Lost audio files

Dec 29, 2012

A presentation from a couple of years ago that needs updating and the audio files have disappeared from the PP files. I have the "published" files which contain the swf audio files from the presentation, can they be used to recreate the audio? This is a large project with over 100 slides and I do not want to record again.

PBH

11 Replies
Christine Hendrickson

Hi Paul,

Was the presentation created in just PowerPoint, or in Presenter? If you used Presenter, and created a Presenter Package for the presentation, you should still be able to access the audio. Just try to make sure that the files you're working with are on your local hard drive. If you try to modify any presentations on an external source (USB drive, network drive, etc) you may encounter some strange behavior. 

Here's some more information:

If you are experiencing unexpected issues using Articulate software, here are some tips for managing your files which can help prevent issues.

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:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365247(VS.85).aspx

Paul Hinds

Normal 0 false false false oNotPromoteQF /> EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";}

Maybe the information below will help clarify the problem.

 

About 3 years ago I used Presenter 9 and Power Point tocreate an online college astronomy course which is also given on campus. Thelectures were converted to flash files and have been used online continuously sincethen. It is time to update the lectures and the original files consisting ofPower Point and Articulate files have, in a number of cases, been separated andthe Articulate files are missing because the material was also used for theon-campus course.

 

I do not want to record the lectures again as it will takehours to do this and I want to know if the Articulate files can be reproducedfrom the flash files which I have or is there some other solution to updatethese lectures?

 

When the new version of Presenter comes out I would like toconvert the programs to HTML5 and I will probably need the audio files for theconversion.

 

I hope this clarifies the problem.

Paul Hinds

Peter Anderson

Hi Paul, 

Unfortunately, without the original source files, I'm not aware of any way to recover the original audio files from the published files. Presenter works like baking a cake, wherein you add all of your ingredients into the original source, and after you publish, Presenter "bakes" all of those ingredients into a cake that you aren't able to pull the original ingredients back out of. 

Any chance of digging up those old source files?

Paul Hinds

I have written about this problem before and I thought it had been corrected. I have reinstalled it and Power Point and Articulate still screws up. I thought it was working but when I looked at the results I found it had trashed some of my slides and produced programs that had many images missing. So now I have to spend time correcting my slides and I can not trust Articulate to work properly. My deadline is here, I am stuck with a mess and I have about run to the end of patience with Articulate.

Peter Anderson

Hi Paul, 

Really sorry to hear you're running into issues. Any chance you'd be willing to share with us what you have so we can take a look and try to help? First, create an Articulate Presenter Package of your presentation as described here. Then upload the resulting zip file from your computer on the second page of this form, and we''ll attempt to diagnose what's happening when we receive your upload. Thanks!

Paul Hinds

I have several thousand questions and want to import them to Quizmaker but it appears that Quizmaker is not interested in communicating with the outside world. I have not found a manual for Quizmaker that says what formats it will import but have only found in the program a selection of import formats that appear to all be Quizmaker formats. I have Respondus and can come up with various formats. I am not in the mood to copy and paste thousands of questions into Quizmaker. Can you help?

PBH

steve raney

As a procedure (a couple of years ago) the training department decided to export audio files into a dedicated folder when we archived the source files at any project completion, for exactly the same reason you are talking about. I also occasionally exported all my audio (if the project was huge) as a precaution during production. I feel your pain...

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