Best procedures to record a long presentation

[Papillon-ch]

Hello everyone,

Glad to know about this forum.

I've been converting PPT slides into captivate3 and recording the narration. At first, we recorded about 20 minutes of conversation for 15 slides. The sound file was easy to manipulate (remove hums and bits of speech ;-)), the captivate 3 file was over 120'000 KB but no crash, t'was fine. Excellent sound quality but the image quality was not so good and the text a bit deformed. Following advice on this forum, I recorded onscreen the PPT show. result = Very good image quality.

Then, we decided to introduce 1-2 bullet points of text at a time. From what I could figure out, each bullet point had to become a slide in captivate in order to be able to modify its timeline. Then, also thanks to you all, found Audio>Edit timing>projects. Took the sound file of hte whole presentation and have been adding the slide marks. I've had to redo and redo this several times, and it is not over yet, because, despite the fact I try to save every 2-3 slides, all the sudden, instead of it's being slide 15 at 9 minutes of track, it is slide 4 at 9 minutes and all other slide markers previously added disappear. So, here I am back to the slide 4 "mark" although I am at slide 19...and 20 more to go, an 17 earlier ones to redo....

Here are questions:

Has anyone had this problem in setting up the timing?
Is there an optimal length of sound file to work with captivate 3 (for ex., don' t go over 5-10-15-30 minutes...)
Is there a way to capture bullet point animation on one slide?
How would you go about with the project?
I thought of recording in PPT and then link audio in Captivate, but the sound quality really is v. good in captivate 3.

my temp solution was to save each time and if the above error occured, to close the file without saving and return to the last save. Even that doesn't work!!!!

Many thanks!!

[Papillon-ch]

Hello.... so maybe I had too many questions?

New question for you:

What is the best way to record 20 minutes of speech and add to a Captivate presentation? Have you found that sound quality decreases if you record for more than 5 minutes at a time?

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks......................

[Spiersey]

Hi Papillon-ch
I've been doing quite a bit of narration and I've found the easiest method is to record in chunks of 4 - 5 minute each; the narration recorded on the first slide of that chunk. For ease of editing I'll plan that each transition point aligns with a slide change and introduce the new slide as the final comment on the previous chunk. Liberal use of Audio>Edit Timing anables me to get timings spot on

Hope this helps

Robbie

[Spiersey]

Papillon

sorry, only glanced thro the post so missed the point regarding timing appearing to have a life of its own and have had lots of frustrations with that one.

If I have it right you record a project, add narration, publish and everything is OK. But, once you amend the project the timing goes all over the place no matter what you do, even multiple saving doesn't seem to work..... sound about right???

After much gnashing of teeth I think I got to the bottom of it. If you make amendments to a project that has narration I suggest that, before even listening to the narration and then editing audio, you go back to the project, slide by slide and check for timeline changes, because changes to a slide can change its duration which will thereby create a large silence on the project narration. If you don't "touch up" the physical timing of a slide any edit to the audio will have no effect - and a silence is created.

But by far the easiest method I have found is that if you need to add/delete slides once narration is attached take a copy of the project, delete the narration from the copy, paste the original narration onto the copy and use the edit timing>projects to distribute thro the new project - this is much less stressful. This is where recording in 5 minute chunks really comes into its own

Again, hope this helps

Robbie

[Papillon-ch]

Hi Spiersey and thanks for your response.

Yes, this issue of "moving sound markers" is driving me nuts. If I understand you correctly... there should be one recording per slide, and not use one recording over several slides?

have you noticed that Captivate adds a lapse of 0.5 or 1 seconds in front of and after the sound file and after, on the timline?

I like your idea for transitions, that makes them more "elastic". Most of my transitions are slience, so when they are off, you REALLY hear the difference.

Sometimes, a recording gets cut off. For ex., Rec3 covers slides 4-5-6, and it gets chopped off at the end of slide 5. Then, I usually redo the sound for the 3 slides, but in the end, I'm not sure that makes a difference.

Thanks!!!!

[Spiersey]

Hi Papillon

I don't go as far as 1 recording per slide; I make a recording that will cover a specific topic which sometimes covers many slides. So in effect I will have 5/6/7 master audio slides. I then find them in the library and give them appropriate titles which makes them easier to find if I want to use them again (for subsequent, amended versions of the project).

I then spread this large audio file over the required slides (you'll notice that in the library these are names "clips" but the recordings are still there if you need them). This gives me the most flexible audio options.

To ask you for some advice, I'm in the process of incorporating an animated ppt pres into one of my projects which works really well - apart from the flash that is apparent at each slide transition - have you come across this and if so have you found a fix??? The slide is set to "No Transition" and it's hardly discernable but I can see the flashes so I'm trying to get rid of them.

Any help appreciated

[Papillon-ch]

Hi!

I am working at the present time figuring out how to best introduce videos and ppt animations. I will let you know if I encounter the flash b/w slides. it probably won't help you in this situation, but I'll tell you that one of the most useful pieces of advice I have read here is to copy the slides into a blank new presentation (1 blank slide to delete later) to reduce file size and remove all the little hidden buggies that weren't removed by Save as. As a matter of fact, that could be interesting to do with your master slides. Have a good week-end and I'll get back to you when I've done a bit of testing.

Papillon

[Papillon-ch]

oups duplicate post

[Papillon-ch]

"from the flash that is apparent at each slide transition "

could this be a timing issue? That your slide is actually a fraction of a second shorter than the animated ppt slide and that the flash is the white from the captivate slide background? Try coloring the slide background and see if your flash changes color. I just had a couple of weird transitions but no flash per say, timing problems between the ppt animation and how captivate perceives it.

[Karzons]

thanks for everyones help with this