Tutorial

Stop Motion Animated GIFs for the win on a process diagram slide!

Yes, you can create a stop motion-style animation in PowerPoint – without using any transitions or animations at all! Sounds wild, right? This method is all about clever slide sequencing, all to create a looping visual effect that’s perfect for showcasing a fun process diagram because this is obviously what everyone thinks of when they use PowerPoint (a little slide sarcasm there for you)!

Let’s walk through how to build a seamless stop motion loop in PowerPoint using nothing but static slides and timed auto-advances. 

What is Stop Motion in PowerPoint?

In this case, it’s simple: a series of slightly different slides that play in quick succession, creating the illusion of motion, just like classic frame-by-frame stop motion films or page-by-page flipbooks. 

Let’s use a process diagram built it across several slides to create a stop motion effect when played. And this is the best part – there are no animations and no transitions — just the slides doing all the work!

First, set your slide transition (and each slide transition in the animation sequence) to auto advance by clicking the AFTER checkbox and set the timing at 00:00 (e.g., no pause between slides advancing). 

Building Each Shape Element Per Slide (The Frame-by-Frame Method) 

To create a stop motion effect, think of each slide as a frame, or page, in a flipbook. Instead of using PowerPoint animation to make a shape appear, we duplicate the entire slide and then add a new element or piece of an element, or adjust existing elements by slightly repositioning, resizing, or changing the angle. For example, in our process diagram, we duplicate our slide and add a lightbulb icon, which will pop up inside the circle shape when played in slide show mode. 

Keep repeating the process, adding elements, moving them, resizing…just remember to check your progress often in slide show mode. 

Create a Perfect Loop – Start and End with Blank Slides

If you’re exporting your stop motion animation as a GIF (which plays in a continuous loop), there’s a simple but essential trick to avoid a jumpy or stuttered loop. 

  • Add a blank slide — e.g., no text, diagram, or shapes, just a solid background (ideally matching your design’s background color). 
  • Insert that blank slide as the first and last slides in the sequence. 

Why Blank Slides Work

When you export to GIF, PowerPoint will loop from the last slide directly back to the first. Without a blank slide in between (or an identical/matching first and last slide), viewers will see the last slide content and then the sudden jump back to the first slide content, which breaks the illusion of a smooth, continuous loop. 

By sandwiching your animation with blank frames, the eyes get a quick pause before the loop starts again. This creates a break in the motion that tricks the viewer into perceiving the animation as seamless. 

Export as a GIF 

Tip: to effectively preview in slide show, go to the Slide Show tab > Set Up Slide Show > click Loop continuously until ‘Esc’. Be sure to watch your animation through to the end and wait for it to loop back to the beginning.  

Once your review shows a great animation effect with a seamless loop, it is time to create the animated GIF. 

Go to File > Export > Create an Animated GIF > Large 720p 

TIP: GIF is a large file size format. PowerPoint has four resolution/quality GIF output options. We generally use 720p for social media for a balance of file size and quality. For using an animated GIF in a presentation where file size may not be the same concern, we will often export to the full 1080p if the GIF will be a full slide element. 

Final Thoughts 

You don’t need complex animations and other software tools to bring your slides, social media content, or blog posts to life. With just static slides and thoughtful design, you can create engaging, looping stop motion effects that can make the content stand out! Here is our process diagram as an exported GIF: 

Animated GIFs can be perfect for: 

  • Process diagrams 
  • Visual storytelling 
  • Looped booth displays 
  • Instructional graphics 
  • And practically anything that needs to loop 

So next time you want motion, don’t animate, just duplicate smartly!

-Christie on the TLC Creative Presentation Design Team 

By |2025-07-21T12:33:16-07:00November 12th, 2025|Tutorial|

What is a Stop Motion Animation – and How Can PowerPoint Create One?

Stop motion is one of those animation styles that’s super simple but really fun! Basically, it’s just a bunch of still images strung together in a specific order, and then shown quickly one after the next to make the subject look like it’s moving. Think claymation, paper cutouts, flipbooks.   

