Discovery about audio/video synching

[Rick Altman]

I am not alone here in this forum among people who have been frustrated by
PowerPoint's inability to keep time to music. It works so much harder
displaying the images than it does playing an audio clip that within a
minute or so, the imagery could be several seconds behind the music. As I
create music videos in PowerPoint regularly, I have learned many compromises
in concession of this deficiency, the most prominent being to make sure that
I play the entire video once before playing it for real, so that more of the
imagery is cached.

And to that end, I have been meaning to try this for some time now, and
finally got around to it: I adjusted my computer's cache setting, and it
made a dramatic difference on two separate machines -- on one of them
practically eliminating the problem entirely.

In XP, you have to drill down quite a ways:

1. Start | Control Panel | System | Advanced
2. Click Performance Settings
3. Click Advanced.
4. For Memory Usage, choose System cache instead of the default of Programs.
5. OK all the way out and restart your system.


If anyone knows of drawbacks to doing this, I'd like to hear about them. It
has made a world of difference for me...

 

[Sonia]

I'm glad to hear of a way to improve synchronizing on a single system. However,
where it gets really crazy and extremely noticeable and where most complaints
come from, is when distributing that same presentation to other systems, and/or
when it's run from a CD.

 

[Sandy]

Wow Rick! This sounds awesome. I'm going to give it a try.

Sandy Johnson

 

[Sandy]

I agree. That's why I usually save to a folder using
Package for CD then instruct the receipient to drag the
entire folder onto their computer. Cumbersome, I know,
but it eliminates some of the drag.

 

[Sonia]

And that isn't feasible if you are distributing a marketing CD to prospective
client, for example, or a photo presentation to friends and relative who are
uncomfortable with computers.

 

[Rick Altman]

Hi Sonia --

No question about it, it is a game of trade-offs.The success of my efforts
are determined by what happens when there are 50 or more people in a room
and the show is about to be played for its one big time. That is where I
will do whatever I have to in order to ensure a good showing.

I have often created an entirely separate version of the video for CD
distribution, where audio tracks are chopped up more, photos are heavily
compressed and reduced, and I don't try for such tight synch. Also, I
usually distribute the CD as a transparent self-extractor that plays from
the person's Temp folder. Always better performance there.

My other big thirst has gone unquenched: Being able to take really large
images and pan across them or zoom out to them. PowerPoint has a theshold
after which it just gives up and shows white. On some level, these feel
related to me, as PowerPoint is limited in its caching of imagery...




Rick A.

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Rick,

Going back a few years..... I used to use something called Scala.

It had the best caching options going.

One of those options was. "Cache this whole presentation". Setting Scale to this mean't when you opened the presentation
it would cache all of it. So when it came time to present it was all in memory (assuming you had enough memory)

The other option was "cache as you go along", this would read as much as it safely could using the available memory,
then it would cache the other slides, as memory became available, after you have viewed the first few slides.

The last option was no cache...which did...well you know.!

Cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
free powerpoint templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com

 

[Echo S]

My other big thirst has gone unquenched: Being able to take really large
images and pan across them or zoom out to them. PowerPoint has a theshold
after which it just gives up and shows white. On some level, these feel
related to me, as PowerPoint is limited in its caching of imagery...

IIRC, Glen was showing Howard something like this in the Help Center at
PPTLive. If so, it's a different threshhold.

 

[ArtWorker]

Rick, I have had some experience with similar issues using sound files in
Director. Then I learned that you can insert markers in sound files, causing
Director to stop until the entire clip has played. I did this easily in
SoundForge. I don't know if PowerPoint recognizes markers similarly, or even
if this can be done with video files, but it might be worth considering.

 

[Rick Altman]

Steve, I imported a 3000 x 2000 photo (whose size PPT then refers to as 30"
x 20") and applied a motion path to it. About 40% of the way across the
photo, the image abruptly disappears and we just see the white slide
background.

With this particular photo, I had to come back to about 20 x 14 until the
pan worked correctly.

Same with zooms -- in fact, that is where I really feel this, as I would
love to be able to do significant zoom-ins or zoom-outs but have to settle
for fades instead...

Echoing Echo, yes, Howard saw this with his own eyes in San Diego...

 

[Rick Altman]

[Posting a second time...first one didn't seem to go through...]


Hi Sonia --

No question about it, it is a game of trade-offs.The success of my efforts
are determined by what happens when there are 50 or more people in a room
and the show is about to be played for its one big time. That is where I
will do whatever I have to in order to ensure a good showing.

I have often created an entirely separate version of the video for CD
distribution, where audio tracks are chopped up more, photos are heavily
compressed and reduced, and I don't try for such tight synch. Also, I
usually distribute the CD as a transparent self-extractor that plays from
the person's Temp folder. Always better performance there.

My other big thirst has gone unquenched: Being able to take really large
images and pan across them or zoom out to them. PowerPoint has a theshold
after which it just gives up and shows white. On some level, these feel
related to me, as PowerPoint is limited in its caching of imagery...




Rick A.

 

[Glen Millar]

I'd also do the old "Cut back on video acceleration" trick to see if it
has any

effect on the whiteouts. (and you're SURE that this isn't photos of your
Arctic vaction, right?)

Well, we both saw the snow, then <g>.

We reproduced it on a couple of machines. One work around was to split the
image into two, and pan both of them together. But hardly satisfactory.

 

[Echo S]

Odd that that should work. Same amount of data; you'd think it'd work the
same, but maybe it's something to do with off screen buffering and the
different images are ... or maybe it's the smoke that we didn't deal with when
we did the mirror trick?

There's some kind of oddball limit in there (in PPT) -- Howard pinpointed it
after he saw the behavior Glen and Rick are describing. But I can't for the
life of me remember the details.

 

[Rick Altman]

For strictly East/West pans I'd try to keep the image size no more than
768

pixels (or whatever the max height of your video display is). Why make PPT
heave around more data than necessary.

Because at 768, there's simply not enough res there to do the job right. And
besides, it doesn't really matter what the original size of the photo is: I
could import a thumbnail, size it up past the threshold, and it would go
arctic on me.

Here's my classic example of its use:
http://www.altman.com/conferences/seminars/updates/ggbridge.ppt

(you'll want to actually download the file, not play it within IE). This
kind of treatment needs a photo well beyond 768 in size...




Rick A.

 

[Rick Altman]

Sorry, Steve -- I was not clear: The example URL that I offered is to a file
that *does* work. It is below the arctic threshold. It works on every system
I have been able to test it on. But if you were to zoom way out on the
slide, and size the photo up in just-a-smidge increments, you'll surely go
arctic before long.

You're right, of course, about the advice to go with just 768 on E/W pans.
Trouble is, I never know how I'm going to pan the thing until I have it on
screen. So I start as big as I can during the creative process...




Rick A.

 

[Sonia]

Based on his description of the problem and the work around, he sent the "good"
one where the image is down-sized because it works here too on dual monitors,
Win XP, PowerPoint 2003.