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A practical guide to presentations

Animation, sound, & video

A look at designing and delivering presentations, in person and online.

Slides don't have to be static. On this page we'll look at how to apply transition effects between slides; we'll explore animations, from making bullet points appear to making objects move and dance in the most elaborate ways; then we'll look at adding audio and video to our slides, including how to record narration and screencasts using PowerPoint.

Transitions

Transitions are used to make the change between slides less abrupt. They can also serve to give you a bit of breathing space to help punctuate the points you're making.

Some of PowerPoint's transitions can look particularly whizzy, and it's very easy to make your presentation to look like a 1980s pop video. Other transitions may make your audience a bit seasick, You may want to stick to one or two subtle choices!

If you're presenting online, bear in mind that your frame-rate may be quite low, so what looks like a smooth transition on your computer might seem quite jerky and confusing through something like Zoom. You may be better off not using transitions and just having a simple 'cut' between each slide.

When applying a transition to a slide, that transition is applied to the appearance of that slide: its the effect that happens when you go into the slide, not the effect that happens when you leave it.

Applying transitions

PowerPoint

The controls for transitions are all found on the Transitions tab:

  1. Choose a transition from Transition to This Slide and use the Effect Options to customise it;
  2. On the Timing ribbon group you can set the "Duration" of the transition (how long it takes to happen). You can also set whether switching between slides ("advancing") happens manually (with a click or keypress), automatically (on a timer), or both.
  3. You probably don't want to add a transition sound (unless you want to be deliberately annoying, or you have some other good reason), but the option is there if you want it. You can also Apply To All if you want to apply the transition to all of your slides.
Tip

If you configure a show to use automatic timings but also wish to use it with manual slide advance, you can suppress the timings by unchecking the box at Slide Show > Set Up > Use Timings.


Google Slides
  1. Go to Slide > Transition — the "Motion" side-panel will open;
  2. Select a transition from the "Slide transition" drop-down, and modify any further settings that appear;
  3. If you want to apply a transition to all the slides in your deck, use the Apply to all slides button.
Tip

The Dissolve transition in Google Slides is the same as the standard "Fade" transition in PowerPoint ("Fade" in Google Slides uses a fade-through-black effect).


Tip

You might want to alternate between, say, two transition effects. You can apply transitions to multiple slides at once by ctrl-selecting (holding down the "Ctrl" button as you click individual slides) in the navigation pane.


Animation

Slide animation allows you to introduce, emphasise, and remove items from a slide. This can help focus attention on specific content.

Animation has long been a part of presentation, be it writing on a blackboard, using a piece of paper on an overhead projector to reveal more of a transparency, or, if you're the BBC, this sort of masterpiece of pop-up card:

An example of animated graphics by Alfred Wurmser from BBC Television (1957)

In slide software, an animation effect can be achieved simply by duplicating an existing slide and then adding or removing content. But there are also built-in animation tools that allow animation of elements to take place within a single slide. The principles involved aren't that different to what Alfred Wurmser was doing in 1957, but in a slide deck it's a bit easier and requires a lot less mechanical skill!

Basic animation

PowerPoint

The Animation tab includes the essential controls for animating content.

There are four types of animation effect:

  • Entrance — the text/object is introduced onto the slide;
  • Emphasis — content already on the slide is highlighted or otherwise transformed;
  • Exit — the text/object is removed from the slide;
  • Motion Paths — the text/object moves from one position to another.

Applying an effect

  1. Select the text/object to be animated;
  2. Choose an animation effect from the gallery (Animations > Animation) — this will be applied to the selection;
  3. Inspect the Effect Options and choose alternatives as appropriate — these will depend on the effect chosen and the type of object being animated;
  4. In the Timing group on the ribbon, choose how the effect will behave.

