MP3 Files Play Well in PP – but not in Presenter

[Guest]

The company I work with is creating computer-based training programs using PowerPoint and Adobe Presenter. I create the presentations with PowerPoint, develop the animations, and record the sound tracks to go into the slides. The sound files are saved as MP3 files and inserted into the slides.

The sound files and animations play and work perfectly in PowerPoint. Slide shows may contain 25-35 slides each. When I am satisfied, I preview the entire presentation in Adobe Presenter. When I am sure the presentation plays well in Adobe Presenter, we publish the presentation in Adobe.

On several occasions, we have later wanted to revise a Presenter-published show. After opening the original PowerPoint presentation, we try the slides to ensure they still play well. Then, as before, we preview the slides in Adobe Presenter.

Often, the MP3 files that worked perfectly before now no longer play when previewed in Adobe Presenter. Sometimes it is only one or two MP3 files in a slide that do not play (i.e., one or two bullet items with sound). However, often it is most or all of the MP3 files placed in a slide that do not play. Remember, these MP3 files still play perfectly in PowerPoint but not in Adobe Presenter.

-----------------------

Our company computers are all PCs. We have had this trouble with Adobe Presenter using both Windows XP and Win7.

------------------------

I have tried replacing some of the MP3 files that do not play in Adobe with the SAME MP3 files that were used before to make the original presentation. When replaced and the presentation is previewed and published in Adobe Presenter, these MP3 files DO PLAY well in Adobe again.

I am tired of having to replace these MP3 files for no apparent reason. Why would they work well in PowerPoint but not when previewed in Adobe Presenter? Also, it makes no sense that the MP3 files suddenly stop playing in Adobe but, after being replaced in PowerPoint with the same MP3 files, play again in Adobe. Can anyone help with a fix or workaround?

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Are the MP3's being inserted using the Insert function of PPT or are you using Presenter's audio tools to import the audio? If you are using PPT, then it makes sense that they wouldn't work in Presenter. Any media that needs to be inserted and uses as a Presenter Presentation must be inserted using the Adobe Presenter functions.

[Guest]

Thanks for your reply. The MP3 files were imported into the PPT animation using PPT's "import-audio" function. With this you can then move the MP3 audio file to any location within a slide's animation (animation pane) so that the spoken words in the MP3 file are synchronized with the visual effects on screen.

I just tried, for the first time, importing an MP3 audio file into a PPT slide show using Adobe Presenter (audio pane - import). When I then tried to import a second MP3 into the same slide, Adobe gave me an error message stating "The selected slide already contains audio. Do you want to replace it?". If using Adobe to import your audio files, how can you import multiple MP3 files into a slide for all the text on screen (i.e., bullet points appearing one at a time)? This seems to me that the Presenter audio import function is only for background music and not text or how could you time the animations in a slide to a single audio file of spoken language?

Further, all the many MP3 files I imported into PPT using PPT's import function and then previewed using Presenter Preview function DID work fine. Only after some time, when I went back to make some changes to the slide show did I find some MP3s on some slides no longer played and ALL MP3 files on other slides no longer played. All animation (text entry, effects, changes, etc.) still worked fine on all slides.

Please note: when I changed all the MP3 files that no longer played in Presenter with the SAME MP3 files used previously, ALL the newly imported files worked fine in Presenter. So it seems there was nothing wrong with the PPT slides because what would not play in Presenter still played well in PPT. Also, nothing was wrong with the MP3 files themselves because when the malfunctioning audio files were replaced with the same files used before the MP3 now played well (again) in Presenter, I think Presenter is the cause of our problems.

Thanks again. Please tell me if I am missing something here with Presenter. Aside from this Presenter is a valuable program.

[Jorma_at_CoSo]

Well, this comes down to how the MP3's are linked to the PPT presentation and how Presenter deals with audio on the slides. I'll address them seperately.

How PPT and Presenter handle media files:

When you instert media (audio or video) with the Insert function of PPT, the presenation creates a call to a local file path that plays the media back with the desired function in PPT. The challenge is that Presenter is bound by server rules, since that is what it is supposed to play back from, which means that it disregards local file path calls. So, while the preview function may still call to those media files on your local computer, a Presenter Presentation should act like those media files are no longer attached. In my experience the Preview function is good for have a close aproximation of what the final output will be, but it is not 100% accurate (this is not exclusive to Presenter or Adobe, but is just nature of seeing your final product without it being finalized).

When you insert meida through Presenter, then it creates a duplicate version of the media which is then bundled as part of the published files. This means the presentaion can make a relative file path call, which is allowed by server rules, and the media can be played back over the web. Point being that the media must be bundled correctly with the Presenter output files for them to be used.

Audio in Presenter:

Presensenter allows one audio file to be imported per slide. It also allows you to synchronize the animations on the slide set to on-click to the audio on that side. So the best solution may be to combine the audio files into one audio file for that slide and then sync the animations to that.

The other solution, that may be more cumbersome would be to create a series of dummy slide to import the multiple audio fiels to and then, using the Audio Eidt tool, move the slide markers to include all the appropriate audio files. Then the extra slides can be deleted and you can manage the audio and animation sync as if there were just one audio file on the slide.

I hope that helps clairfy how Presenter works with audio. It may also be worth looking at Captivate. It is like Presenter's big brother and has much of the same functionality. The nice thing is you can associate audio with any object in it, so it may fit your needs there better, but it doesn't work with PPT content as well, so that may be it's drawback.

[Guest]

Thank you very much for that complete answer. You pitched it at just the correct level of complexity for someone who USES a computer well but isn’t a technical whiz <grin>.

Now I understand now how our problems could happen. The confounding thing is that the sound files DO usually work - but just not always. When the bad MP3 files were replaced and the presentation previewed and worked well again, I immediately published the new Presenter file. Because the published file becomes a ZIP file, we have it “locked” into that ZIP and I assume nothing will change as employees begin viewing the training course over the coming months.

I think linking the PPT animation to the sound would be a formidable task. The current method of building a slide with text and graphics and coordinating their entrances/exits and THEN placing the MP3 files into the animations so everything is synchronized is the most efficient way.

Finally, your mentioning Captivate is interesting. I checked the Captivate 8 site and it says selecting “high fidelity” will allow importing PPT files complete with animations and sound without losing anything. I’ll follow that up with more research.

Once again, thank you for your welcomed help.