This is such great information and a great help for what I want to do with Articulate. Thanks so much for going through the details on how to do it.

Better still would be if Import Audio or the Timeline Audio Editor could import a SoundForge-edited file and recognize and support the slide and animation (“click”) markers already in the file.

Thanks very much – for some reason in going through the documentation I had concluded you couldn’t do this – this will be a valuable tool and appreciate you laying it out there for us.

Just buy the $89 Presentersoft.com mediaeasy program. Import your video or your audio. Import your PPT. Then play audio or video, clicking NEXT on each PPT as you want it to occur as you listen through the audio or watch your video. MUCH SIMPLER

Hi Tom, I agree. Articulate needs the ability to split video across slides and easily sycn slides with video, which Presentersoft does do well. However, Presentersoft is not flash based and does not support Flash video. A combination of the two programs would be ideal.

Trying to get things “exact” with this editing tool is, at best, difficult. Are there any plans for the next release to enable this tool to be made easier to use?

Once I am finished with my project, I would like to store all the files in a corporate repository so that I can access them for future edits. So, I’ve been publishing using the project files function to zip all my project files but the audio files don’t seem to be in the zipped file. Am I missing something there?

Also, when saving the ppt under a different name, it loses the audio files also. Sometimes I get the “would you like to import the narrations” and other times I don’t. How do I get it to always import the audio?

Elizabeth- We don’t disclose future product enhancements, but I’d encourage you to submit any feedback using our feature request form.

Mirella- Publishing to project files should save your audio. You’ll also see an option to include .WAV files, so make sure that’s checked. If you’re still having issues, please submit a case.

Using a “Save As” should prompt you to transfer the audio, so make sure you do that from within PowerPoint vs. manually copying the .ppt file in your file system.

When using the timeline and one large audio file (50 mb split up into 20 slides) there is a audio pause after each slide after publishing so the audio/speech won’t continueing.

This is a problem for us, is there a solution to get rid of that silence (background music is not a option because users have to navigate through the slides)?

Hi Dennis- Have you confirmed in the Timeline Audio Editor that there’s not any extra space or blank sound?

I also have a problem with the timeline editor. If I remove audio from a PPT (and even rename it and save it somewhere else), it still wants to associate with the old audio file – even if I start a new PPT and import slides from the old PPT. After I’ve imported the new audio, and synced it up the slides, when I hit save, the save bar flashes RED. When I exit it encodes the slides with the audio, but when I publish there is NOTHING THERE except silence. Help!

Rebecca, did you get help with this? If not, pose the question in the community forum.

I am having some troubles with the Timeline editor. I have inported my audio files into slide 1 and used the red slide markers in the timeline editor to match the audio to the 3 slides in the presentation. When satisfied, I click save and get the following message: “Error (75) occurred at or after line 65 of OpenSaveClass. Path/file access error”. I click ok, get the red save bar and then close the timeline editor and it encodes the 3 slides with the audio. However when I poublish and view the presentation slide 1 plays the entire audio file and slides 2 and 3 play the audio as per my set up via timeline editor. Why is it not recoginising my instructions for slide 1 but it is for slides 2 and 3?

Hi Eloise- Take a look at this forum thread, which may be of help to you.

Hi Gabe. Thanks, that helps a lot. I have saved the ppt and audio files locally and this seems to have solved the error message problem. I now have a new problem. I have just spent nearly an hour going through a 15 min/13 slide presentation syncing the audio with the slides – making sure I saved changes regularly. It was all done,so I saved one last time, exit the timeline editor and published the presentation only to be presented with silence. All the slide transitions are in the correct place but the audio has vanished. I’ve gone back to the timeline audio editor and the markers are all still where they should be but the actual audio isn’t there…????

And also, I’ve checked import audio and the audio file is still there…

Hi Eloise- This may be an issue with your directory structure. If you’re still having issues, you should submit a support case. We can help you more effectively (and faster) via a case.

I’m having the same problem that Dennis is having. There is silence just before a slide change. Words are being cut off as a slide changes. There is silence being inserted no matter how I do audio; I can record narration live; I can import clips for each slide; or I can do this method.

All methods add silence just before a slide change. I can also see it when I go back into the timeline editor. I have tried to eliminate the silence using the erase tool in the timeline editor, but it is still there.

Hi CD-

If you haven’t already done so, I’d suggest that you submit a support case and we can take a look at your project files for you.

Gabe,

I can’t release the files on this as I am bound by a propietary-information agreement. Basically, from your response, I am guessing that this is something that should not be happening?

I should be able to record narration and advance the slides at the same time with no silence being inserted, and no words being cut off before the change. Is that correct?