Default settings

  • An animation applied to a placeholder will create animation points for the placeholder itself (but only if it has shape formatting of any kind) and to each paragraph or list item therein.
  • An animation applied to a shape or text-box will by default only apply to the object as a whole, not to any text content.
  • An animation applied to highlighted text in a shape or text-box will be applied only to that selection; if the selection contains multiple paragraphs, animation points will be created for each one.
A number appears next to each animation to indicate the order in which the animations are activated
Bullets set to appear one-at-a-time in separate (enumerated) animations.
The animations will play in numerical order.

By default, animations are set to be triggered by a mouse click. All of these defaults can be modified in the Effect Options.

When you apply animation to a series of bullet points, the following defaults apply:

  • The points are animated by paragraph in the order they are listed;
  • Each top-level bullet point is animated on a mouse-click;
  • Second-level bullet points are animated along with their ‘parent’.
Google Slides

The animation options in Google Slides are relatively basic:


Applying an animation

  1. Select the text/object to be animated;
  2. Go to Insert > Animation — the "Motion" side-panel will open and a Fade in animation will be applied automatically;
  3. Use the drop-downs and slider to set the animation type and behaviour.

Default settings

By default, a Fade in animation will be applied to the selection. Regardless of its type, this will act upon the text/object as a whole.

Use the By paragraph checkbox to force the animation to act on each paragraph in turn.


Start conditions

When presenting, an animation is enacted according to its Start condition. This can be one of three options:

  • On click — the animation effect is applied when the mouse is clicked (or the slide is otherwise advanced);
  • With previous — the animation effect is applied at the same time as the previously activated animation effect;
  • After previous — the animation effect is applied immediately after the previously activated animation effect has completed.

With the last two options, if there is no preceding animation, the effect will start automatically when the slide is shown.

PowerPoint also has the option to define an object in your slide as a clickable Trigger for your animation.

In Google Slides, the order in which animations are triggered can be changed using the drag bars in the Object animations section of the "Motion" side panel: just drag and drop the animations in the order you want.

In PowerPoint, you'll need to use the Animation Pane [cue dramatic music, perhaps as an animation event]...

PowerPointThe Animation Pane

For full control of animations in PowerPoint you will need to open the "Animation Pane" side-panel: Animations > Advanced Animation > Animation Pane

Each animated item is listed in the pane, and icons indicate the timing and type of animation. The numbers in the pane indicate the order in which the animations are played, and correspond to the numbers shown against the respective objects on the slide.

Compound animations for text items (i.e. paragraph-by-paragraph animations) may be grouped, in which case it will be necessary to expand the list using the chevron control.


Effects options

In addition to controlling things like the direction and duration of an effect, PowerPoint allows you to introduce delays between an effect's start condition and when it plays. So, for instance, you could set an animation to play 2 seconds after you click to activate it. This allows you to build quite complicated animations. The Animation Pane isn't just a list of animations in the current slide; it's also a timeline of animation events, and shows start points and durations as plotted against a "Seconds" scale at the bottom of the pane.

Some effects allow you to do even more fine-tuning to how they behave. To modify an existing effect:

  1. In the Animation Pane, locate and select the specific effect event;
  2. For simple changes, configure in Animations > Timing and the Animations > Animation > Effect Options dropdown;
  3. For other changes select the specific effect event in the Animation Pane and choose Effect Options… from the right-click context menu;
  4. The options dialogue gives you full control over an effect options, timing and animation.

Re-ordering

If items are not animated in the order you want, select items and then either drag to the new position in the list, or re-position using the re-order controls at the top right of the animation pane.


Adding additional effects

Once you have applied an animation effect to an item, you can add another effect to the same item (e.g. an emphasis or exit effect).

To add the second effect, don't try to choose it from the gallery — this will replace the existing effect. Instead, after selecting the item, choose Animations > Advanced Animation > Add Animation.


An example

The animation below was constructed in PowerPoint. It uses 14 separate animation effects over two slides, with a "Morph" transition between (see below) to get the hedgehog across the road without too much messing about.

