Recording Narrations and Close Captioning help

Sid,

Congrats on wrapping  up your first project. I think you'll be pretty happy with the narration features in Articulate. Here are responses to your questions:

1. "Where should you put the script if you are recording in Articulate Presenter?"

In PPT, just enter it into the notes field. When you click the "Record Narration" button, the script will appear on the recording screen.

Here's a picture of the Articulate Tab in PPT2007. I've highlighed the "Record Narration" button below.

2. "How do I control the annimations and sync them with audio?"

You can sync the PPT animations while you record, although I like to record the script, then come back and sync the animations as a separate step. I just find that reading a script and trying to sync at the same time leads to more mistakes for me during recording. On the Articulate Tab above, I've highlighted the "Sync Animations" button. Once the new screen opens, just click "Start Sync" then "Next Animation".

3. "How do I put in Closed Captioning?"

In the published version of the course, by default, the player will pull in everything from the notes field in PPT into a notes tab in the published player. See below

I hope that helps!

Bryan

That was super helpful. I like the idea of recoding the narration first and then syncing the animation... but I am still not sure how that will happen. I have animations on PPT set as after previous, How do I control the audio exactly to the animations. Is this easy like you said of clicking through sync animations.

About closed captioning - it will pull everything from the notes field from ppt to notes tab in player, but if there is audio that is not in the notes that won't be captured right?

When I record directly in Articulate, I do the animations at the same time.  When i write the script, i just put (*) in each place where I should start an animation.  So while I'm recording, I don't have to try to think and talk at the same time - I just automatically click the animation button every time I see (*).  Then when everything is done, i do a quick find and replace to remove all of those, so they don't show up in the transcript.

Sid, for any animations that need to be precisely timed, I would suggest making them On Click instead of After Previous.  Only use After Previous when you  just want the series of animations to continue once you do the initial click, regardless of voiceover.

Good luck!  (It really is very easy.) 

Sheila - thanks for the tips.... I am trying to familiarize myself with the narrations so that when the person who is actually doing the narration comes in I am ready and don't waste any of their time.

So if i set it to on click......then I would start the click and start talking and the rest can come up as after previous and I keep talking?

Example I have a slide and it start wit after previous a notepad fades in and then the text follows on top of the notepad after previous. one bullet point or paragraph at a time with 25 sec delay between them. Should I make all this on click?

Sid,

Your plan sounds good to me, but for completeness, my workflow is this:

1> Record the narration. I manage about 6-8 slides per hour, by the time I have done Noise Reduction, retakes, edits, and listened to everything end-to-end individually before moving on.

2> Pull all the .mp3s into AP'09.

3> Have the Notes pre-populated with ** symbols at animation points - animate accordingly.

4> Have the Notes populated with %% at appropriate annotation points - add annotations accordingly.

5> Review and re-work as necessary.

You will get the hang of it very quickly, but do not under-estimate the time this can take.

Bruce