Video summary in stills

Embedding video in presentations has its drawbacks. It adds another technical risk factor when setting up the presentation outside your office environment. File sizes become so big that it is hard to email a document. And a PDF version of the presentation does not show the video.



As a solution, you can put in a video summary in your presentation consisting of a few key still images taken from the video. Our brain is powerful enough to make up most of what happens in between, and might even imagine the Star Wars sound track in the background when looking at last year’s Volkswagen Super Bowl ad (which I think was better than the one shown this year).

Look how showing the video, or showing a consecutive series of page-filling images keeps up the suspense of the audience. Showing all images on one page gets the point across as fast as possible. The first approach might be the most fun, the second one is what works best when trying to communicate an idea to busy people.