Animation: A hedgehog waits to cross a busy road. The pedestrian crossing turns green and the hedgehog crosses then scurries away along the far pavement

Here's a look at the first of the two slides:

The slide editor view is zoomed out to 25% to take in the full motion paths of the cars (which go way outside the frame of the slide); The Animation Pane shows twelve animation effects triggered over the course of five seconds.

  • The effects begin with the start of the slide (denoted by the "0" in the Animation Pane);
  • First to happen is a "Teeter" effect on the hedgehog, which is set to repeat until the slide ends;
  • Starting at the same time is the Custom Motion Path of the green car: it starts off the left edge of the slide, wobbles quickly across and off the other end, then moves in a square, far below the bottom of the slide, back to somewhere near where it started; This movement is set to take five seconds, repeating continuously;
  • One second later, the yellow truck comes in from the opposite direction; its laps take only two seconds (making it a faster vehicle);
  • In the next two seconds, the beige car and the white van also enter, each travelling at different speeds; again, the animation repeats continuously;
  • Next up we have a series of "Fly Out" animations which cause any vehicles still on the screen to exit the slide (in the direction they're travelling); originally these were intended to be triggered by a mouse click, allowing the traffic to pass for as long as the speaker needed; in this example they're instead happening automatically, at 3.75 seconds into the slide (the white van's exit animation is shorter than the rest just because it was near the edge of shot at that time and so needed less time to get out of the slide);
  • Another time point comes a second later, when the green man appears on the crossing signal, the red man disappears, and the WAIT light changes colour from amber to grey.

The hedgehog crossing the road happens via a "Morph" transition, and its waddle out of shot happens in the next slide, using a repeated "Teeter" effect at the same time as a "Fly Out" to give the illusion of walking.

PowerPointEasy animations with the "Morph" transition

PowerPoint has a special transition called Morph which creates an animation based on shared content between two slides. It allows you to generate really quite elaborate animations without the messing about normally required in the Animation Pane.

A small red triangle (slide 1) animates to become a large blue triangle in a new position (slide 2) and then animates back to being a small red triangle (a duplicate slide 1)

The above example is a three-slide animation created using the following method:

  1. A slide is created (slide 1) and a red triangle shape is drawn onto it;
  2. The slide is duplicated (copy/paste, or right-click and Duplicate Slide);
  3. On the duplicate slide (slide 2), the shape is modified: it is repositioned, rotated, resized, and given a new fill colour;
  4. The "Morph" transition is applied to slide 2 from the Transitions tab;
  5. The "Morph" transition identifies the triangle in the two slides as being the same object (albeit having undergone some modification) and generates an appropriate animation to bridge the two states;
  6. In the case of this example, slide 1 has then been duplicated again (as slide 3), again with a "Morph" transition, thereby returning the triangle to its original position (the same effect would happen simply by transitioning backwards and forwards between slides 1 and 2, but we needed to save this animation as a GIF).

Morph is only available in PowerPoint 2019 or later. But many of the Morph effects are backwardly compatible, so they will work to some degree or other on earlier versions of PowerPoint.

Tip

The more elaborate your Morph, the more strain it will put on your computer. If you're going to be presenting on a lectern PC, bear in mind that it may not have as much processing power as the computer you used to make the slides in the first place.


Sound & vision

Don't you wonder sometimes about inserting audio and video into slides? Well wonder no more!

Sound clips

Both PowerPoint and Google Slides support sound files including .wav and .mp3.


