Recording Narration for Keynote?

Question

Level 1

132 points

Recording Narration for Keynote?

According to the KN User Manual, each KN slide can be narrated with an audio file so that the audio plays for that one slide only and stops when that slide leaves the screen. But the user manual does not say how to record this narration. Is there a way to record narration, one slide at a time, using a UBS mic, directly into Keynote as I'm building the presentation?

Right now.... my procedure is to export the KN, no audio, presentation as a QT movie: DV NTSC Low Quality compression, at 8fps. (Any other frame rate and the QT movie is not the same length as the Keynote Presentation. I made a one minute test of this and only changed the frame rate settings. 8fps gave me a 1:00 QT movie, but 29.97fps gave me :58. Over time, this two second loss can really add up!)

I then imported that low video quality QT into Final Cut and used the voice over tool and a USB mic to record narration as each slide rolled by. I then exported just the audio track, since the video was just there as a low quality guide, and I then put that audio track in iTunes.

I then went back to the original high quality Keynote presentation and dropped the narration track into the first slide with the media option. For at least the one minute test, everything was in sync through ten different slides.

Is there an easier way for me to get narration into a Keynote presentation?

Thanks, Steve

G4 OS, Mac OS X (10.3.9), Keynote 3 working with Final Cut Express

Posted on Feb 26, 2006 2:16 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 26, 2006 2:50 PM in response to Steve Panther

I've been doing this today in order to create an interactive story book for my teaching course. I used QuickTime Pro:

File > New Audio Recording

Narrate the slide into QT and when you're done recording, simply drag the little QuickTime Movie icon from the audio recording window onto the current slide. It will show up as a little speaker icon, which you can even apply a build to so that it starts at a certain time.

Hope that helps, Rich

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Answer 2

Steve Panther Author

Level 1

132 points

Feb 27, 2006 2:19 PM in response to RichardThomas78

Thanks Richard,

I did what you suggested, but instead of using QT pro, I used SoundStudio, which will also allow me to record through a USB mic. I then added an audio file to each individual slide. I did this for a ten slide test, but for my wife's 100 slide presentation I can see how that would take up a lot of time!

Still, your system of audio files (builds) added to each slide worked fine although I'm still testing out the refinements. It seems that once the audio is on the slide, the preference is towards the audio. By that I mean if you have a 12 second slide and you add 14 seconds of audio then the slide will stay on for at least 14 seconds before it makes a transition. Even though you may have set the slide to transition after 12 seconds. The audio won't get cut off. The other thing I see is that after the audio stops playing, there's too much of a delay before the transition kicks in.
I'll have to look into that.

The other route I took was making a Keynote presentation, exporting it as a low quality QT self playing movie, importing that movie into Final Cut Express, adding voiceover to the total running time of the presentation, and then exporting just the audio track as an aiff auido file. I then took that aiff audio file, went back to the high quality Keynote and dropped that track into the audio well to sync up with the first slide. All worked well with everything in sync, in Keynote. I then exported both audio and video as a QT movie and the audio fell out of sync. After 60 seconds the audio ended up 2 seconds longer than the video. Over time this could kill the project.

So..... if I have to do a lot of narration on slides I might buy QT Pro and drop the audio in as build objects for each slide. Hopefully I can work the other timing bugs out.

Any idea what went wrong with the sync when I exported a QT movie out of Keynote?
Steve

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Answer 3

Brian Peat

Level 6

18,216 points

Feb 27, 2006 5:51 PM in response to Steve Panther

If your LAST step is to add narration to a movie, you might want to take a look at:
http://www.profcast.com

I haven't used it, but it looks like it's made to record your screen and narration at the same time and give you a movie from that.

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Answer 4

Feb 28, 2006 8:06 PM in response to Steve Panther

I've been using Keynote to create QuickTime presentations. The way I have been doing it is to record a continuous audio track...I've done it with DV video gear and with Audacity...edit that down with my video editing tools (I'm an Avid editor, among other things) and then combine that with a self-running Keynote movie. Rather than rely on timings in Keynote, I select either a build or a static slide from the Keynote movie, and add it scaled to each segment of the audio track. It takes a while to put it together, but so far I've been happy with the results. My next variation will be to use a video track instead of plain audio.

The AppleScript application I use to put these together (the package includes a tutorial movie) is available on my web page:

http://capital2.capital.edu/admin-staff/dalthoff/pbuilder.html

A fairly elaborate example of a presentation put together this way is available nearby:

http://capital2.capital.edu/admin-staff/dalthoff/vhs.html

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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Answer 5

Mar 1, 2006 12:32 PM in response to Steve Panther

I just started trying this as well - using QT Pro. My only concern is the audio file size seems quite large - 3MB for 35 seconds. What settings should I use for adequate quality and reasonable size? (simple narration)

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Answer 6

Mar 1, 2006 1:05 PM in response to David Mccollum1

The way I did mine was to let Keynote export graphics using the Animation codec, and to create audio uncompressed AIFF for editing. Once I got the audio edited and assembled the whole thing together as a reference movie, I then exported the whole thing. For the export, I use MPEG-4 audio (AAC Low Complexity) at 44.1kHz sampling, but at a bit rate of only about 32k, which is about a third of the bit rate Apple uses for ITMS product. For video, I like the 3IVX MPEG-4 codec. One tip if you're assembling in QT-Pro is when you export to a compression codec, DO NOT specify a frame rate. This is because you want the non-linear QuickTime frame rate (29.97 FPS for transitions and builds, 0 FPS for static slides). The beauty of this is that the low average bit rate (made possible by running at 0 FPS when the image is static) allows for better picture quality and a quicker "fast start", as the transition video can preload while the static slides are showing.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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Answer 7

