Sound Overlapping on a Slide

Hi Trainer & welcome to Heroes,

If you have a published presentation in which audio from multiple slides is playing simultaneously, it may indicate that there are PowerPoint shapes (text boxes or objects) in your presentation that have been named with special characters. You can correct this issue. Here’s how: 

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=1194

Hey Brian,

That was it.  Thanks so much for the help...never would have thought of that one.

I'm having an overlapping audio problem in a published Presenter course. The narration from Slide 4 begins playing when Slide 2 begins and repeats over and over again. Even when you pause the presentation, the Slide 4 narration loop continues playing until the browser window is closed. I checked for special characters in the shape names, but only have dollar signs and commas (there are dollar amounts on the shapes used in the illustration). The strange thing is that this presentation is a copy of one I successfully published last year with minor text edits to a couple of slides. However, I did record new narrations (one for each slide) with Audacity and imported the audio using the Import Audio button on the Articulate tab. This is the exact same process that I have used for previous courses.

Hi Alecia, 

I'd try removing the dollar signs from the shape names and seeing if that resolves it first. If not, we'd be happy to take a look at the project files to see if there is something else going on. Let us know...

Thanks!

I removed the $ symbols, but I'm still having the same problem. I created the Articulate Presenter Package. Do I attach it here or is there an email address I should send it to? 

Thanks, Alecia. Go ahead and send the package here. You'll be asked to include it on the second screen of the case submission form. 

I sent my package to support on 12/8 and I received the initial email with the case number (00290201), but have not yet received a solution to my problem.

Hi Alecia,

Thanks for submitting the case and sending the files. It looks like Gren received them and was able to get a published version of your course to play properly using the solution here. She noted that she:

"..removed all the special characters in object names in your slides, such as '$', '!', ':', and so on. Once these are removed, I published your file in Presenter, and the audio now plays properly."

If you never received the email from her, it might have been sent to your spam or junk folder. Hope that's helpful!

I didn't receive the email from Support and it isn't in my Junk folder either. I tried deleting all colons dollar signs, but I'm still having the same problem. Do underscores, commas and periods also count as special characters? There are quite a few of those where the software automatically names the objects, but I've removed all $, ? and ! (not finding any other punctuation).

I was experiencing almost the exact same issue and Articulate support asked me to update my Flash Player...I did so and now everything works perfectly.....You might give that a try and see what happens.

I just tried that, but the Adobe installer tells me I already have the most current version of Flash installed. But thanks for sharing!

Got the overlapping sound problem solved--commas are apparently forbidden as well!  (Why does articulate do that by the way?)

But now I'm having a problem with the pie chart animation not working correctly on slide 3. It works fine from within PowerPoint and in the Sync Animations windows, but in a an Articulate Preview of that slide and in the published presentation, there is an added animation that displays the entire pie chart before the correct animations that display the pieces individually. Since I never received the email, how do I get back in touch with Gren to take a look at that? Should I send in another package and support request?

Hi Alecia,

Sorry again for the trouble with the support emails not getting to you. Yeah, I would suggest opening a new case for this current animation issue if the suggestions in this article don't help. And if you'd like, you can leave me your new case number so that I can follow up with it. Thanks! 

I'm having the same problem with my Presenter files. It consists of 9 slides with audio on each slide. For testing I removed all of the text, all of the animations and themes. The only thing remaining is the audio and a screenshot (jpeg file) on each slide. It still doesn't work.

I'm really surprised at this program. Asking Adobe Presenter to publish a PowerPoint with audio narration is not a tall order.

Really sorry for the trouble, Keith. Any chance we could take a look at your project files to determine what might be causing this? 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!

Hi Peter, thank you for your quick response. I've uploaded the presentation to support. Just to give everybody an example of what's happening I'll give the troubleshooting steps I've taken:

Specific Problem: First slide plays with audio. Audio plays to the end. If the user clicks pause or next or stop, the audio continues to play. If you advance to the next slide, the audio from the first slide continues as well as the audio from the next slide.

Troubleshooting: 

• Removed all "animations" from the project. Left the audio in. (Problem still exists.)
• Animations removed, all text removed (to eliminate all special characters) Replaced with jpeg screenshots, left the audio in. (Problem still exists.)