For example, we can make this mouse look like it’s running with just six 6 images: 

The final GIF: 

What’s cool is that you don’t need specialty software to create this. Stop motion animations can be created right in PowerPoint. Yep – the same PowerPoint we use for presentations can double as a mini animation studio!

All that is needed is to build out each frame of the animation as a separate slide. Then export the slides as a video or animated GIF. It’s perfect for fun little projects, social media posts, or even adding some personality to a presentation.  

Here’s what the PowerPoint presentation of our stop motion running mouse looks like, which is only 6 slides. The same background is used on all slides, and the biggest design consideration is positioning the character art in the same location on each slide.  

An important note is that there are no PowerPoint animations, and no slide transition effects. The slides are set with the NONE transition effect and automatically advance to the next slide. Go to Export > Animated GIF > Done! Download and experiment with this slide deck here. 

Throughout this month, we are going to explore PowerPoint stop-motion creations in more detail, including how-to’s and examples in the weeks ahead.  

-The TLC Creative Design Team 

By |2025-09-08T08:19:54-07:00November 10th, 2025|Tutorial|

A Look Back at Slide Background Design with Text – and a New Background Text Idea!

We are looking back to February 2020 and the post entitled, “Use PowerPoint Text As Part of Background Design”. Click here to view the full 2020 post.  

Looking back, I feel this was a pretty simplistic example of a slide design. I know it was inspired by a real client project (and like most of our design work, that project was under an NDA and not able to be directly shared). But I have a new project that incorporates text into the background that I feel is much more dynamic! 

In this new slide design tutorial, we’ll use a speech bubble SVG from The Noun Project and transform it with shadows, bevels, AND a subtle logo texture as part of its background, all for a polished and presentation-ready design element. If you don’t have access to The Noun Project (highly recommended), you can replicate this slide using your own art. 

Step 1: Insert and Prepare the SVG

Start by downloading a speech bubble .SVG file from The Noun Project and inserting it onto your slide (I use the PowerPoint add-in, but you can also go to The Noun Project’s website).

Once placed, right-click and choose Convert to Shape (if needed) so all the PowerPoint style options are available. 

Step 2: Add a Drop Shadow

To give the icon a little depth, apply a drop shadow with these settings:
Size: 100%
Blur: 8.5 pt
Angle: 90°
Distance: 1 pt 

This creates a subtle, soft shadow that lifts the icon just enough off the background. 

Step 3: Apply a Bevel and Contour

For extra dimension, use a Round Convex bevel:
Width: 5 pt
Height: 5 pt
Then, add a contour set to 3.5 pt. This gives the edges of the speech bubble a nice highlight and makes it feel more 3D. 

Step 4: Fill the Speech Bubble with an Image

Next, fill the inner blank area of the speech bubble with an image of the Facebook logo:
Go to Shape Fill > Picture or Texture Fill
Choose the Facebook logo image (this Facebook logo is also sourced from The Noun Project)
Check “Tile picture as texture”
Set Scale X and Scale Y to 5% 

This creates a tiled pattern of the Facebook logo inside the bubble — a cool effect that works well for digital or social media-themed slides. 

Step 5: Add a Soft Color Overlay

To blend the texture and unify the look, copy and paste the same inner shape directly on top. Then fill it with a solid color and set the transparency to 25%. 

This soft overlay mutes the tiled pattern just enough while keeping the detail visible underneath, giving your speech bubble a professional, layered look. 

Step 6: Add Text on Top

Now add a text box over the speech bubble and type something like: Add Facebook stat/callout here. 

This is where you can highlight a key metric, social media insight, or fun engagement fact to make your design more informative and engaging. 

 

Now, Let’s Repeat the Same Steps Using a TikTok logo.  

Repeat the same steps as before, but with one small edit (I sourced the TikTok logo from The Noun Project).  

Back to Step 4: Fill the Inner Blank Area of the Speech Bubble with an Image of the TikTok Logo

Go to Shape Fill > Picture or Texture Fill
Choose the TikTok logo image
Check “Tile picture as texture”
Set Scale X and Scale Y to 5% 

Note: You may need to adjust the Scale X and Y percentages depending on the size of the logo being used for the repeated texture.  

