toolbar.

Once I was happy with the recording and the timing of the presentation, I saved the file and tested it using the 'Slide Show' function.

Stage 4: Save as an MP4 file

Now that I had a PowerPoint presentation that had a voiceover and had the timing of each slide transition in place, I then exported it as a video.

The end result of this process can be seen here on the Wargaming Miscellany YouTube channel.