Relational Presentation Blog – Flexible PowerPoint

Including audio switchboards in your presentation network is a great way of dynamically accessing sound, allowing you to start and stop sound bites and music tracks at will during a performance. However, when linking audio into PowerPoint, avoid a glitch that’s been around for a long time and seemingly is still a problem even in the 2007 edition.

Let’s say you insert a sound clip and then try to play it while in slide show mode. Nothing happens! “That’s strange”, you think. “I just inserted a clip a moment ago, using the exact same procedures, and it played fine. What’s the problem?”

Assuming the clip is in a format PowerPoint can play, such as WMA (Windows Media Audio) and that the file has not been corrupted, the problem may lie with the length of the link path. Here’s what that means:

When you insert audio onto a slide and then play it, PowerPoint must go find that file where it physically exists on your hard drive. The directions it uses to find the file are called a path. A path might look something like this:

C/MyMediaFiles/Audio/Song.wma

Now, here’s the issue. Let’s assume the audio file is in one area of your computer, nested inside multiple layers of folders, and the PowerPoint show is in a completely different location, nested inside its own layers of folders. That means the path from the slide show to the audio file will be pretty long. If that path is TOO long, the audio file simply will not play, even though it looks normal inside your slide show. “How long is too long”, you ask? I have no idea.

The general rule, however, is that if you insert audio and the clip doesn’t play during a slide show performance, try ending the show, moving the clip to a folder that is closer to your PowerPoint file’s location, deleting the old insertion, and then reinserting it. Chances are the shorter link path will solve the problem and the sound will play as expected.

 

 

Filed under: Audio, PowerPoint on April 16th, 2008