Audio Files Missing After Publish

Sep 29, 2011

Greg Davis
By Greg Davis

I am hoping someone can help me. I made a minor change on a huge (168-slide) project with lots of video and audio. When it published, the audio was not playing. I opened the project to look at the Import Audio log in Presenter and everything was gone. Normally this isn't a big deal, but  this project is huge and the audio files aren't easily placed in this project.

I did notice that at the time of publish, Articulate created an "OLD" PPTA file. Is it possible that I can open the old ppta file and see if my audio asignments are still there? Or even replace the OLD PPTA file with the new one?

In a bit of shock here since the client is expecting this to go up on LMS today.

Thanks,

Greg

7 Replies
Brian Batt
over 12 years ago09/29/11 at 11:57 am (UTC)

Hi Greg,

I apologize for the issues that you're having.  If you are working in Presenter '09 and notice that your audio is missing, please review the following article, which outlines reasons and solutions:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=643

Also, be sure that your presentation is located on your local hard drive (your C: drive).  Working on a network drive or a USB (external) drive can cause erratic behavior, including loss of resources.

Jim Heiliger
over 12 years ago09/29/11 at 1:58 pm (UTC)

The link supplied by Brian should have the answer, but there are a lot of possibilities presented in that link. Maybe the following will help (or at least explain).

If you import audio using Import Audio, the audio file path is hard-coded. If you don't have the PowerPoint file and audio files set up in EXACTLY the same directory structure (down to the root lever of your machine) as when the audio files were imported, you will lose them. Same issue importing Flash objects. I have never understood why Articulate does not use relative paths.

If you use Audio Editor, to import audio files the audio is imported and "stored" in the PPTA file. Audio Editor is great for syncing animations, doing some editing of the file, etc., but it does not tell you what audio file you are working in, just the slide #. Import Audio does provide the audio file name.

Brian Batt
over 12 years ago09/29/11 at 2:36 pm (UTC)

Jim Heiliger said:

The link supplied by Brian should have the answer, but there are a lot of possibilities presented in that link. Maybe the following will help (or at least explain).

If you import audio using Import Audio, the audio file path is hard-coded. If you don't have the PowerPoint file and audio files set up in EXACTLY the same directory structure (down to the root lever of your machine) as when the audio files were imported, you will lose them. Same issue importing Flash objects. I have never understood why Articulate does not use relative paths.

If you use Audio Editor, to import audio files the audio is imported and "stored" in the PPTA file. Audio Editor is great for syncing animations, doing some editing of the file, etc., but it does not tell you what audio file you are working in, just the slide #. Import Audio does provide the audio file name.


Hi Jim & welcome to Heroes,

Just to clarify, we always save the audio in the PPTA file when you click on the Articulate menu & choose the Import Audio function.  We always save the audio to the PPTA file when you import audio via the Audio Editor.  You can test this by creating a new presentation, importing audio using those functions, & then closing PowerPoint.  You'll notice that the PPTA file now has several extra MB.

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