Inserting a sound clip to be played on demand

PowerPoint
  1. On the slide from which the sound is to be played, select Insert > Media > Audio > Audio on My PC... and select a file to insert (you can also just drag a file onto the slide);
  2. The clip is inserted with a speaker icon and temporary player controls to preview the clip;
  3. Configure the clip using the contextual Playback tab. From here you can:
    • Trim the clip at the start and end;
    • Fade the clip in/out;
    • Set the playback volume;
    • Configure to play automatically with the slide, and continue playing after the slide changes;
    • Hide the speaker icon (you'd only want to use this if the audio triggers in some other way, and to be honest it's easier to just drag the icon off the edge of the slide).
Google Slides
  1. On the slide from which the sound is to be played, select Insert > Audio and locate the file to insert — the file will need to be in your Google Drive;
  2. On insertion, you may be prompted to amend the sharing permissions on your audio file; if you will be sharing your slides, you will need to share your sound file accordingly, otherwise it will not be able to be played;
  3. The clip is inserted with a speaker icon and temporary player controls to preview the clip;
  4. Use Format > Format options to open the "Audio playback" section of the "Format options" side-panel; From here you can:
    • Set the playback volume;
    • Configure to play automatically with the slide, and continue playing after the slide changes;
    • Hide the speaker icon (you'd only want to use this if the audio triggers in some other way, and to be honest it's easier to just drag the icon off the edge of the slide).

Playing the clip

When the show is running, if the audio is configured for on-demand playback, the clip is activated by clicking once on the speaker icon. Hovering over the icon also generates a progress bar with a pause button.

If the sound is set to play automatically, it will play with the start of the slide. In PowerPoint, automatic playback can be delayed, and its timing controlled via the Animation Pane.

PowerPointSlide narration

PowerPoint lets you record a commentary over slides to create a slideshow presentation that can be run unattended.

The timing of each slide is set when the narration is recorded, but you don't need to record the whole presentation in one go.

  1. Connect a microphone to your computer and ensure you have a reasonably quiet environment. You may need to set the recording level through your computer’s Control Panel;
  2. Choose Slide Show > Set Up > Record Slide Show — a special recording view will open:
    You can select audio and video sources in the recording screen
  3. So long as a microphone has been detected, the option to record narration should be available; if you've got a camera connected you can also choose to record video: an insert will appear as a square in the bottom right of the slide;
  4. Begin your narration and advance each slide as appropriate to match the commentary. Avoid speaking over a slide change and leave a short pause before advancing the slide;
  5. If you make a mistake, press the Escape (Esc) key to end recording. You can begin recording again at any slide, starting at point 2 above (there's a "Record from Current Slide" option on the "Record Slide Show" dropdown);
  6. After the final slide, or if you interrupt recording, you will be asked if you want to save the slide timings. Agree to this to maintain synchronisation between the slides and commentary;
  7. Each slide will now contain an extra sound clip speaker icon; this contains the commentary and is pre-configured to hide the speaker icon and play automatically with each slide as it appears.

Video clips

Both PowerPoint and Google Slides let you embed common video formats such as .mp4 and .mov. You can also embed videos from YouTube (and some other online sources in the case of PowerPoint).


Adding a 'local' file

If you're wanting to show a video that you've got as a file (rather than a video that you've uploaded to a website like YouTube), you'll probably want to embed it into your slide deck.

PowerPoint
Tip

Bear in mind that adding the video file to your slide deck will almost certainly make the file-size of your deck much much bigger. If you need to share your slides with anyone, a large file size may pose difficulties.


  1. If you're using a content placeholder, choose Insert Video and Browse for your item; otherwise choose Insert > Media > Video > Video on My PC...
  2. Select the video you want to insert and choose Insert — the video clip will be added to your slide as an object;
  3. You can adjust the appearance of your video object as you would an image — be sure to use the corner handles to preserve the aspect ratio proportions;
  4. Configure the video's behaviour using the Playback tab. From here you can:
    • Trim the clip at the start and end;
    • Fade the clip in/out;
    • Set the playback volume;
    • Configure to play automatically with the slide;
    • Play full screen.

Tip

When viewed the player will include some basic controls, but these can be hidden from the Slide Show tab.


