Edit Audio Timing

Melden · Apr 07, 2006

Greetings,

I've come across audio timing issues when using the "Edit Audio Timing" feature (Menu -> Audio -> Edit timing...).
When I adjust a slide marker in the audio waveform timeline, the audio segments per slide - way down the time line - seem to get skewed out of sync.

i.e. Adjustments to slide marker #3 will ripple down the timeline to the audio on Slide #42.

Will changes to a slide marker affect the entire timeline?

Thanks and regards,
JB

Melden · Apr 20, 2006

Yeah - my team is having the same isses. I used to when I first started using Captivate, but it hasn't happened in months. Two other people in my team are having the same problems though ... but I don't know what I'm doing differently.

Right now, what we're doing to chopping the audio according to the slides, and importing them into each slide, but I'd like another solution, these seems unnecessary. If anyone has any solutions, please help.

Melden · Aug 17, 2006

This has happened to me as well, after a lot of careful work adjusting audio timing. I now have to start from scratch. I'm getting increasingly frustrated with Captivate performance--it takes 12 minutes just to load my project (approx 200 slides).

Melden · Aug 17, 2006

Hi Macola

You are kidding, right? 200 slides? If you are serious, you should really consider splitting that movie up, as it's just way too big. From everything I have seen with Captivate, your movies should really be in the 50 - 65 range for the total number of slides. However, this (like anything else) is dependent upon too many factors to list them all here. Sometimes you can get away with a larger movie, sometimes even 50 slides is too large.

Additionally, this seems to imply you have one extremely long audio clip that you are using. If this is the case, you should also know that Captivate seems to work better when you have many smaller clips that are attached to each slide.

Sincerely... Rick

Melden · Aug 17, 2006

I wish I were kidding...my client wants one continuous 10-minute video. The audio is not one file but separate clips for each set of a few slides. This worked much better for the narrator as well, especially when she stumbled over a word and had to re-record the clip :)

What would be the best way to break down the project into smaller projects, yet give the client one Flash file at the end? Would this help with the timeline issue? I'm assuming it would at least cut down the loading time for each project.

Melden · Dec 04, 2006

Hi,
I am having major problems with importing powerpoint presentations and audio editing. I have 19 slides (600 x 800 jpegs), I had to make them from a powerpoint presentation as when I tried to import the powerpoint presentation, it crashed Captivate several times! I also have one mp3 audio file (13 meg) . I have been sliding the slide marker bar in the audio timing box to match the timing of the audio file, but every time it gets the timing wrong once I have published the swf, then when I go back in to edit it again, it has changed around the timing terribly, and in some cases deleted whole chunks of the audio file. I have spent hours re-editing again, only to have it do the same thing each time, in a slightly different way. Please can anyone help? It appears to be quite a serious bug, and this feature is one of the main reasons I have purchased licences for the Captivate programme. Very disappointing.

Melden · Jan 31, 2007

The only silver lining to this sad topic thread is that I'm not alone. The timing on my audio files has been skewed as well. My audio files are separate. Has anyone found a way to avoid this problem? Does it only happen upon using the audio timeline to adjust timing?

Melden · Jan 31, 2007

As mentioned earlier in this thread by MyDogShotJFK, I'm chopping every section of audio into smaller, separate files and inserting them per slide. That's about 50-70 audio files per Captivate demo file created. Tedious but effective...
Currently, I avoid using Captivate altogether and use Tech Smith's Camtasia v4.0.

Melden · Jan 31, 2007

Krismus,

The solution that seemed to help for me is to break my project down into about 5 or 6 smaller projects. Within each of those smaller projects, I was able to adjust audio timing--I still had problems if I made too many adjustments, but not nearly as bad as before. At the end, I had to combine all the projects back into one before publishing.

It's a pain in the rear, but it seems to work. I was hoping Captivate 2 would be better, but from all accounts it hasn't helped performance with large projects.

Melden · Jun 15, 2007

Similar to what someone stated above, after a couple weeks of frustration, at least I'm happy to find this is a known issue. I have a presentation of 104 slides (it was over 200 - I split it into two hoping it would help) that uses mostly audio on single slides, although I do have a number of audio sequences that must span several slides - it's software instruction/demo. I find this poor performance of the product completely unacceptable. I have two questions:

QUESTION ONE: Does Captivate 2 do the same thing?

QUESTION TWO: Beginning partway through my presentation, the sound is lagging by .783 seconds. Is there a way to shift the audio timing for a group of slides?

Thank you.

