How to Add a Video in Google Slides

In this new Slidesgo School tutorial, you’ll learn how to add a video to your presentations, be it from YouTube or from your own computer. You’ll also find out what format options Google Slides has to offer regarding videos.

1. How to Embed a YouTube Video
2. How to Insert a Video
3. How to Cut and Edit a Video

How to Embed a YouTube Video

• Open your presentation in Google Slides and select the slide where you want to add the video.
• Click Insert → Video. A new window will open.

• On the first tab, Search, you can look for the YouTube video you want to add to the presentation. Once located, click Select to add it to the slide. You can now adjust its size to your liking.

• If you have the URL of the video, click the By URL tab and paste it in the text field. You’ll see a preview of the video. If it’s correct, click Select to add the video to the slide. Place it whenever you like and adapt it according to your needs.

• Please note that you can’t crop a video in Google Slides, so you’ll need to play around with the rest of the graphic elements to have a coherent design.

How to Insert a Video

• To insert a video that isn’t from YouTube, it must be stored in your Google Drive account.
• Access Google Drive.
• Drag the video to Google Drive or click New → Upload files. Locate the file in your computer and upload it to Google Drive.

• Open your presentation in Google Slides and select the slide where you want to add the video.
• Click Insert → Video. A new window will open. On the Google Drive tab you’ll see all your videos stored in or shared with your Google Drive account. Choose the video you want to upload and click Select. The video will be added to the slide, and now you can adjust it to your liking.

How to Cut and Edit a Video

• Select the video that you’ve added to the presentation.
• Go to the toolbar and click Format options. As an alternative, right-click the video → Format options. You can also click Format → Format options. A new panel will open on the right side of the screen.

• Click the Video playback drop-down arrow to see the options. You can set the start and the end time, trimming the video accordingly. There are two boxes below. Check the first one to enable autoplay when presenting, and the second one to mute the audio.

• The rest of the tabs on the Format options panel contain settings to adjust the size and position of the video, and you can also add a drop shadow to it.
• Within the Size and rotation tab, you can modify the width and height values for the video. There’s also an option to lock the aspect ratio in case you want to keep the video proportions.

• Within the Position tab, you can set exactly where you want to place the video, taking the top-left corner or the center of the video as reference. To move the video, you’ll need to modify the values of the X and Y axes.

• The last tab, Drop shadow, contains a box, which you can check to add a drop shadow. If you click the drop-down arrow, you’ll find options to modify the color and the behavior of the shadow (angle, transparency, distance and blur).