7/13/20
9:00 am

Playing Video Or Audio Across Keynote Slides

A new feature in Keynote is the ability to place a video or audio clip across several slides. The media will continue to play as you advance through the presentation. You can use this to make better introduction slides or present a video over a series of slides with different information at specific times.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at a new feature in Keynote that allows you to play video and audio across slides.
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So Keynote version 10.1 has a new feature that allows you to place a video and audio on slides like before but if the same video or audio exists on the next slide you can choose to have the video or audio continue to play from one slide to the next. 
So this is a feature in 10.1 so make sure you update to the latest version. As an example here I've placed a video on this slide. Typically if I were to create a new slide here I would just have that video on the one slide. So I could play that video on the one slide and continue to the next slide without the video. But now if I were to select this I'd copy it and paste it onto the next slide. So the video would exist in both places. Now when I select the video, under Format, Movie, I can choose the option of Play movie across slides. 
So let's put some things on the slides so we can tell them apart. So now we have two different slides here. Let's play this. I'm going to use another new feature in Keynote and that's the ability to play but in the window. So it's not going to take over the screen. Now here I could see Slide 1. I'll click on the video to start it and there are the waves crashing down. If I go to the next slide by clicking you could see the video is uninterrupted but I've advanced to the next slide.
So you can use this to have a series of slides while the same video plays. You could also set the slides to advance automatically, not on a click. The way to you do that, of course, is you select the slide. Go to Animate and Transitions and you start the transition to the next slide automatically after a delay of a certain number of seconds.
Here's another example. This has a video of me talking about something. Then I've got three slides after that with some captions underneath. So I want the video to keep going for each of these slides. I'm going to select the video and then I'm going to go to Format, Movie and make sure Play movie across slides is checked. Then I'm also going to uncheck Start movie on click. I want it to start automatically.
The next thing I'm going to do is Copy the video and then Paste it on each of these slides. Now I could just play this here and advance the slides manually when it gets to the right point. But I could also have it do it automatically. So I happen to know that the first caption should appear after 3 seconds. So what I can do here is under Animate, Transitions for the slide I could say start transmission automatically after 3 seconds. On the next slide I could say start it automatically after 2 seconds which is when I get to the next point. Then on this slide go automatically to the next one after 3 seconds. 
I simply got these timings by watching the video in QuickTime player and noting where each point was that I wanted and jotting them down. When I play this it will advance to the next slide at the right point. (Video playing).
So you can see how handy that could be. You could actually put together videos, kind of like the ones I do, by recording yourself talking, putting this video down in a corner or something and building a series of slides to travel through while that video plays.
You could even change the position of the video. So, for instance, I could you know position it here, here, and here and it will work when I try it. (Video playing). Now, of course, I didn't place them anywhere specific. But you could imagine actually moving the video to a different corner of the screen to just make it visually interesting as you advance through the points that you're talking about.
You could even use a video as a background. I can stretch this video. It actually is full resolution here. I can do it here on this slide as well. Then have it advance automatically after a few seconds to the next slide. Now it works as a background when I play it. (Video playing)
Now you can do this with audio as well. Here's an example where you may use that. Say you've got some slides at the beginning of your presentation. So you have this introduction one here. You want that to be on the screen for maybe 5 minutes. Then it will go to this one and be there for 1 minute. Then this one and remain there until you click or press the spacebar to start the real presentation on slide four. It would be nice to have music playing across all three of these. But only these three slides and not as background music through your entire presentation.
I could drag and drop an MP3 file here to this slide. It appears here. I'll set it up under Format, Audio to Start audio automatically. So not wait. I'll have it Repeat. So Loop. I'll have it play across the slides. But what I'll do here is I'll take this. I'll copy it and paste it into these slides here. Now instead of five minutes and one minute I just set these each to 3 seconds. I can demonstrate what goes on.  (Audio playing). Now it will sit on this slide until I click and then it will go to slide four.
So with those examples I'm kind of just scratching the surface with what we can do now because we can probably come up with other creative things to do when playing video and audio across a series of slides instead of just only on one slide or in the case of audio having it play across the entire presentation.

