Music Sync Problem

[Richard]

I am to create a presentation for a client in PowerPoint that includes
narration and music. In order to sync the correct narration to the
corresponding slide, the audio engineer will record an individual narration
for each slide. Each narration would be inserted into the corresponding
slide. There will be a music bed as well. I understand that I can use an
audio CD running from the CD-rom drive, or create a Midi file and run it
from the hard drive. The problem is that the client now wants to create one
music bed of 10-12 sections that will correspond specifically to different
sections of the presentation. The presentation must be able to be used by
different presenters with different hardware configurations. Whenever I've
done anything like this in the past, the timing of the music and the visuals
changes on every computer it is run on. Is there anyway to fix this in
PowerPoint, or is there an alternative program besides PowerPoint that I
could use?

Thanks in advance.

Richard

 

[John Langhans [MSFT]]

[CRITICAL UPDATE - Anyone using Office 2003 should install the critical
update as soon as possible. From PowerPoint, choose "Help -> Check for
Updates".]

Hello,

PowerPoint doesn't currently support the kind of timing/synchronization
that you are looking for. For media we can only synchronize the beginning
of the sound to another event. We can't control the beginning of other
events based on how many seconds of a media file has been played. The
feature for this degree of timing control is just not built into the
product. This is mostly because two completely different architectures are
used. For multimedia playback we use system API calls (PowerPoint has very
little control over what happens after the media has begun to play) while
animations and transitions are controlled using PowerPoint's built in
procedures.

So, for example, if you want to sychronize animations and transitions with
something other than just the beginning of media playback (on same slide or
over multiple slides), you will get inconsistent results from system to
system or even on the same system (depending on what data is still cached
in virtual memory).

If some kind of more deterministic, system independent, multimedia
synchronization with animations and transitions is important to you (or
anyone else reading this message) for Microsoft to consider for some future
version of PowerPoint (or if it's not possible, perhaps features within
PowerPoint to help you avoid trying to sychronize something that we can't
guarantee will always be synchronized), so you don't have to resort to
exporting to other formats (movies, shockwave flash, etc.), which would
result is some loss of formatting and/or fidelity, don't forget to send
your feedback to Microsoft at:

http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp

As with all product suggestions, it's important that you not just state
your wish but also WHY it is important to you that your product suggestion
be implemented by Microsoft. Microsoft receives thousands of product
suggestions every day and we read each one but, in any given product
development cycle, there are only sufficient resources to address the ones
that are most important to our customers so take the extra time to state
your case as clearly and completely as possible.

IMPORTANT: Each submission should be a single suggestion (not a list of
suggestions)

John Langhans
Microsoft Corporation
Supportability Program Manager
Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft Office Picture Manager for Windows

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[Rick Altman]

Whenever I've done anything like this in the past, the timing of the
music and the visuals changes on every computer it is run on.


Indeed, Richard, you have put your finger on the most problematic quality of
trying to create precision multimedia in PowerPoint. I think with the type
of synchronization you seek, your project is better suited for a production
application. Start with Camtasia Studio and see if it will do the trick...




--
Rick Altman
PowerPoint Live Conferences and Seminars
Six Cities this Spring
Calgary | Chicago | Dallas | NY / NJ | Phoenix | San Jose
http://www.powerpointlive.com

 

[Doug Kinzinger, MCP]

I agree, but PowerPoint should be a little more accurate in it's timing,
but....

Doug