Embedding sound files into PowerPoint

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My wife and I have been trying for two days now to get a PowerPoint Presentation to play a sound file over the duration of 38 slides. All the timing is correct and this presentation works well on the PC on which it was created. However this file will not work with sound on other PCs. My wife needs this presentation for one of her classes.
It appears that the sound file is linked rather than embedded.
We have changed the sound file from a WMA file to a WAV file as apparently this was needed.
We also went to Tools>General>”Link sound with file size greater than …” and changed that to 44000 and then saved the file.
The presentation file size is still 7435 KB in size.

We have tried to “reverse engineer” another Presentation with similar attributes but we can’t find the sound file, we can’t harvest it – it is all baffling.

Would some kind soul point us the way please as this issue is getting us nowhere fast.

Regards, Bruno Terlingen

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One of the requirements to make sound work with PowerPoint is that the sound file must be in the same folder as the presentation – check and see if that is the case on the other PCs. You might also find PP 2003 won’t play sound and Inserting music (PowerPoint 2003) useful in chasing down your issues.

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Well I find this very interesting. I have read all the links provided and it seems that the whole issue is a PIA.
The whole reason for having embedded files is to be able to send Presentations to others (say via an attachment in an email). I our case my wife needs time at home to prepare for her highschool classes and thus she needs to take the file to school – not the whole computer with its own file path.

We shall take onboard the information given in the UK link, that seems to be the most promising.

Bruno.

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The whole reason for having embedded files is to be able to send Presentations to others (say via an attachment in an email). I our case my wife needs time at home to prepare for her highschool classes and thus she needs to take the file to school – not the whole computer with its own file path.

You haven’t said what version of PPT you are using. 2007 has the “Package for CD” feature, previous versions also had this feature (tho’ it has tended to wander around the menu a bit). The package feature will make it easier to keep all the pieces together in one place.

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The version that we are using is ’03 or XP. I realise what you are saying about the packing to CD but that still does not make sending a PPS via email to others that easy.

OK, yesterday my wife managed to convert a 4 minute (3.75MB) .WMA file to a .WAV file and guess what? The .WAV file blew out to 47 MB. Yes the presentation worked well (having taken notice of the UK website) and the presentation worked across our PCs, so the sound file was finally embedded. BUT, I can’t in all consciousness send a 47 MB attachment that should only be about 5 MB at best.

Now why a 3.75 MB file increases 15 fold to about 47 MB is beyond me. Does anyone know how to convert, or is aware of a program that does, a WMA to a WAV file without incurring this enormous penaltly?

Perhaps I should play this song and hold the .WAV microphone close to the speakers and record a .wav file this way – a bit childish I know.

Bruno Terlingen

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Hi

The sound file DOESN’T have to be in the same folder as the presentation if the sound is embedded.

You must change the limit to 40,000 (or up to 50000) BEFORE you insert the sound.

You can also insert the sound as a transition sound on slide 1 – it will play across slides automatically

mp3 files can be embedded with a little trickery and are 10x smaller

See PPTAlchemy/Sounds

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Thank you John. We did go to the UK site (the link in your post) and collected the information there. Yes we did change the file size setting before trying to embed the file. Indeed the next thing is to “fool” PPT in thinking that the mp3 file is ok to embed.

What I don’t follow is that Bill in all his wisdom still has not provided a patch that will allow common genuine mp3s to be placed across all slides in his U-beaut program. I even went as far as trying to open the PPT in OpenOffice but that was a disaster – so much for compatibility. What century are we living in?

It seems that there are no definitive answers to this “age old” issue. Anyway I am sure that my wife & I will figure a way to get it all working correctly – even if I have to sing the song myself in front of a microphone using Windows recorder.

Bruno Terlingen

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You didn’t mention your version (or I didn’t notice)

IF you have 2007 it is possible but not simple to embed genuine mp3 files in the XML. We might even do it free for you! Won’t work in earlier versions though where we can only embed RIFF wav mp3’s.

john ATSIGN pptalchemy.co.uk

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I did mention what version we were using, and paying for a service deminishes our worth as educators. This program should be able to handle such a simple task. There is money to be made by a 3rd party provider in writing a solution.

But thank you for your thoughts, Bruno.

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Would some kind soul point us the way please as this issue is getting us nowhere fast.

Regards, Bruno Terlingen

Bruno, I used CDex from http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/?q=download and it worked fine. I also came across this that appears to be an even simpler solution although I have not yet tried it… http://www.topbytelabs.com/freestuff/index.php?id=68

If you do try the second one, please report back how it worked.

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Dear sir, I shall pass both URLs to my wife for her to try out. If indeed the second one works I shall let you know the results.

We certainly have NOT been able to get a simple sound file to play over the 38 odd slides for the 4 odd minutes, as yet.

Bruno Terlingen

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Dear Mr Sadler

Well my wife tried option one first and that was far too complicated.
We just tried option two (the one you wanted to know about) and the add-in worked fine.
What we did was to grab our .wma file, opened Windows Media Player 11, then ripped that to an .mp3 format.
This now converted file was then inserted into the PPT file using the add-in as you suggested.

Ok, the slide transition timing has now gone out a bit but my wife can easily change that to suit the .mp3 format.
This PPT is a very powerful (emotional) file and for those of you who wish to see this file (I’m Australian – 11 MB) please let me know and I will email or whatever the “politically correct” manner is.

Thank you all for your contributions and a special thank you to Mr Sadler for his second option.

Bruno Terlingen

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