Music skips on slide transition

[CaronportDave]

I'm doing a presentation for my sisters wedding and having a problem getting
the music to play properly. I'm running Office 2003, and my computer is a hp
compaq nx7010 with a 1.7 celeron and 512 ram. I've loaded all the pictures
onto seperate slides and have the slides set up to transition automatically
with a slow "fade smoothly" after 3 seconds. I also have three songs starting
on different slides which I have inserted to play over the correct number of
slides for the length of the song. It seems that every time that one slide
begins to transition to another, the music 'skips' or 'blips' slightly. It's
not really noticable and the track keeps playing, but it's bothersome
considering there are 136 slides (and I'm a music student, so things like
this drive me nuts). The files were in .wma format, so i tried converting
them to .wav and actually embedding them into the presentation, but the
problem persisted. I also tried compressing the pictures to 200 dpi, but
again no effect. Is it a processing power problem? Is there something that
I'm missing?

 

[Austin Myers]

Have you defragged your hard drive lately? If not that is where I would
start.



Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCMedia http://www.pfcmedia.com

 

[John Wilson]

I would try to get the music and picture file sizes to a minimum ( maybe 96
dpi and mp3 files) Smooth fade also uses a lot or processor power, so you
could try other transitions (I know smooth fade is "artistic!"). There's info
on embedding mp3 files here (and other sound tips)
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk/pptembedmp3.html
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk/pptemailmusic.html

--

Did that answer the question / help?
_____________________________
John Wilson
Microsoft Certified Office Specialist
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk/ppttipshome.html

 

[CaronportDave]

I'll try messing around with the transitions and see if that helps - the
defrag didn't have any effect. Thanks

 

[CaronportDave]

I tried the cdex thing which tricks ppt into thinking that mp3's are waves
(which is really cool and people should know about it), but it didn't help my
skipping at all. Everything is fine with any other slide transition, so I
guess I just have to settle without a smooth fade... or I'll try transfering
it to our dual core computer with a gig of ram and see if it'll do it. Thanks
for the help

 

[John Wilson]

Wel at least you know how to get small music file sizes! I use a 1 gig RAM
desktop and I can hear the skip with fade transitions BUT I'm a musician /
perfectionist - it is almost inaudible.
--

Did that answer the question / help?
_____________________________
John Wilson
Microsoft Certified Office Specialist
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk/ppttipshome.html

 

[CaronportDave]

I transfered it over to my home desktop and it didn't skip, but then the
transitions were choppy. Who knows, seems just to be a computer to computer
thing that has to do with hardware and not software... and I'm also a
musician (a music student in fact), so I think I'm going to go with the less
artistic transition and make the music sound good. Thanks!

 

[Austin Myers]

One thing more you might want to try. Make certain you have DirectX updated
as well as your video card driver.


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCMedia http://www.pfcmedia.com