Downloading Online Videos for a Presentation

I love well-placed and well-used video in presentations.

Like a quotation, a video clip can sometimes make a point much more succinctly than you are able to. Or, it can add humor where you might not be capable yourself. Whatever the ultimate goal, a video is just great for breaking things up and re-engaging your audience.Remember, every ten minutes you should find some way to shake things up.

I often see people insert YouTube hyperlinks into their presentations. And I often see them uncomfortably navigate to a browser window and then back to their presentation. And that assumes that the presenter actually has an internet connection when and where they need it.

Whenever possible, videos need to be local—whether linked in PPT 2007 and earlier or actually embedded as in Keynote and PPT 2010 (the new version of PowerPoint takes a huge step forward with regard to video.)

In order to download online videos, I used to jump through a number of complicated hoops involving screen capture tools and fiddling under my Mac's hood. But I was just turned onto a great add-on for Firefox that makes downloading internet content fairly idiot-proof. It's called Video DownloadHelper. You can learn more about the freeware from their website, but the easiest way to install and get going with this is to visit this Firefox add-on page and just follow the directions.

Once installed, the software adds a small icon to your Firefox browser bar which animates anytime you are on a page with video that can be downloaded. The add-in is cross-platform, but if you are on a PC, Video DownloadHelper can be further configured via an additional install to convert your videos to various formats including MOVs and WMVs. The software isn't 100% perfect and cannot download from certain sites like Netflix, but it works brilliantly for YouTube and most other videos.

And of course, I assume we are all downloading and using videos within fair use laws...

I want to thank Joe Tandle, a fantastic PowerPoint trainer from New York Interactive Mediafor this tip. If you are looking for on or off-site Microsoft Office training, I highly recommend Joe and NYIM.