Final Result

The final result is a presentation-ready graphic because all of the design was completed directly in PowerPoint! Not only is the branded and dimensional speech bubble a standout slide element, it’s native to PowerPoint, so it can scale and be edited easily. It’s a great example of mixing vector shapes, styling effects, and rich surface detail – all directly in PowerPoint, no Photoshop required.  

Want the final product for yourself? Download the editable TikTok PowerPoint slide HERE!

Hope you enjoyed these examples and design tutorial!

-Christie and the TLC Creative presentation design team 

By |2025-10-14T10:58:42-07:00October 24th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Play Video Across Slides No More

In October 2017, we shared a post about a great PowerPoint video playback feature, video across slides, shown in the above video. At that time it was experiencing some issues with playback of stylized videos. See the original post for more information and examples (Read the original post here).

The goal of this feature is to enable a video on one slide to continue playing seamlessly across multiple slides.

Fast forward to today. Microsoft has quietly turned off the play-across-slides feature. I searched and there was no documentation from Microsoft, this feature was just not functioning – argh! With some piecing together of information I could find, there is a reason this feature is no longer working (but still this is frustrating to discover when presenting!). The reason? The Windows OS is no longer supporting the legacy Windows Media Player engine. And the PowerPoint play-video-across-slides feature uses (used) the legacy Window Media Player engine.

Here is the quirky part. PowerPoint, as of today, has not caught up with the Windows OS change. The animation options for video playback, and play video across slides, are still available in the dialog:

We can still set a video to stop playing after 2 slides or 99, but the video won’t play across any slides, it just plays on the first slide. It gets worse, in testing, existing presentations that were built with videos setup to play across slides do not just lose the across-slides playback, the videos themselves do not play at all…instead, only the video poster frame, a static image, is seen on the first slide of the video playback series of slides.

So, while the feature was always limited (never available on Mac or the online version of PowerPoint), I believe it is now completely gone from the Windows side too. It was a useful feature for many years (I know I used it in PowerPoint 2000 presentations!). So this is not so much a look back post, it is really a farewell to a useful PowerPoint feature.

NOTE: just before this post went live, Microsoft added this info page on The “Stop Playing After N Slides” feature is not working as expected in PowerPoint for Windows. This lists ActiveX controls have been disabled in PowerPoint as the reason for the play-across-slides not working. I am uncertain if that is the same or different than what I was told about the legacy media engine – but the end result is the same, things don’t work.

-Troy @ TLC Creative

By |2025-09-14T13:20:34-07:00September 15th, 2025|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc, Tutorial|

Is PowerPoint’s Eyedropper on Your QAT?

Ever struggle with color matching within your PowerPoint slides? Maybe you want your text to match a logo, or you need a shape to blend in seamlessly with a background image. Whatever you need it for, PowerPoint has a simple but powerful tool that lets you pick up and reuse any color on your slide.  

What is the Eyedropper Tool? 

The Eyedropper is a color matching tool that grabs the exact hue from any visible element on your screen. It might be from a shape, an image, a logo, or a background. It is easy to use and guarantees your designs stay colorfully consistent.  

Accessing the Eyedropper tool can be a bit tedious, because it takes a few steps. You have to open the Format tab, click on the Fill Color, Font Color, or Outline Color dropdown (depending on what you’re changing). Then choose Eyedropper from the menu. Not too difficult, but it does take a few clicks. 

But First, Add the Eyedropper Tool to Your QAT: 

If you use the Eyedropper tool regularly, we suggest adding this feature to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) at the top of your PowerPoint window. 

1. Click the small dropdown arrow at the far right of the Quick Access Toolbar.

2. Choose More Commands.

3. In the new window, set the “Choose commands from” options to All Commands.

4. Scroll down and select Eyedropper (Eyedropper Fill in this case), then click Add >>

5. Click OK.

Now the Eyedropper tool is just one click away. No need to go through tons of color menus every time you need it!

