Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Powerpoint 2010 - Bad Narration Quality

For a few weeks I have been using the "record narration" feature in Powerpoint. Never needed this before, because I was always speaking live when giving a presentation. But now with the advent of true online distance teaching, this feature becomes handy. But unfortunately, in Powerpoint 2010, this feature is not really usable. I can record the narration ok, but the sound quality is appalling. It sounds as if recorded with 8 bit, at 11 kHz, and results in absolutely unprofessional recording. In addition, the audio appears not to be compressed, but raw wave, judging from the file size increase which is caused by this. And there is no way of setting the quality, the coded, the bitrate, the compression or any relevant parameter. After searching the web for a solution, this problem is know. Apparently, Powerpoint 2007 did provide means for changing the sound quality through a panel with options. This was taken out in the 2010 version. Is this progress?

2 comments:

Wisconsin dude said...

You are so right. The sound quality using the INSERT tab in Powerpoint 2010 is appalling. You look like a university prof and all profs need to be able to record good quality audio into a PPT slideshow, whether for posting for oncampus students or for an online course. At first, my wife (also a prof) and I were majorly disappointed, too. However, when I recorded the audio using the SLIDE SHOW tab, with the record slide show feature, the audio quality was markedly better. This has worked on three different computers for me. Give it a try - hope it works for you! If not, the only recourse seems to be recording with an external voice recorder and embedding that recording. I am appalled at the spotty quality of this Microsoft software - some features are much improved, but others, such as this quite critical ability to add quality audio to a PPT, is atrocious. I hope my suggestion can be verified by other users and helps.

Anonymous said...

For exporting to other 3rd party programs such as impatica the function of changing the recording settings is critical and now lost. Disappointed in this. Perhaps someone will post an answer...