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C
Contentbee
Inspiring
March 3, 2017
Answered

Captivate 9 audio problems

  • March 3, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 2877 views

The latest projects which are created in Captivate 9 show some severe audio problems. The  audio files are shorter than the original files, e.g. 1:24 min instead of 1:26 min. Strangely enough this happens right when importing the mp3 in the library. After publish you can hear interfering noises, scratches, sound peaks and "plopps". Sometimes it sounds like fast forward, syllables and single characters are cut off.

I´ve tried several sound settings, even maximum bitrate and highest quality, but that only enlarges the file size with the cut offs still happening.

Is there a way to keep the original file in size and quality?

Some technical notes:

Captivate 9.0.2.437

Responsive Project, publishing in HTML5

Slide audio

Audiosetting: constant bitrate 128 or 320, variable bitrate highest quality

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Contentbee

Oh, that leads to an interesting point .... To be honest I have no idea about the encoding of the mp3 files, I just take them as they come from the studio. But I will ask them, maybe that´s the issue!

Keep you on track! :-)

Good night and have a nice weekend!


Dear Lilybiri, dear all,

after some big research with some colleagues from IT and Audio Department we found out whats wrong and how to solve it - and avoid future sound problems!

First: Captivate is only supposed to keep the original mp3, but instead converts it (unseen and internal) into wav - this must be done to show the audio track lines in timeline and library.

Second: with this internal conversion the mp3 files are all slightly corrupted. On most of the files you´ll never notice anything, but there is a risk that it will be audible in some places.

Third: the only way to avoid it, is to import wav only. Some wav-formats cannot be imported either, but with the setting "44,1KHz/16Bit PCM WAV" everything  runs smoothly :-) To spare data, use mono instead of stereo.

To see (and hear) what I mean with "corrupted", see this video in which I show the mp3 from Captivate compared to the original file:

1 reply

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
March 3, 2017

Did you do any editing in Captivate to the audio files?

I'm asking this because it is always better to import the original wav-files. If you edit an audio clip in Captivate the app will have to uncompress the imported mp3 to a wav, and it will have to be compressed again to mp3 when publishing. Not very good for quality.

C
ContentbeeAuthor
Inspiring
March 3, 2017

Dear Lilybiri,

no, I did not do any editing in Captivate. It´s just importing the mp3-files coming from the recording studio, in this case there were no edits needed.

You mentioned the import of WAVs and I checked this, happy to see Captivate does not cut off anything. But this way files are huge and take hours for downloading from and to my customers server ...

But still my question is unsolved: Why does captivate cut off the audio at the moment of import? And can I set the export of any audio to "no compression at all, I want it as it is"?

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
March 3, 2017

If no editing happened, Captivate is supposed to keep the original mp3. Compression from wav to mp3 is always needed, to keep a reasonable file size (as you already pointed out, audio files in uncompressed wav can be huge).

This makes me wonder what happens, is it due to the way the mp3 were encoded? I use Audition for all audio editing myself, what did you use? Audio files are loaded when entering a slide, for that reason I always leave a small gap at the start of the slide, and at the end. But I didn't hear distortions like you mentioned.

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