Music timing and dual screens

[Guest]

Hi! I'm having a strange problem. I have a Powerpoint presentation with a
linked music file. The slide timings are automatic and set so that the music
ends on the last slide. Displaying on the laptop alone everything is fine,
but once I hook up to the projector and go to dual screen output the
presentation ends about 1 minute before the music! (Show is 8.25mins long &
60mb, Powerpoint 2003 and Xp/Sp2)
Thanks for any help offered

 

[Bill Dilworth]

PowerPoint does not keep sync to anything well.
See: http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/synchronizing.htm

--

Bill Dilworth
Microsoft PPT MVP Team
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[Guest]

Bill - thanks for your reply. The reason behind the question was that there
is a massive difference between running on one screen and on dual screens.
The music (1 track) is consistent at 8.25mins in either mode. The slideshow
timing is consistent at 8.25 mins on single screen mode and 9.30 mins on dual
screen mode. Running on 2 different laptops and a workstation gives similar
results . (I've just realised I said in my original post the presentation
ends before the music - it should have been the other way around - sorry !)
Keeping Powerpoint open and re-running the presentation makes virtually no
difference (approx 1 sec). I defragged my hard drive (37% fragmentation) -
again no detectable difference. Not a massive problem once you realise what's
going on - just inconvenient (as you have to have 2 versions on the
presentation with different timings) and unexpected!
Thanks again
Ian

 

[Bill Dilworth]

PowerPoint has to do a lot more screen updating (internal housekeeping) when
you are driving two screens. The CPU overhead is fairly large and takes
away CPU cycles from every transition and animation making them take a tiny
bit longer. The variation is cumulative, hence the noticeably longer show.

In a like manner, running any CPU intensive application in the background
will also slow down the show. Running the show on a slower CPU will have
similar effects. So will having more or less memory installed (causing CPU
cycles to be freed from or diverted to internal housekeeping functions).

If you are able to get fairly consistent results (with the exception of the
dual screen variation) then you should consider yourself far above the
normal PowerPoint sync results.

--
Bill Dilworth
Microsoft PPT MVP Team
Users helping fellow users.
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..

 

[Guest]

Bill - again thank you! I hadn't thought about it that deeply!!! It all makes
sense and at least I know what to watch for in future.

Ian