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Recording Sounds and Narration
Most PCs have a microphone jack on the sound card where you can plug in any of a variety of small microphones. If you have a microphone for your PC, you can record your own sounds to include in the presentation. This can be short, simple sound effects and comments, or full-blown voice-over narration.
Recording Sounds
To record a short sound effect or blurb, use the Record Sound feature in PowerPoint. This is a simple utility with few options, but it serves nicely when all you need is a few seconds of audio.Display the slide on which it should appear, and then choose Insert⇨Movies and Sounds⇨Record Sound. In the Record Sound dialog box, type a name in the Name box, ready your microphone, and then click the Record button (the red circle). When you are finished recording, click the Stop button (the black square) (see Figure 12-14). You may want to play the sound back to make sure it's okay; to do so, click the Play button (the black triangle). When you are satisfied, click OK to place the sound on the slide.
Figure 12-14: Record your own sounds using your PC's microphone.
| Tip | You can add your recorded sound to the Clip Organizer if you like, for easy reuse. To do so, display the Clip Organizer window (from the Clip Art task pane, click Organize Clips) and then display the category in which you want to place it. Then, tile that window with the PowerPoint application window and drag-and-drop the recorded clip from the active slide into the Clip Organizer. |
Recording Voice-Over Narration
Voice-over narration is a somewhat specialized thing. You normally wouldn't want it for a presentation that you would give "live" because you would be there yourself to narrate it. And most presentations you would distribute via the Web should be self-sufficient enough that the audience would immediately understand them even if they can't hear the audio, as a courtesy to people who may be Web-surfing without sound support. Therefore, think carefully before you rely on voice-over narration as a presentation tool.In some cases, however, voice-over narration is the perfect choice. For example, suppose you are creating a self-running show that consists of scanned images of works of art. Almost the entire slide is taken up by each scan, so there is no room for a lengthy text block listing the artist, date, title, and description. In cases like that, recording a voice-over narration might make a lot of sense to relieve the slides from carrying the entire burden of information conveyance.Bad narration is almost worse than none at all, and the recording equipment makes a big difference. Get the best audio recording equipment you can afford. Get a high-quality microphone (these are relatively inexpensive at your local computer store) and plug it into a high-quality sound card on the recording PC. If your PC is not up to the job, borrow someone else's.Then, set the recording quality to the desired level. CD quality is usually not important for narration, so going with a lower quality may be preferable. Audio recording uses up an obscene amount of disk space: CD-quality (the highest quality) audio consumes about 10MB per minute of recording. That means, to fully narrate a 20-minute show at high quality, you need over 200MB of disk space. And with an inexpensive microphone and sound card, you won't be able to get dramatically better results between the highest and lowest recording qualities.
| Caution | If you need to transfer the presentation to another PC for the show and you must transfer it using a floppy disk, transfer it first and then record the narration on the show PC (if the show PC has a sound card that you can hook a microphone to, that is). If you record the narration first, the presentation file will be so large that it won't fit on your floppy disk. You can store the narration separately from the main presentation, but even so the narration file may be too big to fit on a floppy. If you can't avoid recording the presentation narration before transferring it to the show machine and you don't have any means of transfer besides a floppy disk, you might try e-mailing the presentation to yourself. Send the e-mail on the machine containing the presentation file, and then receive it using the show machine. (Warning: sending and receiving the e-mail may take a long time, especially with a slow connection.) You could also upload it to a network drive, Web site, or FTP site for transfer. |
The controls for recording narration are much more feature-rich than those for recording sounds, as you will see in the following sections.
ADJUSTING THE MICROPHONE RECORDING LEVEL
The first time you use narration recording with a certain microphone/sound card combination, you will need to set the microphone level appropriately. To do so, follow these steps:
Choose Slide Show⇨Record Narration. The Record Narration dialog box appears.
Click the Set Microphone Level button. The Microphone Check dialog box appears.
Read into the microphone, enabling PowerPoint to set the optimum recording level (see Figure 12-15). You can also set the recording level by manually dragging the slide bar shown in Figure 12-15, but this is not recommended because you do not know which setting to use without testing the microphone.
