Presenter Video Synching
Video is hot. Since publishing Don Jones’ ScriptingAnswers.com customer spotlight earlier this month, we’ve gotten tons of great feedback on the excellent job he did in creating the “talking head” presenter video that accompanies many of the slides. Although most of Don’s slides contain static (non-animated) PowerPoint content, we’re also hearing a lot lately that those of you adding video to your Presenter courses and presentations want to know how to synchronize your video with the animations in your slide.
Presenter does not currently support a native method for synchronizing PowerPoint animations with video, as it does for audio (Articulate -> Sync Animation Timings). So how do you get your video to appear synchronized with your slide animations?
First, make sure you’re using Articulate Presenter 5.05, which contains a number of improvements to the Insert Flash Movie feature, including Presenter’s ability to automatically set the slide duration based on that of the movie you’re importing.
Next, proceed with synching your presenter video with your slide animations:
The Click-Marker Video Synchronization Approach
- View your Flash movie in any player (your Web browser, Swiff Player, etc.) and watch the timer.
- As you watch your movie, note the time at which you want each animation in your slide to occur (e.g., 02.74 seconds, 09.34 seconds, etc.).
- Import your Flash movie into PowerPoint via Articulate -> Insert Flash Movie on the slide where you have your animations to synchronize.
- Go to Articulate -> Timeline Audio Editor (you must have the Professional Edition) and select the slide where you have imported your Flash movie. You will likely see a single click marker (C1) on your slide with the animations.
- If desired, click and drag the C1 click marker to the point at which you want your first animation to occur — be sure to account for the 5-second Flash movie buffer (or whatever value you’ve specified) at the start of the slide before the Flash movie begins playing.
- For all other animations you have in the slide, click on the audio track until you find the point at which you want your next animation to occur, then right-click at this point and select the option to Add Click. This will mark the point where your next animation should occur, corresponding to the times you noted in Step 2 above.
- Repeat the previous step for each of the animations in your slide, then close the Timeline Audio Editor, making sure you save your work.
Note: This is not an exact science and results may vary due to bandwidth speed and other factors, especially with larger videos, but it will get you pretty close to synching your presenter video with your slide animations.
Alternate method: Strip your audio track out of your video and import via Articulate Presenter as a .WAV file, then synchronize with animations using the Sync Animation Timings tool. This is not a precise method, either, and may lead to your talking head’s mouth moving separately from the audio — so this method may be more appropriate if your video does not feature a close-up of an individual speaking (perhaps it’s a video demonstration of how to tie a shoe and only shows the shoe, not the person).
15 responses to “Presenter Video Synching”
Is there a reason why when I put video as a swf file into the presenter panel that the slide does not automatically advance even though it is set that way? It gets to the end of the slider bar and then jumps back in time, and then stops…
When I put the same exact swf file into the slide (not in the presenter panel), it advances just fine…please advise!
I have the same problem with video in the presenter panel and the program jumping back to the start rather than moving forward. I want to be able to have the video in the presenter panel and I have plenty of action on the powerpoint slide. Any thoughts or solutions? Thanks
I am frustrated with getting my animations to match my presenters explanations. We are a school that is presenting complicated math and other formulas that require a step by step explanation to fully understand. Without the animations matching the explanation, it is awfully confusing! Not only that, but my videos are freezing right and left and seem to not be supported by this software.
After a lot of trial and error, I think the best way to sinc an FLV in the presenter window with animations in the presentation window is to import a silent WAV file for each slide which matches the length of the flv video in the presenter window.
Do not try to “Add Silence” in the timeline editor. It won’t give you a consistent slide timing like a silent WAV will. Unfortunately, a silent WAV will add bulk to your presentation, but it has given me the most consistent results.
I just completed a project with 207 slides, 69 of which have a narration video inserted and slide animations synched to them. The easiest way to do this is to extract the audio track from the videos and temporarily import them instead of the videos.
Once you’ve set the animation timings correctly to sych with the audio-only narration files, simply delete the temporary audio files from those slides and then import the correct videos. The timings will all remain in place.
No need to worry about the lip-synch issue described in the alternate method above if you just delete the temporary audios.
David, where are you deleting the temporary audio files? Every time I delete them from the Import Audio menu, it screws up the timings again.
[…] is to synchronize your video with your slides. You can do this via the Timeline Audio Editor (see Gabe’s blog entry) or you can do what I prefer to do, and that is use the Record Narration feature. There are […]
Buenas tardes tengo un problema con un archivo swf que no me quiere cuadrar con el articulate ya que los su movimiento es más rapido en el articulate que en flash. esta animación esta a 12 fotogramas por segundo y en articulate se ve demasiado rapido que debo hacer para solucionar este problema…. gracias
Estimado Jaime,
Hay dos opciones en este caso:
1) Puede cambiar los fotogramas por segundo a 12 en Articulate por Library and Options –> Other –> SWF Options.
2) Puede cambiar los fotogramas por segundo de su video .SWF a 30 (es 30 por defecto en Articulate).
Espero que esta información le ayude. También le mandé un e-mail.
Sarah
buenos dÃas tengo una pregunta porque hay codigos de flash que no sirven en articulate que pasa en esa parte y si es posible me ayudenpara saber cuales son los que ponen problemas para la utilización en articulate ….
muchas gracias…
Buenas Tardes,
Tengo un problema con el Articulate Presenter. Los videos swf han sido inscrustados en Power Point 2007, cuando coloco audio de fondo, el material publicado no pasa automáticamente de una diapositiva a la otra a pesar de que está configurada para que eso ocurra. Este problema se me presentó en la última versión ’09, con versiones anteriores no tengo problemas. El sistema operativo instalado en mi equipo es Windows Vista de 64 bits
Hola Griselda,
Lo siento que haya problemas con nuestros productos. Para ayudarle, pedimos que mandarnos sus archivos:
http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/?p=457
Sube el archivo .zip creado con este proceso de su computadora a nuestro servidor por esta forma:
http://upload.articulate.com/
En la descripción, por favor, incluye los detalles que ha notado aquí junto con los números de las diapositivas problemáticas. Por favor, provee tanta descripción como sea posible.
Revisaremos y responderemos al recibo de sus archivos.
Hello, i converted my file to a flv, and imported my video into my presentation, and it stops at 5 seconds? i can play the file and it plays the whole thing but it does not seem to play within the articulate? Any ideas?
Hi Jacquie,
When you insert the FLV file, you’ll have the option to play the file indepedently of the slide or in sync with the slide. If you choose to play it independently, then the video will stop at the end of the slide (usually 5 seconds unless you have other animations or audio in the slide). However, if you choose to play it in sync with the slide, then Articulate will play the video for its entire length.
For more information, see the link below:
http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/?p=24
We came across a piece of web based software that solved this problem for our company. We had to catalogue hours of presentations of videos and slides and this was easily the cheapest and easiest way for us to do it. You just need to upload the video file, then slide then sync the slides, it can work as a stand alone website or embeddable presentations. You don’t need to download the software. Worth checking out http://arcticfoxtv.com/
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