Videos can make an excellent addition to your presentation. Most of the time they work, but every once in a while they don’t, and then you’re left there on the stage feeling embarrassed and saying something lame like “Hey, there’s supposed to be a video here, but I guess Murphy just walked into the room.”

So how can you avoid that embarrassing moment?

Insert a black slide before the video slide. Then insert the video slide. Then insert another black slide.

So the sequence looks like this: slide #1: black; slide #2: video; slide #3: black

If the video works, great! If it doesn’t, slide #2 will be black. You’ll have three black slides, and the audience won’t even know there was a problem.

Pro tip:
The standard way to introduce the video goes like this, for example: “Mountains are beautiful, here’s a video about that…” [switch to the video slide, and pray that the video works]

But even better, just say, “Mountains are beautiful…” and then switch to the video slide. Notice that you didn’t announce the video, so if the video doesn’t work, you can just stand in front of a black screen and tell a story about going to the mountains when you were a kid, and the audience will never know there was a video problem.