Power Point 2010 youtube embeding problem

Question

I know this is more programming related site but I couldnt think of a better place to ask this... anyways, Im trying to use the new Embed from video site feature but it seems to be disabled. Please help?

Answer 1

Well, I guess I'll turn this into a programming question for the benefit of others needing this programmatically as well.

The most likely cause here is that you're using an x64 version of PowerPoint 2010. The help file states:

PowerPoint 2010 64-bit is not compatible with 32-bit versions of QuickTime or Flash. You must install a 64-bit version of QuickTime or Flash, or a 32-bit version of PowerPoint 2010.

Kind of pointless to say that because neither Flash or QT have 64-bit versions. That said, you can still embed (actually, "link to") a file programmatically by using code, such as:

Sub InsertWebVideo()
Dim sl As Slide
Set sl = ActivePresentation.Slides(28)
sl.Shapes.AddMediaObjectFromEmbedTag EmbedTag:= _
        "<object width='640' height='385'>" & _
        "<param name='movie' value='http://www.youtube.com/v/gejJM3n2LHU&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;'&gt;" & _
        "</param><param name='allowFullScreen' value='true'></param>" & _
        "<param name='allowscriptaccess' value='always'></param>" & _
        "<embed src='http://www.youtube.com/v/gejJM3n2LHU&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;' " & _
        "type='application/x-shockwave-flash' allowscriptaccess='always' " & _
        "allowfullscreen='true' width='640' height='385'></embed></object>"
End Sub

The issue is that this just doesn't work at all on x64 - an object appears on the slide, but nothing happens. Embedding Silverlight doesn't seem to work though as Windows Media Player kicks an error. If you happen to have a WMV on a website, give that a try with <embed/> code using something like the code above.