Jay Edgar

Melden · Jun 18, 2007

Hi Jay Edgar,

ANSWER ONE: Download a trial of Captivate 2.0 and try it yourself; Captivate 1 and 2 can coexist peacefully on the same machine if you don't have a separate computer for trial applications. This will eliminate the possibility of someone else deciding what's "good" and what's not, and will also assure that the test was done on your own hardware. The link to Adobe's trail download page is right here.

ANSWER TWO: See answer one, above ... but ... the "lag" you speak of is most likely (at least in part) the result of an overly large file. Compared to 200 slides mentioned earlier in this thread, 104 slides is relatively small, but compared to the 40-60 recommended as "best practice", it is probably "over-sized" enough to be causing multiple problems including the lag in audio.

Beyond that, I remember that when Captivate 2 was being beta-tested long ago, audio (in general) was a primary concern to the development team. There could be any number of reasons for the lag you describe but my first suggestion is that you try to get current on your version if that is at all financially possible for you.
.

Melden · Sep 18, 2008

This lag issue is still prevalent in Captivate 3, and extremely frustrating. If I decide, in the Audio > Edit Timing > Project dialog, to add or delete some audio or silence, there is no way to guarantee that "down the line" the audio will still be in sync. I've found I can minimize the problem by ONLY deleting audio if there is an empty (i.e. silent) slide immediately after it. The silence seems to protect or buffer the audio down the line from cutting up or timeshifting. However, this is not fool proof.

Melden · Sep 18, 2008

Hi there energyguy

I'm wondering if the following would prevent the "shifting" of audio.

Click Audio > Advanced Audio and export all the slide's clips. This would result in many different clips and each having a different name. Perhaps try renaming each one after you export. Now delete all the audio from the project. Re-import each clip to its respective slide.

My thought here is that if the singular large clip is still present, this may be causing Captivate to shift the audio. By exporting the clips and removing existing audio, then re-importing the renamed clips, you are effectively adding new audio to replace what you had before. And by doing this you would be preventing the shifting.

Cheers... Rick

Melden · Sep 23, 2008

Thanks for the tip Rick.

quote:

Click Audio > Advanced Audio and export all the slide's clips. This would result in many different clips and each having a different name.

I've tried this but the audio still seems to "shift".

quote:

My thought here is that if the singular large clip is still present, this may be causing Captivate to shift the audio. By exporting the clips and removing existing audio, then re-importing the renamed clips, you are effectively adding new audio to replace what you had before. And by doing this you would be preventing the shifting.

This makes sense. However, I've tried this on a new project with very small audio files and can still get the shifting. In fact, I may have found a way to reliably reproduce this error:

1. Import an audio segment into one the first slide of a project. The audio should be longer than the slide duration.
2. (Make sure you have plenty of additional slides after the first slide). Go to Audio > Edit Timing > Project, and spread the audio out over several slides. Click OK.
3. Return to the project audio timing editing window and, at the beginning of a slide, delete some of the audio. It is important that the audio track continues to the next slide and that there is no silent breaks between this slide that you are removing audio from and the next. Click OK.
4. Publish or listen to the project, and after where you've made the edit, the audio should jump or skip or "shift". If you return to the audio editing window, you may be able to observe this visually. However, going to Audio > Advanced Audio reveals no problems. The Library shows all though, as evidenced by the audio clip file size.

I've created a small project where I counted from 1 to 10, spaced at 1-second intervals and recorded (in Audacity) in a single wav file. This was imported into a Captivate project with 10 slides and distributed among the slides as per the instructions above. Look at the audio now! Much more than 10 seconds.
http://www.redfoxsolutions.com/kevin/1to10.cp

Kind regards,
Kevin

Melden · Sep 23, 2008

Hi again energyguy

My last point was to say that if you are able to avoid using Captivate to adjust the timing of the audio (that weird little dialog that lets you choose where the audio breaks) you can probably avoid the shifting.

However, it would seem you are intent on using the edit timing dialog.

My guess is the dialog doesn't provide the results many are looking for. So why not avoid it?

Should it work as advertised? Absolutely! Unfortunately the fact remains that Captivate is software and all software has flaws. Hopefully this particular aspect will improve with future versions.

Cheers... Rick

Melden · Sep 24, 2008

Hello Rick (and thanks for the follow-up).

Yup, I pretty much need to edit the audio "on the fly" as it is for a software demo. The audio was recorded in a studio and I'm doing a software demo to match. "Pre-splitting" the audio into time-appropriate chunks then importing each one into Captivate is more of a headache than using Captivate's tools. I think if one keeps a blank buffer between the audio you're editing and audio further ahead in time, things are pretty stable.

Otherwise, Captivate is a good product. Looking forward to version 3 SP1 though. :)

Cheers,
Kevin