Whether you’re a teacher, student, business professional, or even a YouTube content creator—for many of us, delivering presentations quickly becomes a standard part of everyday life.
But what happens if you can’t be there to deliver your presentation in person, need a key point to land perfectly, or you need your audience to watch it asynchronously in their own time? Have no fear, video presentations can be a great solution to all these challenges.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything there is to know about creating your own high quality video presentations, so your audience can benefit from your content whenever they need it.
Jump to section
- What is a video presentation
- What makes a good presentation video?
- What tools do you need to make a video presentation?
- How to make a video presentation
- Making a video presentation in PowerPoint
- Making a video presentation in Keynote
Starting from the top: What is a video presentation?
A video presentation is a method of communication through which information is delivered partially or entirely through video. In other words, it’s the process of using video to deliver a message or presentation.
Common formats for video presentations might include pre-recorded slide presentations, instructional videos, sales material, inspirational talks, entertainment, or anything you can think of.
What makes a good presentation video?
While the reaction to a video presentation will be subjective, there are a few general qualities that can be beneficial to keep in mind:
- Make your video valuable—have a clear intended outcome for the viewer and be sure to reach it
- Make sure your audio and video are clear—you want your audience to focus on your message, not your video quality
- Bring your key points to life—use stories, questions, and examples to illustrate key concepts and engage viewers
- Establish expectations—use your introduction to set clear expectations, either with an agenda or teasing where the session is heading
- Don’t rely on slides—if the slides added all the value, you could just send your audience a PDF. Ask yourself: what are you adding to the content by presenting it?
- Keep an eye on time—don’t make your video presentation longer than it needs to be.
- Mix it up—break the monotony and change pace at appropriate intervals
- Don’t start over for the sake of perfection—if you make a mistake during recording, you can always edit it out later
What tools do you need to make a video presentation?
Before you can start creating your own video presentations, you’ll first need a few basic tools.
Hardware for a video presentation
Let’s start with the basics, your tech. In most cases, you’ll have everything you need if you have a standard laptop or desktop computer.
Here’s what you’ll need to start making video presentations:
- A laptop or PC—you’ll need something to make the presentation recording on
- A microphone—to record your voice-over, either built-in or USB
- A camera—if you want to include video of yourself, either as a built-in webcam or a USB camera
Video recording software
With your tech set up, you’ll need software to record your presentation. Depending on your needs, this might be something to record your screen, record your voice, or record yourself with your camera.
With Dropbox Capture, you can do all three at the same time.
Dropbox Capture is video and screen recording technology, designed to make it easy to quickly capture whatever you need. All without needing advanced editing skills or specialist equipment.
With Capture, it’s easy to:
- Record your screen, webcam, and microphone simultaneously
- Create GIFs
- Draw on or annotate recordings
- Automatically generate closed captions
- Share in just a few clicks
While presentation applications like PowerPoint and Keynote have some built-in screen and presentation recording capabilities, they only allow you to record the presentation.
Whereas with Dropbox Capture, you’re free to jump between windows and applications throughout your presentation recording—giving you greater freedom on what you present.
File storage and sharing tools
Ultimately, you’re going to want to make your video presentation available for viewers somewhere.
With Dropbox cloud storage, this is as easy as copying a link, with full control over access and permissions for your files.
How to make a video presentation
We’ll now cover all the steps to create an impactful video presentation, starting from the very beginning—your plan.
1. Plan your topic, examples, and intended audience
You likely already have an idea of what you’ll want to cover in your video presentation, but it can help to formally get this down on paper:
- Presentation aim—what do you want your audience to understand by the end of the video?
- Approach—broadly, what will you cover to help them understand this concept?
- Resources—what examples will you be able to share to illustrate the key concepts?
To help with the planning process, Dropbox Paper has a number of pre-built templates to get your creative juices flowing, like the brainstorming template.
2. Create your presentation slides and your video presentation storyboard
If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to create your slides.
