- Articulate Studio Cookbook
- Robert Kennedy III
- 1451字
- 2021-08-05 18:37:45
Adding audio narration to your slides
Articulate Presenter allows the use of two different types of audio in your presentation. The first is the audio track, which provides background music for your presentation. The second is narration. This program automatically adjusts the volume of your background music whenever there is narration, avoiding competition between the two.
There are two ways of creating your narration in Articulate Presenter, either by recording the narration right into the presentation, or by having your narration recorded professionally and importing it into your presentation. In this section, we will look at how both of these methods are accomplished.
Getting ready
To record narration directly into your presentation, you will need a microphone connected to your computer. It is worthwhile buying a good quality microphone, especially if you are going to be doing a large number of presentations. The sound quality that you can get off a good quality microphone is better than a cheap one.
You don't want to use the microphone that's in your webcam. Not only is this not a high-quality microphone, but the distance between you and the microphone will make you sound like you're speaking from inside a tunnel. Ideally, a microphone should be between three to six inches from your mouth, pointed directly at your mouth. Avoid moving your head from side to side as you speak, as this will make your volume level go up and down. The following are some of the key points to look at before you add an audio narration to your slide:
- A windscreen on your microphone is a good investment as it will help prevent the noise from your breathing on it.
- You may also want to consider a desktop mic stand so that you don't have to hold it in your hand.
- Before recording your narration, it's a good idea to have it written out. Many people think that they can do it off the cuff, but when they get in front of the mic, they forget everything that they were going to say.
- A great place to write out your script is in the notes area at the bottom of the PowerPoint screen.
How to do it…
We are going to record the narration directly into the presentation using Articulate Presenter's built-in recording function. Perform the following steps to do so:
- Before recording your narration, you need to ensure that your presentation is ready to receive your recording. To do this, open the Presentation Options dialog box from the Articulate ribbon. On the Other tab, make sure that the Show notes pane on narration window and Record narration for one slide at a time checkboxes under the Recording section are both checked, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Open the recording screen by clicking on the Record Narration button in the Narration section of the Articulate ribbon. If you have not yet saved your presentation, you will be asked to do so before the Record Narration screen opens.
Your PowerPoint screen will seem to disappear when you open the recording screen. Don't worry, you haven't lost it; when you finish recording your narration, it will appear again. If you are using multiple monitors for your computer, the Narration recording screen will always appear on the far right monitor. So if you have something there that you will need to access, you may want to move it before entering the record mode.
- To begin recording, click on the START RECORDING button on the Articulate ribbon.
- While you are recording, the START RECORDING button changes to STOP RECORDING. When you have finished recording the narration for the slide, click on the STOP RECORDING button.
Note
If you click on the START RECORDING button again after you've stopped recording, it will start the recording again, overwriting what you just recorded. As you are recording, the length of the recording you are making will show in the yellow message bar and will be broken down into hours, minutes, seconds, and tenths of a second.
- You can check your recording using the Play and Stop buttons to the right-hand side of the START RECORDING button. These buttons are identified with the standard graphical symbols for play and record.
- Now that you have recorded the narration for the first slide, you can move to the next slide using the right and left arrow buttons to the right-hand side of the Record and Play buttons. You can also select which slide to edit using the drop-down menu located below these buttons.
- To the right-hand side of the Play and Record buttons, there is an area for selecting the slide that you want to record the narration for. To verify which slides you have already recorded, click on the small arrow pointing downwards below the slide number in the ribbon. This will open a dropbox with a list of all the slides and thumbnails. All the slides that have a narration recorded will show a small icon of a microphone. Above this, they will tell you the duration of the narration that you have recorded, as shown in the following screenshot:
- To exit the narration recorder and return to PowerPoint, click on the Save & Close button on the ribbon.
How it works…
Your narrations will be saved in a new file, which has the same name as you gave your presentation, with the .ppta filename extension. The file will be automatically created at this time, if the program has not already created it. If you have to move your presentation for any reason, be sure to move this file along with the .ppta file, which is the presentation. Otherwise you will lose your narrations.
There's more…
Not only can you record narrations, but you can also import them into the presentation. You may choose to do this using professional "voice" for a specific voice style or for a more professional presentation.
If you decide to use professionally recorded narrations using professional talent, you will probably not be able to record them with Articulate's recorder. This isn't a problem, as you can very easily import those recordings into your presentation.
There are some technical requirements for your recordings. They must be recorded in either the .wav or .mp3 format. Between the two, you are better off using the .wav format files as they are not compressed like the .mp3 files. This means that your finished presentation will be a bigger file, but it will provide a better sound quality for editing. They must be recorded at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, 16-bit resolution, and either stereo or mono. Many recording studios and artists prefer to use a resolution of 32 bits, however if you attempt to import 32-bit files into an Articulate presentation, all you will hear is a screech. Perform the following steps for importing narrations:
- To import these files, click on the Import Audio button in the Narration section of the Articulate ribbon. This will open the Import Audio dialog box. This dialog box contains a simple chart showing the slide numbers, the slide names, and the audio track for the narration. If you have recorded a narration for a slide, it will state the existing narration; if you have no narration, this column will be empty.
- Select the slide that you wish to import an audio file to by clicking on it. Then click on the Browse… button at the bottom of the screen. This will open a standard, Windows open file dialog box, where you can search for and select your audio file for that particular narration.
- You can select multiple narration files to be imported at once. Simply select the first file you need in the Windows open file dialog box, then hold down the Shift key and select the last. If the files are not sequentially located in the folder, you can hold down the Ctrl key, select each file individually, and then import them all together.
- When you do this, a new dialog box will open, allowing you to put the audio files in their correct order. The list of files will be shown in the central part of the dialog box. To change the order, select the file you wish to move, and use the Up, Down, Top, Bottom, and Reverse buttons on the right-hand side of the dialog box to move them as you need to.