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Q: I am delivering a presentation next month and would like to play a small portion of a YouTube clip with it. What’s the best way to do this?
A: Before you reuse a YouTube video in your presentation, you should first contact the author and obtain permission. Assuming you have proper permissions, one way to achieve your objective is to use the website tubechop.com to extract (or crop) a portion of the YouTube clip. Start by copying the Web address (URL) of the video you would like to crop, then visit tubechop.com and paste the Web address into the Enter keyword or YouTube URL box. Use the slider buttons located on the timeline below the video to adjust the beginning and ending points for the portion of the video you want to crop. Add a comment, if desired, in the optional comment box, and click the chop it button located in the bottom-center of the screen (see screenshot below).
TubeChop will process your request and create a video that plays only the portion of the original video you selected. TubeChop provides you with both a link and embed code, which you can use to access and play the cropped portion of the video in the future.
Simply copy the link and paste it into your PowerPoint, Word or Excel presentation, or as an advanced measure, copy the embed code and paste the code into your website code. TubeChop also provides buttons for easy publishing to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social media websites (see screenshot below).
Advanced tip 1. If you want to string together a group of cropped videos and play them as a single video, visit mixpod.com, and paste your newly created TubeChop URLs into MixPod one at a time, then name and save the playlist as instructed. You must sign up for a free account, and MixPod will provide you with a link that plays the resulting video mix.
Advanced tip 2. If you want to download your newly created video mix from the Web and play it from your computer’s hard drive, download the Vixy Freecorder (a free video recorder and player) at vixy.net and follow the setup instructions for installing the Freecorder and converting your video mix to a local file on your computer.
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