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Adding a Video to Your Powtoon

Daniel Schachter
  • Updated
The Powtoon Studio includes several video libraries, containing thousands of professional and high-quality videos in a wide range of categories.
There are two ways to add video to your Powtoon, as a background or as an object.
 
Important:
1) In the Powtoon Studio, you need to be working in Create mode in order to add a video.

Adding a video as an object

  1. Navigate to the slide to which you want to add a video.
  1. Select the Videos tab.
  1. Use the search bar  or browse the following libraries to find the video that is right for your Powtoon:

    Before selecting a video, you can hover over the video thumbnail and watch a preview.
  1. Select the video for your Powtoon. It will be added to the slide.
 
Important:
If the duration of the video you are uploading is longer then the slide, you will see an additional pop-up. You will need to choose between two options:
1. Extend Length- This will extend the length of the slide to fit the video
2. Trim Video- This will trim the video, to fit the duration of the slide.
  1. Once you have added your video to the timeline, adjust the sound of the video, and main soundtrack to fine tine the audio of your Powtoon.
    Select the video, and click on settings
  1. Click Sound.
  1. Adjust the volume, and select the option to reduce the volume of the main soundtrack automatically, according to your needs.


Adding a video background

  1. Navigate to the slide to which you want to add a video. The video will be added to a single slide.
  1. Select the Backgrounds tab.
  1. Use the search bar or browse the following libraries to find the video that is right for your Powtoon:
    1. Video Footage: these are videos from Storyblocks, a huge collection of studio-quality HD videos.
    2. My Videos: these are videos that you have uploaded from your computer or used previously.
    3. My Recordings: these are videos that have been recorded using the Powtoon Capture extension.
 
Before selecting a video, you can hover over the video thumbnail and watch a preview.
4. Select the video that you want to add to your Powtoon. It will be added to the slide.
 
Important:
If the duration of the video you are uploading is longer then the slide, you will see an additional pop-up. You will need to choose between two options
1.Extend Length- This will extend the length of the slide to fit the video
2.Trim Video- This will trim the video, to fit the duration of the slide.

Playing a video background over multiple slides

After the video has been added to your slide, you may want to divide the video between multiple slides. This method will work for both video as an object, and background videos
  1. Add a video to the slide. In the example below, a 21 second video was added. The slide is set to 10 seconds. That means the first 10 seconds of the video will play
    Notice the timeline, where a visual indication shows that the slide will play 00:00-00:10 seconds.
  1. In the slide panel, select the slide thumbnail with the scene that you want to extend. On the slide that you want to extend, hover over the three dots in the bottom right corner to display the slide menu, and click Extend.
  1. A new slide will be created equal in length to the previous slide. You can make this slide longer or shorter according to your needs.
Video as an object
If the video is on the timeline, you will need to manually extend the video to play over the slide
  1. Repeat Steps #2 and #3 according to the desired number of slides.

Notes

  1. Each slide can have up to 2 videos (1 background video, 1 video as an object)
  1. If a video's length is shorter than the duration of a slide, the video will play until it ends. Following this, the last frame of the video is displayed in static mode.
For example:
a. The duration of the slide is 15 seconds.
b. The length of the video is 5 seconds.
c. The video ends after 5 seconds.
d. For the remaining 10 seconds, the last frame of the video is displayed in static mode.
  1. If the video background has sound, you can mute the sound by clicking the video icon in the left corner of the slide, and then selecting mute from the pop-up menu
  1. When you add a video to your Powtoon, it is also automatically added to My Media, your personal video library, ready for future use.

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