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Yes, Synthesia can convert PowerPoint and PDF files into avatar-narrated videos. You upload your file, select an AI avatar, edit the auto-generated script for each slide, and export. For a typical 10-slide deck, the whole process takes 20 to 30 minutes — most of that time spent rewriting the slide text into something that sounds natural when spoken aloud.
This guide is for marketing managers who already have a slide deck on their desktop and want video output today, without hiring a production team. It's also for L&D teams building training content from existing materials, and anyone who wants to turn static presentations into something people will actually watch from start to finish. If you've been sitting on a 20-slide deck that nobody reads, this workflow changes what's possible.
What Types of Documents Can Synthesia Convert?
Understanding what the tool handles well before you start saves you from a frustrating import experience.
- PowerPoint files (.pptx): Full support. Each slide becomes a video scene. Synthesia reads the slide content and generates an avatar script from the visible text. This is the cleanest import path.
- PDF slide decks: Supported, but with caveats. Works best when the PDF was originally a presentation exported from PowerPoint or Keynote. Text-heavy PDFs converted from long-form documents (like a whitepaper) convert less cleanly — each page becomes a scene, which creates awkward pacing.
- Google Slides: Not directly importable. Export your deck as a .pptx file first, then upload to Synthesia. This adds two minutes to your prep but produces a cleaner result than trying to work around it.
- Plain text documents: Synthesia's script editor handles raw text input, but this isn't the same as a document import. You paste the text directly into the script field and format it yourself, scene by scene.
- What Synthesia cannot do: It can't process scanned PDFs (image-only files with no selectable text). It won't import Word documents directly. Complex animations, slide transitions, and embedded videos from PowerPoint are stripped on import — the content carries over, but the motion effects don't.
What You Need Before You Start
- A Synthesia account. Try Synthesia Free to get started. The document-to-video feature requires the Starter plan at $18/month or above — the free plan doesn't include file import.
- Your PowerPoint or PDF cleaned up and ready. Remove speaker notes clutter from the visible slide area. Simplify heavily designed slides where complex layouts might not map cleanly to Synthesia's templates. Make sure any key text is actual text, not an image of text — if you can't highlight it with your cursor in the PDF, Synthesia can't read it either.
- A realistic time budget. Expect 5 to 10 minutes of setup per 10 slides, plus generation time. A 5-minute video typically renders in 5 to 8 minutes once you submit.
Step by Step: PowerPoint to Video
Go to your Synthesia dashboard and click "Create Video." Select "Import File" and upload your .pptx file. Synthesia reads each slide and creates a corresponding scene in the video editor. Large files with 50 or more slides may take a moment to process.
Once your slides are imported, you'll be prompted to select an avatar. Synthesia has 160-plus options. For business presentations, choose a professional-looking avatar that matches your audience. You can assign one avatar across all scenes or vary it by section.
Synthesia pulls text from your slides and uses it as the default avatar script. That text was written to be read visually, not spoken aloud. You need to rewrite it. Cut bullet points, expand abbreviations, and write in complete natural sentences. A slide that says "Q3 Revenue: +18% YoY vs. Q2 forecast" should become "In Q3, revenue was up 18 percent compared to the same period last year, beating our Q2 forecast."
Adjust the background colors, fonts, and template to match your brand guidelines. Synthesia's templates let you apply consistent styling across all scenes. If your company has brand colors, enter the hex values in the brand kit settings — this carries through to every slide automatically.
Click "Generate Video." Synthesia renders each scene with the avatar speaking the script you wrote. For a 10-slide deck at roughly 30 seconds per slide, generation takes 5 to 8 minutes. Download as MP4 when complete.
Step by Step: PDF to Video
Synthesia works best with presentation-style PDFs that were originally slide decks exported to PDF. Open your PDF and confirm that all text is selectable — click on a word and see if it highlights. If the whole page selects as one image, you have a scanned PDF and the import won't work. Each page should represent one "slide" of content with a clear focal point.
