Clip art, pictures, movies, and sounds can add a full multimedia effect to your presentations. You can insert picture, sound, and video clips from several sources ”from the Microsoft Clip Organizer, from Microsoft Office Online, or from your own stash of pictures, sounds, and videos . Understanding Clip ArtOffice offers thousands of clip art images that you can use to illustrate your presentations. Microsoft's Web site includes even more images. After you insert clip art into your presentation, you can reformat , recolor, and redesign it to suit your needs. Office includes clip art images in the following formats:
You can also add images in the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and Bitmap (BMP) formats. Understanding PicturesA picture is any drawing or photograph you insert from your own files. Unlike clip art, you can't control its format or color after you insert it into a presentation. PowerPoint accepts pictures in a many formats. Table 13.1 lists the most common picture formats. Table 13.1. Picture Formats
Understanding Sound and Movie FilesPowerPoint lets you insert media clips (sound and movie files) in to your presentations. To play them, you need to have a sound card and speakers installed on your computer. Media clips work in much the same way as clip art and pictures, and are also available through the Microsoft Clip Organizer. Common media clip file formats include the following:
Media clips can greatly enhance your presentation's multimedia effect, but remember that, as with clip art and other images, overuse of media clips can clutter a presentation. To learn more about ways to include multimedia content in your presentations, see "Incorporating Multimedia" in Chapter 28, "Exploring Technicalities and Techniques," p. 665 . PowerPoint can play a clip automatically during a slideshow, or you can customize the clip to play only by a mouse action. Other multimedia options include recording your own sounds or playing a CD track as a slideshow background. |