Serious audio problems in Presenter 7

[jonturkle]

I am posting this for anyone who may be seeing the fallout of the new way Presenters handles audio to see if anyone else is having these issues

After months of testing I have discovered that (using either Power Point 2003 or Power Point 2007) Presenter 7.0.2 will not delete or add audio files once the presentation has been recorded. Seemingly unlike Presenter 6, with Presenter 7 if you delete audio embedded power point slide the audio `files for those slides are never deleted from of the audio folder. If you move of copy audio from one slid to the next no new slide audio file is created - Rather Presenter 7 only refers to the original audio file.

What does that mean to you the author? Any audio you cut or copy one slide to another is not actually displaying or using that file, even though the audio editor would lead you to believe that. Any editing of or any audio volume changes now seems to add unrecoverable audio artifacts in the audio editor that, given enough edits, can make your audio unintelligible. Move the slide markers around in the audio editor and watch the playback synchronization with the audio editor drift out of sync for no apparent reason. Make enough edits and Power Point will crash generating a severe error message identifying the Presenter plug-in as the cause and the recommendation to uninstall Presenter..

Audio recording through presenter: Create a live audio recording in a slide, pause the recording momentarily and then start recording again. You will only get audio after the pause was made.

In several example of presenter 6 presentations migrated to Presenter 7 we have seen all manner of strange behavior including presentations that publish with missing slide audio to presentations which corrupt when attempts are made to re-open the Power Point file. The same work flow carried out on the Presenter 6 version has none seen of these issues. One might easily imagine this is a system problem, but we have experienced these problems on multiple computers with multiple authors.

Has anyone else experienced these issues in Presenter 7?

[Colin_Davis]

I had an instance where the presentation I was working on suddenly decided it had no audio at all, even though the mp3 files were still in the audio folder.  It seems the more you work on the PPT, editing the audio, the more chance that Presenter will just loose all hope.

The pause during a record starting again from the start of that slide is a pain.  We now use Adobe Soundbooth (although you could use the free Audacity) to record the audio.  We then have to split the audio up into a number of 16bit WAV or MP3 files, numbered 01, 02, 03 and so on, one for each slide.  You can then create a clean PPT, import the audio, click Browse, select all the audio files, and it will use one file for each slide.

We find that using an external audio editor such as Soundbooth or Audacity allows us to clean up the audio and edit it much better than trying to do it in Presenter.

Regards

Colin Davis

[knittypurl]

I would like to join the conversation. I'm having serious problems with sound and crashes in Presenter 7, too. I've been recording in Presenter and doing the editing there, too. Like others, I've had the media file disappear during a crash. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Presenter. It helped for about an hour. I'm not doing quizzes; just a slide deck with animation and sound, synched.

It is very frustrating. Very frustrating indeed. And yes, I have more artifacts in the audio file than imaginable. If I never need a recording of me clearing my throat, I know where to find it ;-(

Has anyone figured out why Presenter works just fine and then suddenly gets so darn flakey - at project end of course!

[knittypurl]

I sent email to the Matt, after seeing his email address in this thread. His email reply directed me to Mike and Mike's email reply directed me to someone else, whose name I don't remember. I thought "yeah, sure." To my surprise, this morning when I got to work, there was a call from a gentleman in India. To my delight, he worked with me to fix the problem. Here is what we did:

1.  I was running Presenter version 7.0.1. Rahul installed the upgrades for 7.0.2 and 7.0.5.

2.  Next Rahul deleted over 3000 temp files from c:\windows\temp (only a few files there) and c:...\documents and settings\<my userid>\Local Settings\Temp. There were over 3000 files there, including some temp Presenter files that Rahul thought might be the culprits.

Meanwhile, a colleague said that the little boxes that appear after trainer notes are imported are a source of problems, too. I stripped all formatting out of the my trainer notes so they would be clean when I imported them into Presenter. I still stripped out the little boxes, just to be safe. I think that bug was fixed in 7.0.5, but I wasn't in the mood to take a chance!

Anyway, a big shout out to Rahul Saxena for his help and Christi here at the University, too.

[mrock66]

Great news! I was let Rahuls manager know if he doesn't already

Matt Rock

[knittypurl]

Hi Matt,

Rahul was wonderful.

I just did something really stupid, though. I was backing up the file that has the audio clips and media.ppcx file in it and it appears that I have the audio clips and media.ppcx file safe, but I deleted the file that Presenter created to put them in, the file named with the same name as my ppt. I tried to create the file, but of course, that didn't work.

Any suggestions?

Cynthia

[mrock66]

Let me check with Rahul as I'm not to sure.

Matt

[knittypurl]

Matt,

I just did something stupid, but I figured out how to fix it. The most recent published version is fine. I'm reviewing it now. Then, I'm going to head home before I goof anything else up!

Once again, thanks for all the help today. Not only did you all save the day, but you taught me enough I was able to figure out the solution to the next problem.

Kindest regards,

Cynthia

[Guest]

I have an audio issue that I did not see listed.  My problem is when I publish from Presenter to Adobe Connect.  The first time I published a presentation to Connect, the audio was fine.  But, I wanted to add some slides and re-record others.  I did this in Presenter, and in Presenter, the audio seemed just fine.  So, the next step was to publish to Connect.  When I do this, I get two un-welcome behaviours.  One of the re-recorded slides reverts to the old audio, the other re-recorded slide no longer has audio.

Has anyone seen this one?  Have you been able to fix it?

Peter

[knittypurl]

Hi Peter,

Bummer. What I know about Presenter would fit into a thimble with room left for a teaspoon of rice! Based on my recent experiences, I suggest trying these things:

1. Back up your audio and ppcx files in a separate folder!

2. Delete temporary files (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Internet Options on an XP machine. Not sure about Vista or Mac.)

3. Upgrade to 7.0.5 if you aren't already there.

4. Do a test on the two slides that are misbehaving; for example, record "This is a test," save, publish local, publish on the Connect server, and see if it works. Be real careful to make sure that you actually save your work. Don't use pause, don't edit. Just record a sentence and see what happens. I'm saying this from experience; I got goofed up with Pause at the beginning. And, a couple times, didn't hit the right button to save.

If all else fails, try downloading Audacity (with the Lame plug-in) and record in Audacity, save as an MP3 file, and import to Presenter. I had good luck doing that.

Lots of luck,

Cynthia, aka KnittyPurl

[memarsh100]

It looks like this issue is supposed to be resolved in the 7.0.5 patch.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/506/cpsid_50677.html

The patch can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=153&platform=Windows

Hope this helps,
Melissa Lockhart

[knittypurl]

Thank you, Melissa.

I installed the upgrade and so far, everything is good!

Cynthia

[Guest]

Thanks! We've already downloaded it and have not had a problem since.