Timing slides with music (consistently?)

[CoruscatingC]

I have a fairly complex presentation that I'm trying to time perfectly with a
three-minute song. I'm using PoowerPoint 2003 in Windows XP Home.

The song is set to run automatically upon the initial mouse click. My
problem is that every time I run the presentation, the timing is different.
This is especially true for the first few (5+) runs, where there are delays
in the slides. These generally improve as I repeat the presentation,
although I never get to a point where I can be sure the music and slides will
sync exactly as I need them to do.

Any ideas?

 

[Luc]

CoruscatingC
PowerPoint doesn't support the kind of timing/synchronization that you want.
Try using Microsoft's add-in for PPT: Microsoft producer that will give you
more control.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...d5-fc75-4f99-94bc-784919468e73&DisplayLang=en.
Luc

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

In addition to what Luc said, reducing the sampling rate of the three minute
sound may make the presentation play more snappier. To change the sampling
rate, you can open the sound (as long as it is a WAV) in Sound Recorder
(sndrec32.exe) and choose File | Properties - then click the Convert Now
button and change to the Radio Quality option in the Name dropdown list.

If your sound is a MP3 or WMA, you can still reduce the sampling rate in an
audio application like Audacity, Sound Forge, or Audition - do let us know
here and I'll try to provide a link to a suitable tutorial.

In addition, there are many other factors that can make your presentation
play better - the instructions on this URL are for smoother plaing of videos
in PowerPoint but there's no reason why they won't help any other
presentation:

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/ppvideo3.html#smooth

Finally, you might want to compress your images so that the presentation
does not have to cope up with any high resolution pictures while showing -
here's more info:

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/ppphotoalbum.html#Compression

Have a nice day.


--
Geetesh Bajaj
Author of Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies
http://www.cuttingedgeppt.com

 

[CoruscatingC]

Thanks so much to both Luc and Geetesh Bajaj for their great comments.
First of all, learning that PowerPoint doesn't support the synchronization I
need saved me a ton of time struggling to get it to work. Producer seems
great, but (so far) I haven't been able to figure out how to simply run the
presentation on my C; drive once I've created it.


Mr. Bajaj's thoughts were quite useful, especially defragmentation - which
seems to help significantly. However, it still did not completely allow for
synchronization, which needs to be exact for the presentation I'm doing. Thus
- archaic and forced though it is - I'm (for now) simply breaking down the
presentation into subsections, and manually clicking on at appropriate
points.

Not a particularly elegant solution, but it works.

Thanks, again.

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

Thank you for getting back - have a nice day.