Note: You can move the position of where the Eyedropper tool appears on your QAT by moving it up or down in the “Customize the Quick Access Toolbar” menu using the up and down arrows on the right. 

Once you have the Eyedropper tool added to your QAT, you’ll wonder why you didn’t add it earlier!  

The Eyedropper allows you to capture a fill color from any element on the slide – whether it be from an image, another shape, or even text: 

Extending Photo Backgrounds  

Here, we have inserted a square photo, but we’d would like to extend it to fill the whole frame.  

1. Select the image and click Crop from the Picture Format tab.

2. Drag and extend the crop area to fill the entire slide (trust us on this!).

3. Select and utilize the Eyedropper from the QAT and pick a color from the edge of the image’s background.

4. Done! You’ve created a seamless, solid background color.

 

What About a Color I Like from Outside PowerPoint? 

No worries! PowerPoint gives you the option to move the Eyedropper off the slide screen and onto something else open on your desktop. Borrow a color from a website, an image, or a document. In the example below, and in honor of the 50th anniversary of Jaws, we are picking up a hue from the movie’s color palette, which is a separate image I have open on my desktop.  

Again, select the Eyedropper tool from the QAT. This time, however, click and hold down the mouse button. Now, drag the cursor off the PowerPoint workspace and onto the desired color object. 

Final Thoughts 

Color matching just got a whole lot easier! The Eyedropper tool may be small, but it is an essential and powerful tool when it comes to slide design. Once it’s on your Quick Access Toolbar, it’s even faster to use and helps you stay on-brand and visually consistent with minimal effort.  

-Mike and the TLC Creative Design Team 

By |2025-08-01T15:37:27-07:00September 8th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Add a Smart Phone Demo Video to a Slide

Want to make your presentation pop by showcasing a video inside a realistic iPhone frame? Whether you’re creating a product demo, UI walkthrough, or simply want a sleek modern look, this step-by-step guide will walk you through how to insert a video into PowerPoint, crop it, modify it to rounded corners (yes, video containers can have rounded corners!) – all while fitting seamlessly into a PNG or SVG image of an iPhone. 

Step 1: Insert Your Video 

  • Go to the slide where you want the video. 
  • On the Insert tab, click Video → choose This Device (note, for some of the styling options being applied, it must be an embedded video, not a web-based video). 
  • Browse and insert your desired video file.

 

Step 2: Change Video Playback Settings to Set the Video to Play Automatically 

  • By default, when you insert a video in PowerPoint, it’s set to play “On Click” as part of the animation timeline.   
  • NOTE: Because this video is going to be underneath the iPhone image, it will not be manually clickable meaning you can’t “mouse over” the video to click it to play or pause. You can leave the animation setting to “On Click” but for our example we want the video to play automatically when the slide hits the screen.  

Click on the video to select it. 

1. Go to the Animation tab on the ribbon. 

2. Change to “Play” vs “Multiple”.

3. Look for the Start dropdown. 

4. Change it from “On Click” to “With Previous.”.

Now your video will begin playing as soon as the slide appears in Slide Show mode—no click required! For our example here, the video we chose is 1920×1080 (the teal gradation you see below).

Step 3: Layer the Video Behind an iPhone PNG Image 

Now, let’s place a phone on top of the video: 

1. Source an image of a realistic phone (ideally a PNG with a transparent screen area showing just the phone “frame”) or edit your image to remove the background and the screen area of the phone.

2. Insert your phone image onto the slide. 

3. Resize and position it as needed. 

Step 4: Crop the Video to Align to the Phone Screen 

To fit the video inside the vertical screen area of a phone (typically portrait aspect ratio), you’ll need to crop the video. You can do it like so:

1. Select the video and resize the video as needed to fit the phone (for our example, we’ve chosen a simple gradient with no content, so resizing isn’t critical).

2. With the video selected, in the Video Format tab, click Crop. 

3. Use the black cropping handles to trim the edges and create a portrait orientation, aligning the edge of the video just inside the edge of the phone. 

