How to turn a PowerPoint into a video

The built-in way to turn a PowerPoint into a video is File, then Export, then Create a Video: PowerPoint saves the deck as an MP4 with any narration and slide timings you recorded. You can also record your screen while you present or, if you would rather not narrate it yourself, give the .pptx to an AI tool that reads your slides and speaker notes and turns them into a narrated whiteboard video. Here is how each method works, and how to choose.

Will the video work without you in the room?

A deck is built to be presented. The slides are the backdrop and you are the explanation. Once the deck becomes a video, something else has to carry the meaning: your recorded voice, or a script written for people who weren’t there.

So before you pick a method, decide three things:

• Who is watching, and where. A phone held upright needs bigger text and fewer words than a meeting-room screen.
• Whether they need you. A team update benefits from your voice and face. Training, onboarding and product walkthroughs need a clear explanation more than they need a presenter.
• How long it should be. Most decks have more slides than a video needs. For a single idea, 60 to 90 seconds is plenty; for a lesson, stay under six minutes.

Method 1: Export from PowerPoint with recorded narration

PowerPoint can record your voice slide by slide and then save the whole deck as a video. These are the current steps in PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 on Windows, from Microsoft’s guides to recording a slide show and turning a presentation into a video:

1. Record the narration. Open the Record tab and select Record. If your slides have speaker notes, PowerPoint shows them at the top of the screen, like a teleprompter. Select Start recording, talk through each slide, use the arrows to move on, and select Stop when you finish.
2. Save the deck as a .pptx file.
3. Select File, then Export, then Create a Video.
4. Choose a quality: Ultra HD (4K), Full HD (1080p), HD (720p) or Standard (480p).
5. Choose Use Recorded Timings and Narrations. Without a recording, every slide stays on screen for five seconds by default, which you can change.
6. Select Create Video, then save it as an MPEG-4 (.mp4) or Windows Media Video (.wmv) file.

Microsoft flags two things. Narration isn’t recorded during slide transitions, so let each one finish before you speak. And exporting a long or complex deck can take up to several hours, though you can keep working while it runs. If one slide’s narration goes wrong, you can delete and re-record just that slide.

On a Mac, Keynote has the same idea built in: record the slideshow from the Play menu, then export it as a movie with the recording included.

• Good for: lectures, internal updates and decks that must keep your exact template and brand.
• Watch out for: bullet points. In an analysis of 6.9 million viewing sessions on edX, tutorials built from PowerPoint slides held attention less well than tutorials drawn freehand on a tablet.

Method 2: Record your screen while you present

If the video needs a live demo halfway through, or you just need something quick, run the slideshow and record your screen:

• On Windows: press the Windows logo key + Shift + R to open Snipping Tool’s screen recorder, select the area to record, then select Start, and Stop when you are done.
• On a Mac: press Shift-Command-5 to open the Screenshot tools, choose to record the entire screen or a part of it, and click Record. Stop it from the button in the menu bar.

Before you start, check that the microphone is on, turn on Do Not Disturb so notifications stay out of the video, and run the slideshow full screen.

• Good for: walkthroughs that jump between slides and live software, and quick one-off updates.
• Watch out for: small slide text on phones, and changes. Fixing one sentence usually means recording again.

Method 3: Turn the .pptx into an AI whiteboard video

The first two methods record your slides as they are. An AI video tool can instead read the deck and write a new video from it, which helps most when the slides only make sense with you presenting them. With Chasca, it works like this:

1. Upload the .pptx in the prompt box. Chasca reads the words on your slides and your speaker notes.
2. Say what to focus on (optional). “Explain the new release process to someone who missed the meeting” gets a sharper video than no instructions.
3. Pick a length, a narrator and a drawing style. There are 30 narrators and six styles (Marker, Chalkboard, Pencil, Blueprint, Crayon and Clean), in landscape, vertical or square.
4. Generate. Chasca writes the script, splits it into scenes and draws each scene stroke by stroke in time with the narration, usually in about a minute.
5. Change what you need. Turn subtitles on or off, switch the drawing style or add music, free. The narration and drawings stay as they are.
6. Share it. Download the MP4 with subtitles, or send a link.

• Good for: training and onboarding decks, a pitch for the people who missed it, lecture slides for revision, and decks that change often.
• Watch out for: the look. The result is drawn as a whiteboard explainer, not a copy of your slide design (custom branding with your logo, colors and fonts is on the Pro plan). Dense charts work better as a sentence of explanation in the speaker notes.

Our examples page includes a seven-slide deck about a team’s release process, with its speaker notes, turned into a whiteboard video, and the original deck is there to download.

Tips that make any deck video better

• Write the narration in the speaker notes first. PowerPoint shows them while you record, and an AI tool can read them. Notes written the way you would say them make the best narration either way.
• Take words off the slides. Say the explanation instead of printing it. One of Richard Mayer’s evidence-based principles for multimedia instruction, the redundancy principle, is that people learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration and the same words on screen.
• Give each slide one idea. If a slide needs two minutes of talking, it is really two slides.
• Keep it moving. Cut long pauses, and keep each slide on screen for under about 30 seconds.
• Add captions. They help viewers follow along and make the video accessible; our guide to explainer videos for teachers covers the research.
• End with a question the viewer answers in their head, then give the answer.

Which method should you choose?

If you need…	Choose
Your exact slides, template and voice	PowerPoint’s own export with recorded narration
A quick walkthrough with a live demo in the middle	A screen recording
A video that explains the deck without you, and is easy to update	An AI whiteboard video from the .pptx

Working in Google Slides? See how to turn Google Slides into a video. Starting from a PDF or a blog post instead of a deck? See how to turn a PDF or a blog post into a video.

Sources

• Microsoft Support. Turn your presentation into a video.
• Microsoft Support. Record a slide show with narration and slide timings.
• Microsoft Support. Use Snipping Tool to capture screenshots.
• Apple Support. Take screenshots or screen recordings on Mac.
• Apple Support. Record Keynote presentations on Mac and Export to PowerPoint or another file format in Keynote on Mac.
• Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of MOOC videos. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Learning at Scale.
• Mayer, R. E. (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. American Psychologist, 63(8), 760–769.