By Julie Reiling and Steve Jones, Faculty, Animal Science
Adding narration to a PowerPoint screen show can be a useful tool if it is done correctly. Microsoft doesn't offer much help in doing this, but after adding narration to over 50 PowerPoint presentations, we've figured out a process that works.
| NOTE: If you want to make a narrated PowerPoint screen show available on the Web, you need to convert the PPT file and its accompanying WAV files to a streaming format such as REAL. That is NOT covered in this instruction sheet. |
We used PowerPoint 2000 and XP and both versions work much the same way. We bought a mid-priced headset microphone ($15-20) because it works better than a desktop microphone in minimizing outside noise and keeping your hands free to advance the slides. It also allows you to move your head to look for notes and other items. Of course, your computer must be outfitted with a sound card and speakers.
Put your PowerPoint presentation together exactly the way you want it before adding any narration. If you are planning to do any editing to your sound clips, then turn off all animations because the timing will be altered. If you are planning to leave your sound clips unedited, the animations can be used.
Once your PowerPoint presentation is ready to be narrated, place it in its own folder (if you plan on editing your clips, this is VERY important). During the recording process, PowerPoint creates a WAV file for each slide's narration.
| We highly recommend doing this if you have a fairly long presentation, or if you will be speaking quite a bit on each slide. Doing this will help keep the size of the PowerPoint file to a minimum. |
| If you do select this option, you will need to click on the Browse button to select a place to save those sound clips. Save them directly to the folder that contains your PowerPoint presentation. DO NOT save them into their own folder within the folder that contains your presentation. This will cause problems later on. |
Once you've completed these steps, click on the OK button to begin narrating your presentation. When you click on the OK button, PowerPoint will begin a slide show with your presentation, so you must be ready to start recording when you hit that button. Pause a moment, then speak slowly and clearly. When you've completed what you want to say for that slide, pause briefly, then advance to the next slide. Again, pause briefly and then begin speaking.
You cannot pause while recording the presentation once you begin. If you must stop there is a way you can go back to that point and begin again and we will touch on that later in this instruction sheet.
When you've recorded the last slide in the presentation, go ahead and advance to the black screen that tells you the slide show has ended. You must advance to the next slide to save the sound clip on your current slide. If you end the slide show at the last slide instead of advancing to the black screen, you will not save the narration for that last slide.
| Sample Narration
Right-click on the file name and select "Save link as..." or "Save target as..." to save a copy to your local hard drive. Then use the WinZip program to unzip the file to get the PPT file and the accompanying WAV files to use in the PowerPoint program. |
Once you have reached the end of the slide show, or need to stop before you reach the end (stop recording by pressing the escape button), a message box will pop up and let you know your recordings have been saved to each slide and asks if you want to save the timings for them. Click on Yes. You've successfully completed your narration. When you play the slide show it will automatically play your narrations.
If you were forced to stop before you completed the slide show, you can go back and start where you left off. Simply advance to the slide where you stopped (a speaker icon will appear on each slide that has a sound clip recorded to it) and again, under Slide Show select Record Narration. Remember to select the 11.025kHz, 16 bit mono attribute under the Change Quality button and to select the box to link your sound clips (if you are doing that) and select where those sound clips should be stored before you click the OK button to begin narrating. When you click the OK button, a message box will pop up telling you that you can start the narration anywhere within the presentation. It then gives you the option of starting at the first slide or the current slide. You want to start at the current slide. Begin narrating that slide and continue through to the end.
You have two choices if you make a mistake in your narration. If you plan on editing your sound clips, just pause, then continue on with the correct phrase. If you will not be editing your sound clips, you can re-record that particular slide. Go ahead and complete your narration. Go back to the slide that needs to be re-recorded and add a blank slide AFTER it. Proceed through the setup process in the previous paragraph and re-record that slide. Once you've completed the narration of that slide, you MUST advance to the blank slide, then press the escape button to stop the narration. DO NOT stop the slide show until you advance to the blank slide. You MUST insert the blank slide BEFORE you begin re-recording the slide. If you don't insert a blank slide and try to re-record the incorrect slide, you will either not get the slide sound clip saved if you do not advance to the next slide, or if you do advance to the next slide, you will delete the sound clip for that slide when you stop the slide show. When you've completed the narration for that slide and have saved the timings, save your presentation, then delete the blank slide.
If you edit your sound clips with sound editing software, you MUST link to the sound clips instead of embedding them. We used the sound editing program, Cool Edit 2000. It is easy to use, especially for those who have never done sound editing before. It is available from Syntrillium Software Corporation at http://www.syntrillium.com/cooledit/ for $69. We used it to clean up our sound clips by removing any repeated words and all the uh's and um's or to remove any mistakes. You can also cut and paste words into the sound clip. If you do edit your sound clips, you cannot have any animations on your slides because the timings will be off.
PowerPoint has an odd way of naming the sound clips. We have discovered no pattern nor rhyme or reason for the way it names the clips. So, if you plan to edit the sound clips, it helps to print a handout copy of your presentation with 6 slides per page and write down the name of the sound clip next to its corresponding slide. Find the name of the slide by right-clicking on the sound icon on the slide, then clicking the Edit Slide option. This brings up a box that gives you the exact path and name of the sound clip for that slide. You only need to write down the number that appears at the end of the path.
Once you've identified the sound clips for each slide, they are easier to edit. While you are editing the clips, write down the length (minutes, seconds) of the edited sound clips. You will need these times. After you've completed editing the clips, you need to change the timings in your presentation. This is quite simple to do. Put your presentation in the Slide Sorter View (where all your slides are in miniature on the screen) and select the first one. Right-click on it and select Slide Transition. Under the box "automatically after" type in your new time for that clip in this format 00:00.00 (minutes:seconds.hundreths of seconds) and then hit the Apply button (NOT the Apply to All). You will need to do this for each slide. Remember to save your presentation as you work through it!
Once you have completed recording your narration, do not move the sound clips around. Leave them in the folder with the presentation. If you chose to link to the sound clips, you need the whole folder (including the clips) to be able to play the presentation with sound.
If your sound clips accidentally got saved to the wrong place, you can move them to the correct spot and re-link to them. Simply move them to your folder. Again, right-click on the sound icon on the slide and select Play Sound. Since you've moved the clip, it will not be able to find it to play, so it will bring up a message box saying that it cannot find the clip and asks you if you would like to locate it yourself. Choose Yes, then browse to find its new location. Again, save your presentation and you're all set to go.
Deleting a sound clip from the slide is also easy. Select the sound clip icon for that slide and press the delete key. You also need to delete that sound file from your folder. Deleting the icon will not delete the sound clip off your computer.
Adding narration to your PowerPoint presentation can be very handy, and hopefully this article will help you accomplish this with little frustration. Good luck!
Originator: http://cit.information.unl.edu/tips/ppt-narrate.htm