Google Slides
  1. On the slide from which the video is to be played, select Insert > Video — the "Insert video" dialogue will open;
  2. Choose the Google Drive tab, and locate the file to insert — the file will need to be in your Google Drive;
  3. On insertion, you may be prompted to amend the sharing permissions on your video file; if you will be sharing your slides, you will need to share your video file accordingly, otherwise it will not be able to be played;
  4. The clip is inserted as an object;
  5. You can adjust the appearance of your video object as you would an image — be sure to use the corner handles to preserve the aspect ratio proportions;
  6. Use Format > Format options to open the "Video playback" section of the "Format options" side-panel; From here you can:
    • Mute audio;
    • Trim the clip at the start and end;
    • Configure to play automatically with the slide.

Adding a YouTube video

An embedded YouTube video will still need internet access in order to run. Video playback in a slide can be a bit buggy, and not as smooth as playback directly from YouTube, so first ask yourself whether it's essential that the video is embedded in your slide deck, or whether you could just link to it instead.

PowerPoint
  1. On the slide from which the video is to be played, select Insert > Media > Video > Online Video...
  2. Paste in the web address (URL) and choose Insert
  3. You can adjust the appearance of your video object as you would an image — be sure to use the corner handles to preserve the aspect ratio proportions;

The video can be sized and repositioned, but the available settings on the Playback tab are limited to the basic "Start" animation options.


Tip

You can use this method to import videos from other sources as well as YouTube. Not everything will work.


Google Slides
  1. On the slide from which the video is to be played, select Insert > Video — the "Insert video" dialogue will open;
  2. If you're seeing the Google Drive search options, click the "Back" arrow at the top-left of the dialogue box;
  3. You can Search YouTube for a video, or, if you know the web address already, use the By URL tab;
  4. Once you've found your video, hit Select — the video will be inserted as an object;
  5. You can adjust the appearance of your video object as you would an image — be sure to use the corner handles to preserve the aspect ratio proportions;
  6. Use Format > Format options to open the "Video playback" section of the "Format options" side-panel; From here you can:
    • Mute audio;
    • Trim the clip at the start and end;
    • Configure to play automatically with the slide.

PowerPointScreen recording

PowerPoint lets you record your screen. The recording is inserted into your slide as an object. You can save this object as a video file, making PowerPoint quite a useful screencapture tool in its own right.

The screencapture's frame-rate is 10 frames per second.

  1. On the slide where you want to add the screencapture, choose Insert > Media > Screen Recording — PowerPoint will minimise and a video capture toolbar will open:
  2. Use the controls on the toolbar to select the area of your screen you want to capture, and whether or not you also want to record audio and capture your mouse pointer;
  3. When you're ready to record, hit the Record button, and pay attention to the instructions;
  4. If you're lucky enough to still be able to see the controls, you can pause your recording or stop it and commit it to your slide; if you can't see the controls you'll need to press the Windows key, Shift, and 'Q' together to stop the recording;
  5. When your recording is stopped, the video will be rendered to your slide as a video object — the usual controls and settings apply;
  6. If you want to save a copy of your video, right-click select it and choose Save Media As...

Subtitling


Live captioning

Both PowerPoint and Google Slides have the option of live captioning when presenting:

PowerPoint

Slide Show > Captions & Subtitles > Always Use Subtitles

Google Slides

On the hover toolbar when presenting, choose Captions



Adding subtitles to a video clip

PowerPoint

Captions can be added so long as they're in the WebVTT (.vtt) subtitle format. Select the video and go to Playback > Caption Options > Insert Captions

WebVTT uses a text file saved with the extension ".vtt". You can make your own with any text editor so long as you save the file with the .vtt extension. The formatting looks like this:

WEBVTT

00:00:00.030 --> 00:00:08.000
At the University of York we have access
to a whole suite of Google applications.

00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:14.000
Now these are web applications
that work really well in Google's own browser -

... where the numbers are time codes in hours:minutes:seconds:thousandths.

Google Slides

Google Slides doesn't have any specific options for captioning imported video, but it uses Google/YouTube's video player, so if captions exist with the source video they can be displayed in the slides. Captions can be added to Google Drive videos so it's relatively easy to caption your own videos through that method.

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