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Question

Editing Audio! Seriously losing patience :)

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
February 12, 2008
13 replies
2759 views

Hi there,
I was after any advice or input anyone could give me regarding audio editing.

I have tried to do this in two ways, both times, similar problems seem to occur. I've tried either a single large piece of audio (recorded in audacity, import to captivate as wav file) or smaller sections. I spent all day yesterday using the audio > edit > project function within captivate to match my audio to the slide lengths, and amend the slide lengths appropriately. I've come to listen to it today, and the whole audio has gone whoopsie! it starts off okay, but captivate is repeating and looping certain sections of audio, sections are in the wrong order. So all the work I did yesterday is kind of wasted.

I'd really appreciate any advice on the cause of this issue, or suggestions as to the best method of working. I'm still fairly new to captivate so am open to any suggestions. I am creating a training project where I have recorded the screens within my application and recorded the audio (either in small sections, or in one block as a whole). I didn't think it would be practical to record each slides audio individually as some slides could be very short - just clicking on one button for example.

Many thanks. If you need any more informaiton, please let me know.

Kind regards,

Rebecca

Editing

This topic has been closed for replies.

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BillRab

Known Participant

Here's the technique I've been using in software demo movies that have a few PowerPoint intro and wrapup slides before and after the demo:

As others have suggested, I record in Captivate without narration. I then go through my project, slide by slide, and record the narration for each one by pressing F5 to open the audio editor, F5 again to start recording, and F5 again to stop recording. I usually edit the audio right there to remove long pauses, sounds of breathing, etc., as well as the audible "click" at the very beginning of the track.

If I need the narration to span several slides, such as the Login sequence in which the user enters her User ID, then her password, and then clicks "Login", I first (temporarily) extend the duration of the last slide in this sequence. I then select "Audio > Record from this Slide." In the "To:" field, I enter the number of the last slide in this sequence, and record my narration. After I edit the audio and click OK, C3 distributes the audio track across the specified slides. Finally, I reduce the duration of the last slide in the sequence to accommodate the portion of the audio track that C3 placed on this slide. (I find it necessary to manipulate the duration of the last slide in the sequence, because if the recording exceeds the total duration of the slides C3 simply stops recording.)

It's a bit tedious, I admit. But so far it seems to work every time. I have not yet tried "Audio > Edit Timing > Project" to adjust how the audio is distributed across the slides in the sequence.

Also, I usually record narration by reading a printed script that I wrote in Microsoft Word (double-spaced; heading for each slide or slide sequence), so I am not looking at the screen while I record the narration. Sometimes, for a multi-slide sequence I will copy my script into the "Notes" area of each slide in the sequence, because in "Record from this Slide" mode C3 always shows a preview of the slides in the sequence. I find it helpful in this situation to watch the preview while I speak.

HTH,
Bill

A

Anonymous

I have been having the same problem and came here looking for help. Editing the audio and using the Edit Timing feature seems nigh impossible without losing bits of audio, audio segments transposing, etc. I did recently try to solve the problem by recording audio into each slide. But the audio had too much bass, was irritating to hear, and the system does not provide a way to modify. I have also tried importing the slides one by one (from Wavepad). But when I adjust the timing, I get the same problems as before. The best avenue seems to be to record separate sound files and important them into their slides one by one, so I will go back to that method.

The various work-arounds proposed in this thread seem needless and tedious: Matching the same length for the sound and video before synching them. Changing all the fade-ins and fade-outs times for slides and objects such as highlight boxes. These shouldn't have to be necessary.

We use Captivate2 and it was also dismaying to read that these problems have not been fixed in 3. I cannot recommend to my company that we upgrade. I have wasted so much time trying to get the audio correct on this project since Nov. 2007 that it is going to be delivered late. At the very least the system should give a warning when the audio is about to go wrong.

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Rebecca_KnappAuthor

Known Participant

Hi GinaL

I also don't have a maintenance contract so was unable to raise this with them. I was unable to resolve the issue and like you, had to resort to recording the audio per slide. The feature of being able to splice the audio apparently quickly and easily according to slides was something that made me pick captivate over it's competitors. Obviously, I'm incredibly disappointed that I have had to completely change the way of working after spending many lost days fixing and matching and editing the audio files.

That said, now I have the project with the audio per slide, I have had no further problems and the results out of captivate are fantastic.

Rebecca

ginafromtampa

Inspiring

I just submitted this to Support at the following URL, but without a maintenance contract, I don't know what they'll do with this. If anyone having this issue could please report it, maybe they could at least post it as a known issue.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/support/index.cfm?event=home&loc=en_us

So far since I stopped using the audio/edit timing/project feature, and am recording partial sentences per slide, it's acceptable but annoying that I can't use the feature that seemed to work in previous versions of Captivate (I'm on Captivate 3).