Thanks,
C.

Hi CD- Yes, that’s correct. Are you recording on a local drive or on a network drive? And does this happen with every presentation or just this particular one?

You might want to try a new presentation and also recording audio one slide at a time (vs. all at once). That will help in terms of saving your audio for each slide as you go.

Gabe,

I don’t have the luxury of recording one slide at a time – that seems to be everybody’s and every vendor’s solution. We are recording presentations live in a conference situation. We rarely even know who the speakers are until they are at the podium. We have been doing this now successfully with Microsoft Producer for over 5 years (with video, I might add) and now need a Flash-based/cross-platform solution.

We have tested Articulate with audio one slide at a time, and the same thing happens – audio is cut off and silence is inserted near the end of the slide. It only keeps all of the audio if we give a substantial pause at the end when recording … but obvioulsy, that doesn’t fit our needs, anyway.

We have tested recording on local drives, and firewire drives and USB 2.0 drives. This happens on every presentation; we have created empty presentations also with text only, no transitions, no animations and still the problem occurs.

Our test PCs range from 2.7G Hyperthread P4, 2G RAM, to 3.6 Hyperthread P4, 2G RAM.

We have seen other producers’ materials using Flash that have continuous uninterrupted video or audio like Microsoft Producer, so we are trying to find a vendor with a product that does that.

Thanks for your help. Hopefully the next version of Articulate will cover some of these issues, but no one knows since you won’t discuss what you are developing, which is, of course, your prerogative, but very frustrating from a user’s standpoint.

I apologize for the rant.

Thanks for the input, CD. I’ve added your email address to our list of beta testers so that you’ll get an invite when beta testing begins for the next release of Presenter. It sounds like you’ll be able to give us some great input when the time comes!

I wish to concur with CD and Dennis with their inserted silence at the end of each slide. When spanning a single audio file over multiple slides, Articulate inserts a 0.07 second pause at the end of each slide, which causes an annoying silent blip (or dropout). Even if I remove it manually, so that the audio it seamlessly stitched together, upon saving and opening again the 0.07 second silence again appears. In addition, if I save it a second time, the gap expands to 0.14, and so forth, so it is certainly being added by Articulate.

This audio blip seems to be a common problem. I have only just started to use the Time Line Editor and hae experienced exactly the same thing. Is there a solution to getting rid of the pause?

JN

It sound like you folks know what your talking about. Can I take it that these are still issues despite the recent upgrade? On that basis is the current way to proceed by editing large audio files with something like audacity or soundforge, cut each audio to match the slide and then import to AP?
Sounds labor intensive but Am I on the right track?

David

Just wanted to see if anyone has found a way to have multiple slides timed to a VIDEO? Right now I have to break my video in to different segments…

[…] Importing audio into Articulate Presenter is just a matter of a few mouse clicks. As Gabe has outlined in previous posts, you can import multiple audio files or even use the Timeline Audio Editor to split your audio across several slides. […]

This would be such a great feature for me if only the slide markers didn’t get all smushed to the end of the window after I imported the audio. It is really a pain to try and drag them apart when they run into each other. I can zoom out, but then I can’t see the beginning of the audio file. Doing this visually is not ideal — it would be easier just to enter a list of the timepoints.

So what would be GREAT is if we could import a text file that has a list of time data that would line these up for us. For example, if I had a text file with these values in it:

“10,40,160,400” (and so on)

When I imported it it would be nice to have it set all of the markers at these timepoints. For an example, see how you can import labels in Audacity.

Willswords: If you’re brave (and are working with a backup of your file(s) ), you can try editing the ae.ini file manually.

Articulate: Have you published any articles about or discussed the manual editing of the ae.ini file to achieve certain special cases?

Has this been upgraded in 09? I want to create presentations based on full audio files. In the past I found this very difficult to work with because it did not respond correctly.

So, there really is no solution for that gap or blip between slides, is there? I’m really frustrated by this. Trying to make a nice reflection with a Christmas hymn, for a retreat, and there’s the constant cut off between slides. You would think flash would be smoother…

I even tried to set the ppt transitions to fast, but to no avail…

To fix the audio gap/pause issue between slides, I ended up attaching background audio as instructed by:

http://www.articulate.com/forums/articulate-presenter/2513-attaching-background-audio.html

I have tried pretty much all of the suggestions on this page to remove the jarring audio gap at the end of each slide, without success. Using version 5.4 Pro. The gap arises when Articulate goes through its sound encoding step. Neither Lectora nor Camtasia suffer from this drawback.

Hi Chani,

I apologize for the issues that you are having. Would you mind submitting a support case to us so that we can take a closer look at the issue?

http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/