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Videos look boring when they’re just plonked onto a slide, and you’ll lose your audience’s attention if your video runs for too long. But if you adjust the start and end points of your video, to cut out any unnecessary waffle, and then choose whether or not you want the video to start playing automatically when you transition to the slide, you can integrate them into your presentation much more seamlessly. You can even change the frame that’s shown on the video object itself before it plays.
It’s worth bearing in mind, though, you can’t cut out any parts of your video from the middle – you can only trim from the ends. So if you want to make a few quick cuts then you’ll want to drop into iMovie quickly and then export to Keynote. Let’s get started.
1 Add a video
Open up your keynote and insert a video by dragging one in or using the Media menu. Select it and then head to the Movie tab of the Format panel that opens on the right.
2 Edit Movie
Click the arrow to the left of Edit Movie, below the playback controls. This opens your Trim and Poster Frame options (the Poster Frame is the one shown on the video object).
3 Trim it down
Drag the handles at either end of the Trim slider to change the start and end points of your video. The video object on your slide will preview the changes as you make them.
4 Change frame
The Poster Frame is the frame that’s shown on the video before you press play. Again, just drag the slider and you can use the preview to pick a suitable, illustrative point.