I believe the problem lies within the SWF files that the presentation creates when it's exported. The ActionScript within the SWF file possibly has no commands to stop the audio when the user advances to the next slide. Is this true? I don't know.

One of my presentations was somehow exported with the audio files sitting outside of the exported SWFs. Presenter exported the project into a folder with all kinds of files. -> This one worked.

The presentations I'm having a problem with don't have separate audio files. Instead they have larger SWF files, one for each slide, and they're large to indicate the audio has been embedded within the SWF.

Does anybody know how I might be able to export my presentation so that the audio files are sitting outside the SWF files? I'd like to try that and see if it works.

Thanks again!

Thanks, Keith! Appreciate the additional info

Peter. I do not have any signs in my presentation, and yet I have an overlap in voice. The voice is a WAV file imported, and the output is HTML 5. What else can I do?

Another thing, on my computer it works fine. Uploaded to a server it does not. Also the play and pause uttong do not work.

Ramzi, I upgraded my software to the latest versions. Technical Support said this was a known bug in the software. I am at the point where I will need to upgrade from Adobe Presenter 7.x to version 8.

I sent my files in to Technical Support and haven't received a response about why this issue is happening. No conclusions yet. I understood that upgrading past the versions that have a glitch would solve the problem but it didn't.

To be clear, I have no other software or applications running on my computer while I'm building or exporting the presentation. I'm not using projects that were built from other versions of Windows, or 32-bit/64-bit computers. I am isolating this software and hardware down to the basics for troubleshooting.

I actually had to use alternate software entirely to complete my projects.

Again, publishing a powerpoint with audio narration should not be a tall order. That is what this software is designed to to. I have come to the point where I have to say that this is unacceptable. I can no longer rely on this software, given that I have tight deadlines. I need to use software that I can trust.

Hi Ramzi,

Are you able to send us your project files so we can run some tests on them? 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!

And @Keith, in reviewing your case (00313109), it looks like you sent Cleo a project that was created using Adobe Presenter. Is that correct? If so, we can't help troubleshoot another software's issues. If there is a misunderstanding, please feel free to clarify either with me or with your case owner, Sid. 

Thanks!

Yes there was an Adobe Presenter file that was sent in by accident. Technical Support informed me of an issue with the software that exists in version 7.x

Similar Question but for PowerPoint 2010:

(Hoping someone can be able to help me)

I am busy working on a project for a client and I am having trouble with audio files on the sameslide that are overlapping:

#1 I did go and remove any non-alphanumerical signs from file names:

#2 I did set the timing and effect options to "stop on click" and " repeat untill next click" but it does not work when I view the slide in present mode - they still overlap / play at the same time when I click another group.

I am not sure whether it has something to do with the fact that I have triggers set for them?

However, I am having issues with slides that do not have triggers set for them, and it coincides with the delay limit problem (these slides do have non-alphanumerical characters still in them):

When I want to set certain of the audios to "stop on click", it forces me to set the delay time as well before I can apply the change to the effect, but then moves the current place on the timeline because the limit is only 60 seconds:

The weird thing is, when I only select "timing" from the dropdown menu, it shows that the current timing for the audio is much more than 60 seconds! But when I set the stop option, if forces me back to the 60 seconds limit.....

What could be the solution for both of these scenarios?

Help much appreciated!

Similar Question but for PowerPoint 2010:

(Hoping someone can be able to help me)

I am busy working on a project for a client and I am having trouble with audio files on the sameslide that are overlapping:

#1 I did go and remove any non-alphanumerical signs from file names (please see image #1).

#2 I did set the timing and effect options to "stop on click" and " repeat untill next click" but it does not work when I view the slide in present mode - they still overlap / play at the same time when I click another group (please see image #2).

I am not sure whether it has something to do with the fact that I have triggers set for them?

However, I am having issues with slides that do not have triggers set for them, and it coincides with the delay limit problem (these slides do have non-alphanumerical characters still in them):

When I want to set certain of the audios to "stop on click", it forces me to set the delay time as well before I can apply the change to the effect, but then moves the current place on the timeline because the limit is only 60 seconds (please see image #3).

The weird thing is, when I only select "timing" from the dropdown menu, it shows that the current timing for the audio is much more than 60 seconds! But when I set the stop option, if forces me back to the 60 seconds limit..... (please see image #4).

What could be the solution for both of these scenarios?

Help much appreciated!