May 12, 2006 10:27 AM in response to Dave Althoff

Thanks Dave for your BRILLIANT solution to the problem. But I can only appreciate your work from your demo and your site, since I always have the same message from my mac when I click on a handle: "QuickTime Player got an error: NSReceiversCantHandleCommandScriptError (4)". This for every movie tested, from my Keynote presentation to sync (still waiting, sob!), to the simplest .mov I've got on my HD. Of course I exported to QT using H624 and then, reading your message, with Animation. I'm an italian dentist, and I would like a DVD archive of my congress presentations... and, yes, maybe with a little videocamera "Live" will be easier than dragging QT movies and narration on iDVD! 🙂
Can you help me?
Thanks
Piero

iBook12, 1.2Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.6) HD80Gb; 768MB

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Answer 8

Geiger

Level 1

75 points

May 13, 2006 12:19 PM in response to Steve Panther

The best and easiest way to do this I found is to open up iMovie, and use the resource there for recording sound. Then drag the sound file directly into the keynote page. It's not what iMovie was designed for, but it works really fast! You can put each file into each respective slide. If you want one long sound track you can drop that into the document pane of the inspector (gee I hate the inspector!) and it will play throughout. Not sure how it syncs if you want to co-ordinate one long soundtrack with changing slides.

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Answer 9

H.I.

Level 1

5 points

May 14, 2006 2:06 PM in response to Geiger

You can use GarageBand too, and then send to iTunes if you haven't QT Pro.

Regards

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Answer 10

loops

Level 1

5 points

May 14, 2006 4:26 PM in response to Steve Panther

Try importing into Garageband or Logic, and sync narration. Or narrate into Garageband for slide and copy into Audio. That's one way.

G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

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Answer 11

May 14, 2006 5:09 PM in response to loops

Here are, more or less, the steps I use:
1) I use Sound Studio 3 from Felt Tip (www.felttip.com) to record my naration.
2) I then break the file up using Markers into separate audio files for each slide. 3) I then drag the audio files to each slide and export full quality.
4) then, slide by slide, I adjust the animation timings to match the audio - this is extremely tedious/frustrating and time consuming.
5) I open the full quality export from Keynote in Quicktime Pro and export it from there - getting the audio and video compression I need.

The problem is the step 4 - I wish Keynote (as I wrote back in February) had a timeline. If anyone has any ideas/solutions to speed up the audio<->animation synchronizing, PLEASE LET US KNOW

Thanks,

Wayne

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Answer 12

May 14, 2006 6:21 PM in response to PieroPadovan

The error you are getting...

Are you trying to use my AppleScript utility, and having problems with that? I ask because I wrote that with QuickTime 6 in mind, and there is a distinct possibility (I have not tried it) that it doesn't work right in QuickTime 7. But that might not be too much of a problem, given that the main thing that the AppleScript app does is to give you "in" and "out" controls for QuickTime, then it automates the process of "Copy from movie 1", "Create new movie", "Paste", Copy from movie 2", "Add Scaled", "Select All", "Copy", "Close", "Switch to Movie 3", "Select None", "Paste".

The point is, QuickTime 7 now has hotkeys ("i" and "o") to set "in" and "out" marks. So using QuickTime 7, the only thing that isn't just as easy to do manually is to "size transition"...that is, to select the same number of frames from the audio track as there are in the transition you're about to drop. But a little bit of arrow-pressing and counting can get you where you need to go.

Incidentally, the reasoning for using the intermediate temporary movie in the assembly process (instead of just pasting the audio chunk, leaving it selected, then doing an add scaled on the final movie) is to limit the number of tracks you end up with in the final movie. If there are two tracks in the final movie and you paste a two-track movie onto the end, it will still have two tracks. If you paste on some audio then add video scaled to the audio, you'll find that suddenly there are three tracks. And that can get confusing after a while.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
(hmmm...gotta go test pbuilder with QT-7...)

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Answer 13

May 15, 2006 5:23 PM in response to Wayne Levin

I have recorded individual sound files and drag them into each slide. But, the slide cuts the sound off once the builds are complete and moves on to the next slide. I have it set to NOT use "on click" as I want to post this for a play-thru movie. Do I have a bug or am I missing something?

Thanks!

Rox

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Answer 14

May 15, 2006 7:01 PM in response to Steve Panther

I wonder if it might help for you folks to see what I (and perhaps others) mean by synchronizing Keynote animations with audio. I've got some content online (warning - it's elearning for statistical methods - but hopefully kinda fun) that you can look at. Just note that each activity BETWEEN slide transitions have to be set relative to previous activities on the same slide - a real nuissance to get right.

To view the content:
1) Launch Quicktime
2) Select File --> Open URL
3) type: http://www.predictum.com/elearning/jmpel.mov
4) select an item from the menu at right.

THere's an email link in the lower-right - have a look and let me know what you think. Any ideas that would simplify the audio-synching process would be GREATLY appreciated

Wayne

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Answer 15

Jody Joy

Level 1

27 points

May 16, 2006 1:43 PM in response to Wayne Levin

Well after some experimentation, I followed Geiger's iMovie recommendation because the idea of dropping individual sound files onto each slide seemed a simple way to get the narration for that slide onto it. However I used Audio Hijack Pro and my Logitech USB mic. Running a test, I created 3 slides.

Then opening AHPro, I created 3 clips. Since AHPro tells you exactly how long each clip is, I was able to adjust the Keynote transition delay by the appropriate timing. I basically just dragged the clip directly onto the slide, and VOILA! Audio synched to each slide. This test did not involve fancy builds or anything, as I just wanted to test the strategy.

G5 Dual

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