While doing this, you should also think about the overall storyboard of your video presentation—what are the key beats, how will you present them, and what slides do you need?
A storyboard is a visual tool, used by video producers to map out the narrative flow of a video and the visuals that will accompany it. In many cases, your presentation will almost act as a storyboard, but it might help to get this down on paper first.
You can learn more about the storyboarding process in our in-depth guide to storyboards.
3. Record your video presentation
With your storyboard and presentation ready, it’s time to go about creating your recording.
You can record your screen first, then later record a voice-over or video narration and edit the two together. Or with Dropbox Capture, you can record your screen, webcam, and microphone simultaneously. Using Dropbox Capture makes it easy to create your pre-recorded video lesson in one take. Perfect, if you don’t have access to advanced video editing software.
To record with Dropbox Capture, it’s a simple as the following steps:
- Open Dropbox Capture
- Click Screen recording & camera
- Choose which part of your screen you’d like to capture
- Click the Record icon to start recording, click it again to stop recording
- Click the Pause icon in the side panel while recording to pause or resume recording
- Click the Draw icon in the side panel while recording to draw on your recording
4. Edit your video presentation
If you’re already happy with your recording, there is no further editing required.
In any other cases, you can use video editing software to apply finishing touches to your video as you see fit. These edits might include:
- Editing your screen recording and voice-over together (if you have separate files)—with Dropbox Capture you can record your microphone and camera simultaneously, without the need to use editing software
- Cut and delete unwanted sections of video—like an awkward pause or a dog barking, with Dropbox Capture you can do this directly within the app, no editing software required!
- Remove awkward filler words—clean up those pesky “ums” and “ahs”, with Dropbox Capture you can do this automatically, directly in the app
- Adding text overlays to emphasize key points of video sections
- Additional flair and visual elements
- Adding background music to create an atmosphere
5. Share your video presentation
With your video presentation finished, you’ll need a way for your viewers to access it.
If you're using Dropbox Capture, sharing your presentation couldn’t be easier, simply click the Share button and the sharing link will automatically copy to your clipboard.
If you’re not using Capture, Dropbox cloud storage makes it easy to share your video files with anyone and see who’s viewed your video presentation. All you need to do is copy a link to the file.
If you want to send a copy of the full video, complete with its cumbersome file size, Dropbox Transfer makes it easy to send large files securely.
How to record a video presentation in PowerPoint
It’s worth keeping in mind that, when recording directly within PowerPoint, you can only record your slides and your editing options will be limited. The best way to give yourself complete control over what you record—and how you edit it afterwards—is with a purpose-built screen recording app like Dropbox Capture.
If you’d still prefer to record directly in PowerPoint, you can do this by following these steps:
- Open PowerPoint and open your presentation file
- Navigate to the slide you’d like to start recording from
- Select Record in the top-right corner of the PowerPoint window
- Click the red Record button, wait for the countdown, then start your presentation
With your presentation recorded, you can then save it to your Dropbox cloud storage, making it easy to share your video files with anyone and see who’s viewed your video presentation.
How to record a video presentation in Keynote
If you’re a Mac user and would prefer to record directly in Keynote, here’s how to do it:
- Open Keynote and open your presentation file
- Navigate to the slide you’d like to start recording from
- Select Record Slideshow from the Play menu at the top of the screen
- Click the red Record button, wait for the countdown, then start your presentation
With your Keynote presentation recorded, you can then save it to your Dropbox cloud storage and share it simply by copying the link.
Again, your control over what you record and how the final edit turns out will be limited when recording directly within the Keynote app. To give yourself complete control over how your video presentation turns out, a purpose-built screen recording app like Dropbox Capture will be more suitable.
Elevate your video presentations with Dropbox Capture
It’s never been so simple to create an engaging and memorable video presentation, with Dropbox.
With Dropbox Capture, it’s never been easier to get your message across with video recordings of your presentations. So you can clearly say what you mean and nail the delivery, every single time.