4. Click Crop again to apply changes. 

Step 5: Add Rounded Corners 

Our video now fits nicely inside the phone but you can see the corners. The good news is that videos in PowerPoint can be changed to any (yes any!) of the PowerPoint shapes. For this slide, we need rounded corners, which is an easy customization to the video. Believe it or not, PowerPoint is easier for this than video editing apps!

1. Select the video. 

2. Go to Video Format → Video Shape → Choose the Rounded Rectangle shape. 

3. Now use the yellow shape modifier (dot) to adjust the rounded corners to match the iPhone image’s rounded corners  

  • TIP: zoom in on the slide for better control of the rounded corner adjustment. 

With just a few clicks, you’ve created a high-end, device-framed video display — no video editing software required. Perfect for UI demos, mobile app presentations, or just leveling up your PowerPoint visuals. 

 

Let your slides scroll like a screen — and wow your audience!  

-The TLC Creative design team 

By |2025-09-16T10:14:37-07:00August 27th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Add Live Camera to Slides

Make your PowerPoint presentations more dynamic and engaging by using a great PowerPoint feature to add a live camera feed directly onto your slide. Whether you’re hosting a virtual meeting, presenting at a live event, or recording a tutorial, showing your face in real time can help you connect with your viewers and make the message much more personal. 

Cameo

Cameo is a feature that was added to PowerPoint in 2022 and provides many design options. For your slide layout and design, keep in mind exactly where on the slide (or slides) the live camera will appear. Make sure it does not cover any elements or distract from the slide content itself. This is definitely something to test before presenting, not only to confirm the slide layouts work, but also that animations and transitions work – and, of course, the technical connection of the camera to PowerPoint works. 

Add a Cameo Live Camera to a PowerPoint Slide 

To add a live camera feed, we will be using the Cameo feature.  

  • Go to Insert > Cameo
  • In the dropdown menu, there are two options – place a Cameo on “This Slide” or “All Slides.” Select the option needed.
  • TIP: The live camera object that will be added can be adjusted or deleted from any slide, so “All Slides” is often the easiest workflow. 

 

Once selected, a placeholder for your camera feed will appear on the slide, as seen in the example below. By default, PowerPoint adds the placeholder in the lower right corner as a circle shape.  

Preview the Live Camera 

To preview how a live camera will look: 

  • Click the placeholder  
  • Click the camera icon 

  • Use the “Camera Format” tab to choose your desired camera
  • TIP: The camera you are using can be changed at any time – a common workflow is to test simply with your laptop’s built-in camera and then change to an external camera when you are setting up for the actual presentation (an external camera is usually of better quality)

Modify the Cameo Live Camera Object 

What is exciting is that the camera object can be modified like any PowerPoint shape. Moving, resizing, and changing shape are all options. 

  • Select the cameo placeholder 
  • Move and resize to fit the slide layout. For our example slide, we are moving the live camera to the upper left and downsizing it a little. 

In addition to moving and resizing, you can add styles, shapes, borders, and other effects to the video feed. Go to the “Camera Format” tab to add an outline, change shape, add a drop shadow, or soft edge. Be creative!

Presenting 

When going to Slide Show mode, the live camera will turn on automatically, and the live feed will be visible during your presentation. 

A Few Tips Before You Go Live

1. Always test before presenting – that means making sure your webcam or other camera is working and positioned properly.

2. Use lighting! Good lighting can dramatically improve how you appear on camera.

3. Limit the distractions. Before going, live consider turning off any video effects or anything in the background that might distract from your message.

4. Smile!!

Conclusion: 

Adding a live camera feed to your slides is possible – all using native PowerPoint features! There are technical considerations, yet in the right environment, this adds a nice visual touch and can be a fantastic storytelling tool.  

-The TLC Creative Design Team 

By |2025-07-18T12:21:33-07:00August 25th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

PowerPoint has a Video Problem – Optimizing Ends at 4K

We love that PowerPoint has built-in video compression options, we really do. It’s a super handy feature when you’re trying to manage file size. But there’s one big catch: the compression is limited to a maximum of 1080p (HD)!


