PowerPoint always plays video over all PowerPoint shapes like rectangle, oval, etc. This article explains how to get text over video with the help of a couple of OfficeOne add-ins.

OfficeOne TransparentShow add-in allows you to make the background of a slide show transparent. Using TransparentShow in conjunction with PowerShow should get you text displaying over video.

We would have two presentations:

1. One presentation (video.ppt, say) that has the video.
2. Second presentation (text.ppt, say) that has the text and animations on the text that needs to be displayed over the video.

We would overlay text.ppt over video.ppt. We would display video.ppt through PowerShow to enable us to overlay text.ppt over it and still let video.ppt to continue playing.

The following configuration steps show how to build the configuration:

1. Ensure that PowerShow and TransparentShow are installed in PowerPoint.
    
2. Open video.ppt and text.ppt in PowerPoint.
    

3. In video.ppt, insert the following macro:
   

   Sub LaunchTextOverVideo()
       Application.Run "TransparentShow.ppa!LaunchTransparentShow", "Text.ppt", vbBlack
   End Sub
   

   
   
4. In video.ppt, on the slide that displays the video, insert a shape and set its Action to run the above LaunchTextOverVideo macro on mouse click.
    
5. Start video.ppt slide show through PowerShow:
   1. Select Slide Show | Power Show item.
   2. On the Presentations tab, select your Video.ppt <Slide Show> in the first row and 1 monitor.
   3. Click Start Show button.

Now when you come to the slide that displays video, click the shape that has been set to run the LaunchTextOverVideo macro. This will launch text.ppt over the running video.ppt to give you text over running video.

Important Note:

The vbBlack in the above macro should be substituted with the background color of slides in text.ppt. This color would be made transparent by TransparentShow. The following colors are predefined for convenience by PowerPoint VBA:

You can use the RGB() function to define your own color by specifying the Red, Green and Blue components of the color.

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