The only difference I can think of is that I am working with a file that I didn't create - but have edited. Perhaps it was created in a former version where the 'embedded' videos are actually 'linked' videos. If this is the case, then I have a different problem - that of ending up with a black box when I embed a video in a newly created Office:mac pptx file. I need the embedded video icon to be the first frame. I have used a movie editor to ensure the file's first frame is not a black box, but it never-the-less embeds as a black box, with no apparent way to change it. There are three things to discuss here.

Select all of the video's embed code and then press 'Ctrl-C.' Open the PowerPoint slide for which you want to embed the video. Click the 'Insert' tab, 'Video' in the Media group and then 'Online Video.' Select the 'Paste Embed Code Here' field and then press 'Ctrl-V' and then 'Enter.' Your embedded video appears on your selected slide.

Liking vs embedding, file formats, and Mac vs PowerPoint versions. Linked video: If a video is linked, the PowerPoint presentation file and the video file are discreet, independent files. PowerPoint saves the path to the video content as a link. The video content is not copied into the presentation. Mac osx for virtualbox. Links to file content can be 'absolute' where the complete file path is saved, or 'relative' where only the name of the file is saved. There is a long thread in the MS Answers forum that goes into great detail about exactly when PowerPoint saves a relative link and when it saves an absolute link.

Getting links to work when moving a presentation from one computer to another is tricky. The general rule to create a relative link is to make a folder, put all the video and audio content into the folder along with the presentation file. Then insert the links to the content. To share the presentation, you share the folder that contains the presentation file and all the linked content. Embedded video: When a video is embedded, PowerPoint makes a copy of the video file and incorporates the video within the PowerPoint file itself so that there is no link to break when sharing the presentation file. Although this makes the presentation files larger, you don't have to distribute the video file along with the presentation. Embedding makes this foolproof and much much simpler.

You don't have to worry about links at all when content is embedded instead of linked. OOXML file formats vs old file formats OOXML OOXML stands for Office Open XML.

This is the current international standards body open file format and is now the default format for Microsoft Office applications. OOXML supports embedding of audio and video files. By default, in current versions of PowerPoint for Mac and PC the default is OOXML called PowerPoint presentation (.pptx). You should always use one of the current file formats unless you plan to play your presentation on PowerPoint v.x (Mac) or PowerPoint earlier than 97 for Windows. Here is a list of the current file formats for PowerPoint 2011: Old Binary formats There are plenty of old presentations and templates that were saved in the old binary formats (.ppt.pps.ppa.pot).