And let’s be real… plenty of modern presentations are being designed for higher resolution output these days. For example: 4K+ screens, LED walls, and wide-format displays. That makes this “HD-maximum” compression setting feel a bit dated. 

To make things trickier, PowerPoint doesn’t let you pick and choose which videos to compress within a slide deck. It’s all or nothing. Raise your hand if you’ve ever exported a single slide with video into its own temporary presentation, ran PowerPoint’s compression on it, and then reinserted the newly optimized video back into your original deck? Yeah. Us too. 

But let’s talk about video export. PowerPoint does a decent job here, too, offering resolutions up to 4K. But that’s where the options end. You can’t go beyond 4K. And again, for many modern uses, 4K just doesn’t cut it.

Presentations today aren’t just being projected in boardrooms. We’re using PowerPoint to build visuals for LED walls, wide-format stage displays, and custom resolution outputs that don’t follow traditional 16:9 rules. Where is the 3:1, 3240×1080 resolution option? 

What we’d love to see from Microsoft: 

  • Preset export profiles up to 8K
  • Or better, allow the end user to set the video resolution for export (please!)
  • Ability to individually select videos within a slide deck to be optimized 
  • And most importantly: support for higher-than-1080p for video compression and optimization
  • The ability to create and save custom export profiles

Speaking of custom export profiles, we really like the profile system NXPowerlite has available to users! Here are the 7 custom profiles we have available on all TLC Creative computers:

PowerPoint is evolving into a tool for so much more than standard presentations. The video compression and export engine need to catch up with the creative ways people are using PowerPoint today (yes, those “unlimited” LED walls in the below image are higher resolution than 4K! And no, we were not able to optimize videos on these ultrawide resolution slides within PowerPoint). 

Until then, we’ll keep doing our hacks and workarounds and dreaming of the day we get a “Custom Resolution” button next to “Ultra HD.” 

-The TLC Creative Presentation Design Team 

By |2025-07-17T13:16:40-07:00August 18th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

A Look Back at Layering Video with Static Images

It’s summer, and let’s be honest, during a blistering California summer, looking at some chilly mountains can be good therapy! 

Back in July 2020, we created a post about this dynamic slide, which utilized creative layering of static images and an embedded video. One thing to note is that we used PowerPoint’s native background removal tool – which has remained unchanged for years. Overall, this is a great effect and can be repurposed to use in a number of presentations!

The Design Process

  • First, we started with a static image: a mountain range with a blue sky. 

  • With some effort, we were able to use PowerPoint’s Remove Background tool to remove the blue sky so the mountain stood alone. 

  • Then, we found a great video of moving clouds. Of course, our slide shows a snow-covered mountain and the video we found shows a grass covered field. However, because the static image of the mountain range will be in front of the video, effectively blocking the grass, it works great for our slide! (But also, the video could be cropped to remove the lower grass from being part of the playback). 

  • Layered on the slide, everything blends together great! The moving clouds in the video add subtle motion to the scene, while the grassy portion of the video is not seen.

  • Finally, we layered some stylized PowerPoint text on top of the mountains to complete the slide design. 

The result? A visually compelling slide with a natural, fluid feel—made entirely in PowerPoint. But what’s wrong with this picture? Exactly…it’s a low-res image and not a video! Let’s blame it on Covid, but we weren’t able to find some of the original files from this post, so let’s recreate this layered effect again today. 

How We Recreated a Similar Cloudy Mountaintop Today 

We found the mountain scene jpg, but since PowerPoint’s background removal tool hasn’t changed and we don’t want to spend that much time again, we’re going to take the image into Photoshop and use Photoshop’s generative tools to remove the sky quickly and create a .png image. 

Using a different but similar video of moving clouds (this time with no grass in the foreground) we layered the cloud video and mountain graphic in PowerPoint and added stylized text. Now we’re back to where we started! 

This time, however, we can show you the final results in video form. Overall, this is a great effect and can be repurposed in a variety of ways to use in a number of presentations! 

