Captivate inserting random silences (making for skippy, choppy sound)

Report · Jun 30, 2015

Hi,

I am wondering if anybody has experienced the audio track in Captivate adding small silences at random?

I have been experiencing this, and my only solution is go in and manually delete all of these silences, which is not a perfect science. This can add clicks and inhibit my sound quality. Does anybody know what causes this and how to fix it? This is frightfully annoying and a huge pain. I would like to know how to fix it, AND/OR how to prevent this from happening. If anybody can provide any sort of insight on this, I would surely appreciate it.

Report · Jun 30, 2015

This is the first I've seen such an issue, I don't think it's a common problem.

Is audio being missed (not recorded) or just random silences?

I'd suspect a system issue - your system is getting hung up and 'pausing' for an instant before being able to continue writing the audio to disk.

I rarely record narration in Captivate. Audacity is free and has a lot of great features (i.e filters). I record there then import that narration...

It's not a great answer, but may be worth trying to see if that solves the issue.

Otherwise, restart your system, don't open anything else, and do a sample recording. Does that record fine or still shows gaps?

If fine, likely a system resource issue (CPU, memory, etc)

Report · Jun 30, 2015

The original recording is fine. I made alterations to the sound file as a whole (Audio>>Edit>>Project). After I edited, these random gaps in silence popped up. I am wondering exactly what I did to make these random gaps appear so that I may prevent it in the future.

Report · Jun 30, 2015

Oh! That's indeed a different issue...but I don't have any real guidance since I don't know your editing process.

Could be simple user error

Do you have audio 'per-slide' or one audio recording extended across all slides?

If all slides, perhaps that's the issue - CP is getting...confused...you cut out a piece, but it's got set timings for sections of the audio per slide...so to reconcile missing time it adds spaces?

Maybe a bad way to compensate, if that's the cause.

If your audio is specific per-slide, then I'm really at a loss.

Unless you find the cause - to avoid it in the future, edit outside Captivate and import your finalized audio (though I realize that's not ideal)

Report · Jun 30, 2015

Not ideal, but editing sound in Audition is WAY easier - especially with the spectral analysis.

Report · Jun 30, 2015

I always use Audition to edit audio. However the Edit with Audition button will not work with the latest version of CC 2015. The Edit with, from the right-click menu on audio clips in the Library will still be functional.

Report · Jun 30, 2015

The Edit with Audition button does not work when the "Slide Audio" box is open, indeed.

Today I discovered a neat little shortcut:

Ctrl + B (Find the audio clip), Ctrl + U (opens Audition), edit the file, save in Audition (I did not know that it would save to the Captivate sound file the first several times I ran through it).