Audio Import error lame.exe

Hi Carolyn and welcome to Heroes! I'm guessing that your  WAV files simply aren't compatible with Presenter. Here's a great article on how to convert your audio files to 16 bit 44 KHZ PCM WAV files and that should resolve your issue.

That was it!  Thanks so much for your quick response. 

Happy to help!

Hello. I am new to the E-Learning community.  I am having the same trouble as Carollyn above and have followed all instructions in this post and other posts about audio issues to attempt to resolve the issue am experiencing. I still cannot get the audio to playback in Presenter Preview and if I go to Audio Editor I also get the "lame.exe has stopped working" error.  I used Audacity 1.3 to convert my mp3 files to wav (16 bit 44 KHZ PCM).  I can insert the audio file from INSERT > AUDIO > AUDIO FROM FILE and playback in the slide but not in Presenter Preview.  Same issue with not playing back using ARTICULATE > IMPORT AUDIO.  If I import multiple audio files (e.g. 10 files) I get the "Art_audio.exe has stopped working".  Any additional guidance? PowerPoint 2010 (32 bit), Presenter 09, Windows 7 Professional.

Hi Caroline. Welcome to the community!

First, are the audio files local? 

1.  Work on your local drive (your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, including file corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 

2. You should also make sure the directory path to your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters (for example C:\Articulate).

3.  Avoid using special characters, accents or symbols in your file names.

Additional information regarding "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in Windows operating systems can be found in the following Microsoft article.

You may also want to see if you can try reconverting the audio files in Audacity to a different format. When importing audio into Presenter ’09, you can choose to import either .WAV or .MP3 format. Presenter supports MP3 - MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. Would you be able to try this, instead of the WAV file? Just curious if this makes a difference for you. 

If you've tried these suggestions and still can't hear your audio, please create a Presenter Package. After you've created the package, please share the files with us in a support case. We'd be happy to take a look and see what's causing this. 

Thanks!

Hi Caroline.

In addition to what Christine said, Articulate Presenter does not support audio imported into PowerPoint directly via the Insert menu. Presenter only supports importing audio directly via Presenter -> Import Audio or through the Audio Editor. You may want to try converting your audio using iTunes to see if that makes a difference.

Thank you for the suggestions.  So far, the problem is not resolving.  I tried converting mp3 to wav using iTunes (versus Audacity). Everything is local (C:\users\poseidon\music\preterm\O_001_preterm.wav). I did file a support case and they suggested using mp3 files which I did originally without success. I can hear the audio play fine in a music player ... just will not play in Presenter.  Presenter thinks there is an audio track and it advances as if it is playing.  Just no sound.  Not sure where to go from here.

Caroline,

Just a quick observation - those underscores in the file name, can you remove them? Try renaming the file without the underscores and see if you're able to re-insert the audio file. 

Also, I haven't been able to find the case you mentioned. Can you share the case number with me, so I can take a look, please?

Thanks!

Hi -- I will remove them and re-import and see if that makes a different.  Case 00319073 (uploaded 2/13/13; wav files using Audacity for the conversion).  If it doesn't, shall I upload again with the wav files using iTune for the conversion)?  Thank you kindly for your assistance.

Hi Caroline,

Thanks very much for sharing the case number. I was able to find the both cases for this issue and I see that Adrian is now working with you on this. I'm going to follow along with the case progress, as well. 

Thanks Caroline!

Christine