Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/10/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Yes, you can do it with Powerpoint, but the "synchronization" is not repeatable, in the strictest sense, since there is no implicit relationship between the background audio track and the slide timings. The task of playing the audio track is handled by one or more threads separately from those handling the display of images. Assuming all goes well and your audio plays without any hiccups, and there is no delay in dislpaying the images, you have the "effect" of synchronization. I would call this "coincidental synchronization". If something interrupts your audio track (let's say, for some reason, your background audio track is interrupted for 1 second), and the images keep displaying on time, you are now out of synch by 1 second with no way to recover. On any computer, there are many reasons why processes may be interrupted. For example, any number of software packages periodically connect to the internet to look for updates. Let's say one morning you innocently install something like the MSNBC news alert. You test your PPT slide show for that night while connected to your cable modem and everything seems cool. Later, you disconnect your computer from the internet, take it down to the auditorium and begin your show. Five minutes into your presentation, the news alert program starts looking for a server that it can't see becuase you are in an auditorium and not connected to the net. All this activity stalls your audio track for a couple seconds while the slides keep going. Now you're out of synch. Real synchronization is absolutely critical if you are using a custom audio track specially created for your presentation. You want slide transitions when music changes, on a beat, things like that. In the case of your work, Tina, imagine soft Latin music in the background, with some ambient sound from a marketplace on top, with your voice over on top of the whole thing - kind of like what you hear on those great NPR radio documentaries. Even a precision of 1 second is not adequate for these kinds of timings. That's the impetus behind the W3C's SMIL specification. SMIL provides absolute synchronization between media elements during a presentation. - --Jim - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tina Manley" <images@InfoAve.Net> To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 1:11 PM Subject: Re: [Leica] The great slide show software search (long) > You can do this with PowerPoint. For both music and narration you would > have to put both on the same sound track, tell PowerPoint where to start > the sound track and where to end it and time all of the slides > inbetween. There is no break in the audio when a slide changes. > > Tina - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html