Inserting Video in PowerPoint (part 4) - Saving YouTube Videos

Sure you learned yesterday how to drop that YouTube video into a PowerPoint presentation when you computer is connected to the internet. But what do you do when you need to take the presentation on the road and you don't know if you'll have internet access when you get there? YouTube doesn't have a way to save the videos from the site so that you always have to go back to them to get the content. Unless . . .

The YouTube Options (YTO) extension for Google Chrome allows you to download the YouTube video to your computer's hard drive. First of all, you should probably be using Google Chrome as your web browser. It's fast, stable, and extensible (which means you can add all sorts of goodies to it). YTO shows you a YouTube video and then gives you a few download links underneath the video in either FLV or MP4 format. Either way you'll need to convert it to play nice with PowerPoint, so grab the highest resolution file you can (look for the largest number). This will keep your video from looking too grainy when you project it.

Once you've saved it, convert it into a PowerPoint friendly format (remember how?) and plug it into the presentation. Now that you know this information you're never going to give it up.

What YouTube video needs to go in your next PowerPoint?