How to adjust recording quality

[Guest]

I am trying to record a narrative of the speaker in a powerpoint
presentation. I have an internal microphone but I am not sure how to adjust
it so that it picks up the best audio or figure out a way to hear it better
when I play the presentation. Speakers and microphone work but the play back
is very faint

 

[Michael Koerner]

Try making your recording outside of PowerPoint, and then inserting the
sound file.

 

[Guest]

I thought of that as well but how will I be able to play the specific
narrative for each slide at the same time as the slide show?

 

[Guest]

When you record narrations there should be options to" set mic level" and
"change quality"
Probably the easiest way to sync external narrated files with slides is to
record narrations for each slide and add them as a transition sound.

 

[spudmachine]

Hi Sunbaby,

I would agree with the advice to use an external microphone, AND to use an
external recording package. Recording narrations using PowerPoint itself is
a frustrating and ultimately futile activity

Also, the internal mike on a laptop will probably result in a very noisy
recording, and on some laptops all you'll hear is the hard drive (it depends
on where the mikes are located).

An external headset for gaming or VoIP is ideal, and you can pick these up
really cheaply.

I still use CoolEdit 2000, which has served me well for years, but it's now
defunct I think. Windows Sound Recorder only records up to one minute of
audio, and does not have editing capability.

I found this link to Audacity, a free recorder but I have no idea how good
it is.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Procedure:

- To set your microphone volume, open Control Panel, choose Classic View,
choose Sounds and Audio Devices, Click the Audio tab, and you'll see a
section "Sound recording". Click the "Volume" button and you'll see the
Recording Control dialog box. You need to adjust the Microphone slider. If
it's still too faint, click the Advanced button and check the Microphone
Boost box.

- Narrate each SLIDE individually. Save the sound file as, for example,
"slide_01.wav", "slide_02.wav", etc. For simplicity, store the WAV files in
the same folder as your PPT.

- To embed the sound object into a given slide (I'm using Powerpoint 2003),
click Insert / Movies and Sounds / Sound from file. Choose the WAV file for
that slide from the dialog box. You will be asked if you want to start the
sound automatically. Choose "Automatically".

- If you want the slide show to continue automatically from slide to slide,
you need to know how long each sound file is. Let's say on Slide 1 the WAV
file lasts for 23 seconds. So on Slide 1, choose Slide Show / Slide
Transition. Check the box that says "Automatically after", and enter a
value of 25 seconds (I allow a couple of seconds leeway).

- Repeat for all the slides. That's it.

- If you intend to put the presentation on a CD, make sure the WAV files
stay in the same folder as the PPT. Powerpoint uses relative paths to find
these files.

I advise you to try this on a short presentation to see if it behaves the
way you want it.

Note, if you prefer more control over the sound object, you can go to Slide
show / Custom Animation. You will see the sound object is part of the
animation sequence, and this allows you to control if it plays
automatically, or after a delay, etc.

If you'd like to see an example of a Powerpoint presentation I narrated, go
to http://www.infinera.com , and you'll see "Infinera's Vision on Photonic
Integration", with a yellow button saying "Learn More". Click the button
and you'll hear my melodic tones in a Flash version of the presentaiton (I
recorded this using a VoIP headset and converted to Flash with Camtasia).
But I basically used the procedure above.

Good luck,
Geoff

 

[Michael Koerner]

Yes, it is just matter of adding your sounds to their particular slide

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Beautifully done. Thanks!

I've had good luck using USB as upposed to regular headsets/mics. As I
understand it, the analog to digital conversion is done in the headset,
external to the PC ... a much less electrically noisy environment.

If you already have a good mic and other inputs, companies like M-Audio make
USB external "sound cards" with a variety of inputs, volume controls, headphone
jacks and such.

For example:
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=mobileinterfaces