From your dashboard, create a new video and select "Import File." Upload your PDF. Synthesia processes each page into a video scene, pulling visible text for the avatar script field.
PDF imports don't always come through perfectly. Check each scene for text that got cut off, garbled on import, or is missing entirely. This happens most often with text inside images, complex table formats, and decorative fonts.
Steps 4 and 5 follow the same process as the PowerPoint workflow: edit the script, customize branding, generate, and export.
How to Write Scripts That Work with AI Avatars
The script is where most people lose time on their first Synthesia project. Here's what actually works:
- Keep sentences under 20 words where possible. Long, winding sentences cause avatar pacing issues and make the delivery sound robotic. Short sentences sound confident.
- Spell out numbers and abbreviations. Write "eighteen percent" not "18%." Write "return on investment" not "ROI" the first time you use it. Synthesia's text-to-speech engine handles spelled-out words more naturally than symbols and acronyms.
- Use commas deliberately. Commas create brief pauses in the avatar's delivery. A comma in the right place sounds natural. A missing comma where one should be sounds rushed. Read your script aloud and add commas wherever you'd naturally pause.
- Avoid words that AI voices frequently mispronounce. "Gantt" is a common one (say "project timeline chart" instead). Uncommon brand names and acronyms the tool doesn't recognize can also come out wrong. When in doubt, spell out the phonetic version in a note to yourself and listen before committing.
- Test one scene before generating the full video. Synthesia lets you preview individual scenes. If scene 3 sounds off, fix it before committing to a full render of a 15-scene video.
Real-World Use Cases
Training and Onboarding Videos
Many companies already have onboarding decks built in PowerPoint. Converting them to video means new hires get a consistent, watchable introduction instead of a 40-slide PDF they skim in 90 seconds. A 10-slide deck becomes a 5-minute video that actually gets completed. For distributed teams or companies with high turnover, this is one of the most immediate uses of the tool.
Sales Decks Converted to Video Proposals
Instead of emailing a static deck, you send a 3-minute video summary. Your avatar walks the prospect through the key points. This works particularly well for outbound sales where you can't be there live and want something more engaging than a PDF attachment that gets opened once and forgotten.
Educational Course Content
If you're building online courses, converting existing slide-based lesson content into video narration removes the bottleneck of recording yourself. A 5-module course with 15 slides per module becomes 5 short videos without camera time, studio setup, or editing software.
Internal Company Updates
Quarterly business updates, policy changes, new benefit announcements — these go out as PDFs that most people don't fully read. A 2-minute video with an avatar presenting the key information gets watched, especially when it lives in a tool your team already opens every day.
How Synthesia Compares to Doing This Manually
| Factor | Manual (DIY) | Synthesia |
|---|---|---|
| Time per 5-minute video | 2–3 hours (record, edit, export) | 30–45 minutes once you know the workflow |
| Cost per video | $300–$800+ (freelance editor) | $18/month Starter plan, 10 min/month included |
| Skills required | Screen recording, audio, light video editing | Script writing only |
| Consistency across videos | Varies by who records and when | Consistent avatar, branding, and tone every time |
| Quality ceiling | High — with budget and expertise | Solid for internal and straightforward external content |
Synthesia videos don't have the polish of professionally edited content with b-roll, custom motion graphics, and dynamic editing. They're a meaningful step up from a raw screen recording with a voiceover, but they're not a substitute for your hero marketing content. For everything else, the trade-off is worth it for most teams.
Final Thoughts
If you have a PowerPoint deck sitting on your desktop and you want video output by end of day, Synthesia is the fastest legitimate path to that outcome. The document import feature does exactly what it promises for standard .pptx files, with some limitations on PDF imports and no support for Word documents or scanned files.
The real work is in the scripting step. Treat the auto-generated script as a rough draft — something to edit, not publish. Spend the time there and the output quality increases significantly.
The $18/month Starter plan includes this feature and covers 10 video minutes per month. For most teams testing the workflow, that's enough to verify whether it fits before committing to a higher tier. Start with one 5-minute video, get a feel for the process, and scale from there.