I've got a situation where I want to distribute a Powerpoint presentation to several people. I want to be able to embed several large videos in this presentation by linking to a URL, for the following specific reasons:

1. the videos are highly confidential, and I would like to be able to delete them at some later date, but still allow them to see it in the presentation while it is online.
2. I want to send the presentation via email (so it should be small), and put the links on a server with a faster upload speed
3. Maybe I'd like to change the video at some point without changing the presentation

One option that addresses #1 is to hook up a webcam and allow them to see video stream from the office, but our upload rate is too slow for this to be a viable option.

I've tried embedding a video and giving Powerpoint the URL. It seems to work initially, because the first frame appears in my slideshow. However, when I play the slideshow, nothing happens. I looked at the network traffic on my computer, and nothing was getting downloaded from the remote server.

Any suggestions on how to make this work, or how to at least satisfy the criteria listed above would be great!