Feeling a little relief from the heat? We hope you can use this layering technique sometime by following the same steps!   

– Troy @ TLC 

By |2025-07-28T13:20:08-07:00August 15th, 2025|Tutorial|

Videos are Stretchy!

When you add a video to a PowerPoint slide, sometimes it doesn’t perfectly match the size of the presentation slide. The video might be a legacy 4:3 proportion, or a social media square with 1:1 proportions. PowerPoint definitely has the superpower of being able to add any aspect ratio video to a slide, but PowerPoint’s superpower is even more super in that if you want these videos to fill the 16:9 slide, you have the option to stretch (aka distort) or crop a video with ease! Whether it’s a minor size adjustment or dramatically changing its shape, resizing the video playback size can be done in a few simple steps.  

Insert the Video 

First things first: let’s add a video to the slide. 

  • Go to the Insert tab.
  • Click Video > Insert Video From (choose the source – Device, Stock, or Online).
  • Find the video file and insert it onto the slide. 

Our example is a legacy 4:3 video, added to our modern 16:9 slide. Obviously, the video does not fill the slide, leaving empty margins on the sides that might look like a mistake when presented. 

Let’s walk through 2 options for making it fill the slide.

Stretch the Video 

Because this is an abstract content video, we can distort it without the result looking wrong. Once the video is on the slide, click on it to make sure it’s selected. You’ll see a border appear around it with sizing handles on the corners and edges. 

Now the fun part: 

  • To stretch horizontally or vertically, click and drag one of the side or top/bottom handles. This will stretch the video in that direction only, which will distort the original aspect ratio. In the example above, the video was first moved to the left edge, then the right-side handle was selected and dragged to the opposite edge. Notice that the cursor will turn into a cross while dragging.
  • Note: If you’re not stretching and just need to resize without distortion, drag one of the corner handles while holding the Shift key. This will keep the proportions locked, but we’ll discuss this in more detail in a moment. 
  • You can also right-click the video, choose Format Video, and go to the Size & Properties tab to enter exact dimensions if you want precise control. 

Crop the Video 

To avoid any type of distortion, cropping the video is another option. Portions of the video that are off the slide will not show during the presentation, but the proportions of the video will stay intact. 

  • Insert the video onto the slide as described in the previous section. 
  • Select and grab a corner. This time, enlarge the video to fill the slide horizontally, holding the Shift key to keep the size ratio in proportion. 

  • Go to the Video Format tab and click Crop.
  • Grab and drag one of the handles (the short thick line, or corner) to crop the video to the edges of the slide. Move the image within the cropping box to the desired position, being careful to fill the full cropped area with your image. 

TIP: One of our shortcuts used at TLC Creative is the Match Size feature in BrightSlide, which many people may not realize also works on videos! With just one click, the video will resize and crop to the full slide size. Then, as we just described, use the Crop tool to adjust and move the visible portion of the video as needed. 

Once resized, play the video to make sure it looks the way you want. Remember when stretching a video, the video content is being distorted. Stretching works well for abstract motion backgrounds like our example below.  

Crop or Stretch? 

Another thing to consider is video quality/resolution. Our above example looks fine when stretched to fill the slide.

Let’s look at another example. Here we have a 16:9 video on an ultrawide presentation slide. This motion background video looks good when stretched (eg. distorted) to fill the slide but may be seen as too distorted for some people. To avoid the distortion, the other option is enlarging and cropping as we demonstrated above. This will keep the content the same aspect ratio, however, keep in mind that when enlarged, the video may become pixelated. Ultimately, the design and the video content will determine which is best: stretch or crop (or a combination of the two)!

Conclusion 

PowerPoint makes it very easy to stretch, squeeze, and distort videos. Be creative and make amazing slides! But use this superpower carefully, as you don’t want to create slides that are pixelated or distort things that shouldn’t be distorted.  

-The TLC Creative Design Team 

By |2025-07-15T13:33:20-07:00August 13th, 2025|Tutorial|
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