Click OK to return to the Record Narration dialog box.
Figure 12-15: Read the text shown in the dialog box to allow PowerPoint to adjust the recording level as needed.
From this point you can change other settings in the dialog box, click OK to begin recording with the current settings, or click Cancel to close the dialog box without recording anything right now.
CHOOSING A RECORDING QUALITY
As I mentioned earlier, recording quality has a direct relationship to file size: the higher the quality, the larger the file.
The three preset qualities are Telephone (low), Radio (medium), and CD (high). You can also create your own custom quality settings by choosing a certain format and attributes.The default quality is Low, but it may appear as [untitled] in the Record Narration dialog box. To choose a recording quality, perform the following steps:
Choose Slide Show⇨Record Narration if the Record Narration dialog box is not already open from the preceding steps.
Observe the Quality setting in the Current recording quality section of the dialog box. If needed, click Change Quality.
In the Sound Selection dialog box, open the Name list and choose one of the presets. Or, if you want the recording in a certain format or with certain attributes, choose them from the Format and/or Attributes lists (see Figure 12-16).
Click OK to close the Sound Selection dialog box.
Figure 12-16: Choose a recording quality or set one up on your own.
| Note | Beginners should choose one of the preset quality settings. If you chose your own combination of format and attributes in step 3, you can click the Save As button and enter a name for a new quality setting, if desired. |
From this point you can change other settings in the dialog box, click OK to begin recording with the current settings, or click Cancel to close the dialog box without recording anything right now.
CHOOSING LINKED OR EMBEDDED NARRATION
By default, narration is embedded in the PowerPoint file. As discussed earlier, this has pros and cons to it. It makes the file much larger, but it also makes it more conveniently portable because you do not have to worry about associated files and keeping them all in the right locations. On the other hand, linking the narrations gives you the opportunity to edit the narration sound files in sound-editing software after inserting them in PowerPoint and having the updated versions appear through PowerPoint.If you want to link rather than embed the narration, mark the Link narrations in checkbox in the Record Narration dialog box (see Figure 12-17). Then, click the Browse button to select a location in which to store the narration. Try to store the narration file in the same folder as the PowerPoint file itself if possible; this makes the path to it relative, so if you move both files to another location the link will still work.
Figure 12-17: Link the narration file, if desired.
RECORDING NARRATION FOR THE ENTIRE PRESENTATION
After performing any setup required from the preceding sections, you are now ready to do the recording. In the Record Narration dialog box (shown in Figure 12-17), click OK to begin.If the first slide of the presentation was selected when you opened the dialog box, the first slide appears immediately in Slide Show view, and you're off and running; simply speak into the microphone and click to advance the presentation. Keep going till the end of the presentation.However, if any other slide was selected when you opened the dialog box, you will be prompted to choose whether you want to begin recording with the Current Slide or the First Slide. Click First Slide to begin.When you get to the last slide, the screen goes black, and a message appears prompting you to press Esc.After you press Esc, a dialog box appears reminding you that the narrations have been saved with each slide-the box will also ask whether you want to save the timings. Timings are automatic transitions between slides that make the slides automatically advance just as you advanced them when you were narrating. Usually the answer here is Yes, but itdepends on your specific needs.Then, test your show by displaying it in Slide Show view from start to finish and listening to your narration.
RECORDING NARRATION FOR AN INDIVIDUAL SLIDE
Nobody's perfect, and it can be difficult to record the narration perfectly for an entire presentation at once. Therefore, you may want to go back and change the narration for individual slides. To do so, select the slide that you want to rerecord and choose Slide Show⇨Record Narration. Change any settings and then click OK. When the dialog box asks you to choose between Current Slide and First Slide, click Current Slide. When you are finished recording the narration for that slide, press Esc.
DELETING THE NARRATION FOR A SLIDE
After you add the narration to slides, a little speaker icon appears at the bottom of each one. You can double-click this icon to preview the narration at any time. To remove the narration from a slide, delete this icon.
