There's no doubt that the easiest and quickest way to use videos in your Prezi is using the Insert YouTube option from the main menu. YouTube has millions of videos available and it takes much more time than you have available to watch every single video that's stored there.
With such an expansive free source of videos available, it's bound to be your first stop. We'll start from here and add more details as we go through the chapter.
Tip
Be a master
Make sure you explore everything in this chapter and go beyond simply inserting YouTube clips that already exist into your Prezi canvas. You picked up this book because you wanted to master Prezi and all of the elements it contains, so stick with it and give everything mentioned here a try.
So you've come to a point in your Prezi where a video would be a really useful source of stimulation for your audience. But, how do you find the right clip and insert it into your Prezi canvas?
Let's pretend that we need a short clip of someone doing a parachute jump. The clip needs to be a couple of minutes long, and very high quality:
- Go to www.youtube.com.
- Enter a keyword or phrase into the search panel, for example, parachute jump.
- Use the Filters option to find clips shorter than four minutes and in HD quality.
- Using the filters will decrease the amount of videos available. This is circled in the upper-right corner of the preceding screenshot.
- Click on a video that looks like a good match and watch it from start to finish, checking the quality.
- Once you find the clip, copy the URL from the top of the web page.
- Now, go into your Prezi canvas and click on Insert and YouTube video…. Then, paste the URL into the dialogue box provided and click on Insert:
It's definitely a good idea to use the filtering system on the YouTube website. By just selecting a couple of filters, you can reduce the number of videos in your search by a few thousand, or even more. This will save you a lot of time and help to give you exactly what you need.
Note
Using this method does not embed the YouTube clips into your Prezi, but simply creates a link to them. In order to use this method, you must be 100 percent certain that when you finally present your Prezi, there will be a reliable Internet connection available, and that the YouTube website is not blocked by your IT department.