Comments: 16 Responses to “Playing Video Or Audio Across Keynote Slides”

Cameron

4 years ago

I just tried this using the Magic Move transition, and had the video smoothly glide to a different position, and then smoothly enlarge to full screen! I especially like the example you gave of using a full-screen full-resolution video as a background!

I will say I was disappointed in the "Play Slideshow in Window" feature. There have been times when I've wanted this, but it doesn't show presenter notes or next slide preview, so not that useful for me personally.

Jeanne Dyer

4 years ago

Gary, can the playing video across Keynote slides process be used like a crawl to advertise something like a starting date and time of a class?

Gary Rosenzweig

4 years ago

Jeanne: Sure, but it may be overkill. If you just want some text or graphics on several slides, just put those on those slides. No need to make it a video.

Michael Jones

4 years ago

What would be nice now is to have the audio to fade in or fade out. Does that feature exist?

Gary Rosenzweig

4 years ago

Michael: No, not in Keynote. Depending on what you are doing, you could build your thing in iMovie instead. Or, build in Keynote, export as video, bring into iMovie to add the audio. Or, if you are developing a presentation, not a video, then you can always use GarageBand or Audacity to add the fade in and out to versions of the audio files and use those files in Keynote.

John Stefano

4 years ago

Hello, Gary. This is very clear, thank you. There is a feature in PowerPoint called "Rehearse Timings" which allows you to play a slideshow in Preview and click when you want the slide to change. When you've finished the slideshow, PowerPoint allows you to save the timings, so you don't have to go through the laborious process of figuring out the timing for each slide. Does Keynote have an equivalent? Thanks!

Gary Rosenzweig

4 years ago

John: Is the idea that you want the presentation to play automatically, advancing to each slide as you go? You can use Record Slideshow and Play Recorded Slideshow for that. There is a mute button in the recording interface to turn off the mic if you don't want it to pick up any sound.

John Stefano

4 years ago

That solved it. Also looked at your video on "Using Keynote to Create Narrated Videos." Very helpful, thanks for the quick response!

Kido Chang

4 years ago

I tried this and works fine until i go backwards. As soon as I go back a slide, then the video stops. Is there a way to keep the video playing no matter which direction you go?

Gary Rosenzweig

4 years ago

Kido: Not that I know of. It just works how it works.

tim delaney

4 years ago

have a Keynote (Mac) slide show with pre-recorded audio track set to automatically change. The first 7 slides work perfectly.
All Following slides (20 total) will not advance. All are set with one second transitions, and set to "automatic". Have tried adjusting the transition lengths as well as small tweaks to the slide duration. I'm at a loss. Any ideas?

Gary Rosenzweig

4 years ago

Tim: Just a matter of checking everything again. Check the Build Order for each slide and each element in the Build Order.

tim delaney

4 years ago

Thx Gary. I thought that maybe the fact the the one slide that was hanging up was very short in duration( 6 seconds), that using a simple 1 second dissolve was the issue? Nope. Re: your comment on the "build" Order. It's my understanding (and pls correct me), is for moving elements in the slides, title reveals etc. These are just static slides, no reveals etc. Titles on a static background. I've checked and double checked it. The first 7 slides perform perfectly. I'll keep looking

tim delaney

4 years ago

I think I'll delete that troublesome slide and re-generate it and drop it in. I have a scratch copy of the show and I just did the dissolve thing, and that one works. I'll let you know. thx again.

tim delaney

4 years ago

Strange occurance. Removing that specific slide fixes it. I re-built the troublesome slide (new) and dropped it into the sequence. Same problem. Crash. I can edit my audio to fix. Thx Gary.

Maarif Haque

3 years ago

Very helpful video. I discovered more than I was looking for! Thanks.

Comments Closed.

Playing Video Or Audio Across Keynote Slides

Comments: 16 Responses to “Playing Video Or Audio Across Keynote Slides”

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