S

StreamNZ

Participant

Um, how come you don't just record your audio straight into Captivate? Is there some reason why everyone is this forum seems to be importing their audio? I guess you do that if your voicework is outsourced? However, we just record straight onto the slide, and there are no timing issues or having to edit audio whatsoever.

ginafromtampa

Inspiring

Rebecca,

I have been using Captivate for years since it was RoboDemo and never have I had the audio/edit timing issues I'm having now in Captivate 3 (as part of the Technical Communications Suite). I have spent a week on a short 66 slide project with imported audio and every time I edit the audio to split it between slides, when I generate it, something happens and the audio gets shifted to other slides, cut off, repeated, etc. (I also have several objects per slide such as text and video). I imported .wav files from our voiceover person into the library and added them to the slides. I noticed my project growing from around 30 MB to over 800 MB!!!! Captivate was copying the audio files until the library was huge. I read somewhere in another post that Captivate imports the wav and exports it as an mp3, which is fine, but evidently it's saving the mp3 in the project. (Someone says it uses the wav files when you edit the audio and then creates a new clip when you do that. ) Then the whole file wouldn't open, so I followed the instructions to fix a corrupted file. I got most of the slides back but not all the elements (such as the menu). I've lost about 3 days of work time trying to deal with this. Finally, another voice over person is going to sit with me to record the audio directly into Captivate (we use professional narrators). We're going to record on each slide and not use the audio editor any longer (audio/edit timing/project). I searched the support site and nothing is mentioned about the audio editing issues that are all over this forum. I don't have a maintenance contract so I hope someone with the same problem will log it as a defect.

A

Anonymous

Hi Becky,
Ricks demo covers it all, but if you need help as you get into it let us know.
Peter

A

Anonymous

Rebecca,
Try to turn off the automatic time calculation of captions. It is an option the is availale to set caption timing based on the text in them. Disable that.

Next, look at fade-in and fade-out. I have had problems with objects fading in (or out) while sound is loading. Things like fade-in caption or fade-in slide. Turn that off.

Instead of the above, set the audio to start after the fade in. So if your slide and captions are fading in at 0.5 seconds, start the audio at 0.6 seconds.

Regarding recording. I have a few professional grrade microphones such as a USB Samson and a Shure lavaliere, but that is just the good sound part of this and it does not help or change Captivate. I had several issue with the Captivate recording inputs. I switched to from the Microphone input option to the line-in and got less humm. Of course, Audacity seems to be Hum free. Software pre-amps are not necessarily Adobe's thing and in time, one could hope that some of the Adobe audio product technology will seep into Captivate.

Like they say above, the practice of recording per slide is nicer. It lets you correct things quickly and control timing delays and set the pace as needed on a given slide.

Regarding the 50 slide recommendation. I am still SHOCKED that Adobe has not fixed this issue. 50 slides in a Flash presentation is a "snack" compared to what people do with Flash. I have some presentations that are near 100 slides, but I have found that breaking a presentation down into mini-modules lets the user get a learning jolt and take a break as needed. It does not drone on and the users appreciate it.

Let us know if any of the above helps. Please log into the Adobe BUG forum and ask them why they don't issue patches for know bugs. I will not upgrade until they fix this thing.

Joe C.

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Rebecca_KnappAuthor

Known Participant

you're an absolute gem - thanks
:)

R

Rebecca_KnappAuthor

Known Participant

Hi Peter, thanks for your thoughts
this shows how new i am to captivate!! i didn't know there was a recommended best practice like this.

How would I go about connecting projects - it isn't something i've attempted at all before.

Many thanks

Becky

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi Becky

See if this link helps you to understand it.

Cheers... Rick

A

Anonymous

Hi Rebecca,
You also mentioned that your project was 200 slides. This is way more than the 50 that is considered best practice and may contribute to your problems indirectly. Maybe you need to split this into 3 or 4 connected projects.
Just a thought,
Peter

R

Rebecca_KnappAuthor

Known Participant

Hi Rick,

many thanks for your reply. I think i just need to get my head around a different way of working. I've always timed the audio to the slides, rather than the other way round.

Thanks for your input, it's appreciated.

I'm still getting used to the program - it looks like it has huge potential and i'm just scratching the surface.

Many thanks

Becky

R

Rebecca_KnappAuthor

Known Participant

Hi all,
Sorry to raise this issue again - but I wondered if anyone had any ideas why the audio clips have got muddled against the slides?

I had a look through previous posts on this forum, and there is a post about audio corruption when the slides have names. I couldn't find much more information about it.

any input would be greatly appreciated, as I'm currently still slicing audio into slides using audacity.

Thanks in advance,

Becky

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi Becky

Sorry to hear of the Audio woes. (I suppose that was a bit of an unintentional play on words, eh?)

Anyhoo, it would seem that the approach of using a singular large segment of audio does have issues as you have described when bringing it into Captivate. As much as possible, you should probably avoid using the Audio * Edit Timing feature.

See, each time you use that feature, you're allowing Captivate to split and recombine the audio into different elements. It's been my experience that any time I allow an application to make choices like that for me, the results are nearly always less than I wanted them to be.

Here is my understanding of how Captivate expects to work with audio, as well as the way we teach others to use it in the classroom. Record your Demo or Sim with no audio. Work out your timing issues for when Captions or other elements appear and disappear. Once you have all the timing issues sorted, then add your audio. Usually by simply recording a different segment for each slide. If you are using Audacity (no reason not to if you like working that way) just ensure the audio clips you record are very close to the slide duration. (Hopefully you have noticed that Captivate provides an option-actually it's the default-to simply make the slide timing match exactly the audio timing when importing audio clips that are longer than the slide you are inserting them into.)

Sincerely... Rick

A

adoucette

Inspiring

One thing I've noticed that consistently throws off the timing:
If I delete any of the audio when there are slides timed to appear later than the spot I'm deleting from. Example: deleting a few seconds silence from the beginning of the audio track or deleting silence between slides.

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