Showing a brief video during your presentation may be a very powerful manner to bring over a message / key point to your audience. However you should be careful with this, because when it doesn’t work properly it will reflect badly on you in terms of perceived quality of your presentation. There are a couple of things you can do to avoid mistakes.
For example you can embed the video in your presentation slide deck. By means of this you will not loose time switching between applications and running into various problems that make your presentation look unprofessional. For example MS PowerPoint® has an option to embed a video into a slide and then you can change the settings to make it play full-screen automatically when you show the slide. This looks more professional compared to having the video play in a smaller window on the screen.
It is also important to also test if it works before the start of your presentation. A combination between moving images and sound of the video will add complexity. Therefore test / practice upfront to check if it working. Sound level ok? Even though you may not be responsible for having the technique work, if it doesn’t it will reflect on the perceived quality of your presentation.
More helpful practical tips and tricks in regards to the best use and content of videos in a presentation can be found in the book that is part of the Public Speaking Kit.
