Animating Slide Objects While Media is Playing in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

You have a 5-minute video or audio clip playing on your slide. And exactly after the clip has played for 30 seconds, you want some text to appear superimposed over the video clip. Alternatively, you may want to show other objects on the slide while your audio clip is playing. All this while, the original audio or video clip should continue playing. How do you achieve this result?

It might seem difficult, but you can end up with these results quite easily using the Trigger Animation option. These Trigger animations typically happen as a result of a click on some other slide object. But in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows and later versions, you can now cause Trigger animations to also happen on media playback through a Bookmark.

Follow these steps to learn more in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows. While we have used a video clip in this walkthrough, you can achieve the same results with an audio clip:

1. Select the video clip on your slide, or if you want to start from the beginning, launch PowerPoint. Within the Presentation Gallery that shows up by default, select the Blank Presentation or any other Template/Theme. Doing so opens up a new presentation with a blank slide. Thereafter, optionally change the slide layout to Blank, insert a video clip and select it.
2. Then, add a Bookmark to the selected video clip as required. In Figure 1 below, you can see that we have selected a video that already has a Bookmark added (notice the yellow dot in the Player bar below the video clip). Additionally, the slide also has a Text Box, containing the words Starry Night Sky. This has been placed over the video clip. Do note that no animation has been added to this Text Box yet.
3. 
   Figure 1: A slide with a video clip and a Text Box
3. This is an optional step. Now, select the video clip. Then click the Video Tools Playback tab of the Ribbon, and select the Automatically option within the Start drop-down list, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below. This will ensure that your video starts playing as soon as you play the slide.
4. 
   Figure 2: Play your video clip automatically
4. Now, select the Text Box, and add an animation. We added Swivel, an Entrance animation to this Text Box, as shown in Figure 3, below.
5. 
   Figure 3: Text box selected and animated
5. Now access the Animation tab of the Ribbon, and click the Trigger button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4, below. Doing so brings up a menu. Choose the On Bookmark | Bookmark 1 option, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 4, to make the selected Text Box animate while the video is playing through Bookmark 1. If you have more than one Bookmark, you can choose any Bookmark you want.
6. 
   Figure 4: Trigger animation set to happen

More Triggers for More Bookmarks

Do you have several Bookmarks in your video or audio clip? You can make different Trigger animations happen via these multiple Bookmarks!
6. Save your presentation and play it. You can see the wheel animation on the Text Box when the bookmarked point in the video is playing, as shown in Figure 5, below.
7. 
   Figure 5: Text Box animating at bookmark point