 Creating animated videos using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a program that most of us have been familiar with for years, but it can be so much more than just a presentation tool. In this video, we'll dive into PowerPoint as a video creation tool. PowerPoint has a great built-in animation system. You've probably used it before to animate text or images on your presentations, but you can also use the system to create simple, compelling scenes that you can export as videos right in PowerPoint itself. Once you've learned the basics of animating in PowerPoint, you can make your project as simple or as complicated as you'd like. These techniques can be applied to add some interest to a regular slide deck or to create a fully animated video story. The first step to any project is to launch PowerPoint and select a template or a blank presentation. Many of the templates and placeholders in PowerPoint are great when designing a presentation, but are not as helpful when creating an animated video. Try starting from scratch by selecting blank presentation and, if desired, adding a title slide with the title of your video. What we will be doing over the course of this video is creating a slideshow with each slide acting as a different scene in the final video. After your title slide, you'll want to add a new blank slide by clicking the down arrow beside the new slide button and choosing blank slide from the available options. To begin an animation, you'll need images to use. You can insert images from PowerPoint as well as images you found on the web or created yourself. More recent versions of PowerPoint now come with a large collection of images, icons, cut-out people, stickers, and illustrations. From the Insert tab, tap Icons. Here you can search for and choose your desired graphic. Once you have selected your graphic, tap Insert to place it onto your slide. You can also search the web for images from right in PowerPoint by clicking Insert, Pictures, and Online Pictures. Here you can search for the perfect images for your video. A helpful tip for finding images to animate is to type whatever you're looking for in the search bar and add the word illustration afterwards. In this case, we're searching for park illustrations. You can also add PNG after your search term to find images with a transparent background. As an alternative, you can insert graphics you have already found online or created yourself. From the Insert tab, tap Pictures and then select this device. Locate the graphic you wish to insert and tap Insert. If you want to add an image to the background of the slide, consider adding it from Design, Format Backgrounds instead. In Format Backgrounds, you can change the color of your background as well. When you've found a graphic that works for you, it may need to be altered to work properly in your video. To resize your images, simply click and drag from the corners until they reach your desired size. To crop your graphic, select the graphic you want to crop. Select the Picture Format tab and click Crop. Use the black corner guides to resize your graphic. Once you're finished, select Crop again. You can also remove the background from an image by choosing Remove Background from the same Picture Format menu and marking the areas you want to keep or remove from the final image. In the same menu, you can also change the sharpness, contrast, or transparency of your images. These options can be helpful if you want something like a background to appear out of focus. You can play around with other effects such as recoloring graphics, adding shadows or reflections to images, or even changing the perspective. PowerPoint comes equipped with a variety of animations. Once you have your images and icons chosen and placed on your slide, navigate to the Animations tab. You'll see the animations organized by color. The green animations are entrance effects. These alter the way your media enters the scene. The yellow animations are emphasis effects. These are animations that take place when an image is already on screen, and the red animations are exit effects. These alter the way your media exits the scene. There are also path animations. These are the primary type of animation we'll focus on in this video. The motion paths are more customizable, and in combination with other effects, you can create simple, effective animations. To begin, click the Animation pane button in the Animation tab. This extra window will allow customizations of each phase of your animations. Start by clicking the first object you'd like to animate. To create a custom animation, click Path Animation, and choose any of the options under Custom. With these, you will simply be able to draw a path for your object to move along. PowerPoint will automatically preview your animation after you make any changes. If it's not exactly to your liking, you can alter the path by clicking and dragging the endpoint of the path, or the path itself. Or, with your path selected, click on Effect Options in the main animation menu, and select Edit Points. From here, you can add, remove, or edit any specific points along the path. In this menu, you can also reverse path direction. This is helpful if you've already got an animation path you like, but you want it to move in the opposite direction. The Standard Entrance and Exit animations work in the same way, although they don't have as much potential for customization. You can preview your animation at any time by clicking the Preview button in the top left corner of the General Animations tab, or the Play From or Play All button at the top of the animation's pane. Once you have created an animation, you can begin to customize the effect and edit the timing. This can all be done in the animation's pane. In Effect Options, you can change certain features of your chosen effect, as well as what happens after an animation. You can also add a sound effect, smooth the beginning or end of the animation, make it end in a bounce motion, and auto-reverse the animation. In Timing, you can choose to start your animation on click, with previous, or after previous. This will change the queue to begin the animation. You can also customize the duration, delay the start, repeat, and rewind your animation. By default, the timing is set to on click, and the duration is set to 2 seconds, medium, but you can customize any length you'd like. Customizing the timing of your animation is what will make it succeed as a video. For the final video, we want the whole presentation to play out on its own, with minimal interference by the operator. Play around with starting your clips with previous or after previous, and adding delays to make each animation flow seamlessly into the next. You can stack multiple effects on one object by adding emphasis effects, as well as motion effects. For example, if you wanted an object to shrink or grow as it moves across the screen, you can add a path animation, and the grow shrink animation. Make the emphasis effect start with previous, and match the timing, and the two effects will happen simultaneously. If you have scenes on multiple slides, you can utilize the PowerPoint Transitions menu. Here you can choose from various transitions. Click Effect Options to edit the movement directions of the transition, as well as change the duration, timing, and add sound effects. Once you've finished your animation, you're able to add a voiceover or background music right in PowerPoint. Click on the Recording tab and choose Audio. From the drop-down menu, you can select Audio Browser or Audio from File, and allow you to browse your computer and music library to select any audio. You can also choose Record Audio to individually record separate audio files for each slide or scene in your presentation. You can edit any audio and their timings in the Playback tab that appears when an audio clip is selected. Another way to record a voiceover is also in the Recording tab. Click Record Slideshow, and a full-screen window will open with your presentation in it. Here you can record audio as the slideshow progresses. The Record Slideshow feature will also set all the timing for your finished video. This way, when you export the final version, PowerPoint will know how much time there should be between any mouse clicks. This will essentially allow the presentation to play out by itself. All you have to do is press Play. If you have a script you want to stick to, write it in the Notes section of each slide, and the text will appear for only you to see for reference during your recording. Don't worry if you make any mistakes. When you've finished your recording, you can edit the clips in the Playback menu. You can trim the clips using Trim Audio, Add Fades, Change the volume, as well as make sure the audio is playing at the correct times. If you have background music, you can also choose Play in Background, which will automatically play your music across all the slides without cutting it, and loops the audio until the presentation is over. To preview your entire presentation, full-screen, go to Slide Show tab and click Play from Start, or click the Slide Show icon in the very bottom menu next to the Zoom slider. Once you're happy with your final animation, click File, Export, then select MP4 as your file type. Check the box here to use the timings and narrations that you recorded with the Record Slide Show, or set how much time you want the video to spend on each slide, if there are no timings recorded. Name your video and choose where you would like to export it, and click Export. Once it's saved, watch it back to make sure all the animation, audio, and transition timings were recorded properly. Now you're free to share your finished video with the world.