Music stops playing in PowerPoint 2003 slideshow

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I'm betting that PFC's Vista-compatible, but Austin can tell you whether it Plays For
Certain, so to speak <g>.

But failing that, you might indeed want to look into converting the PPT to a series of
pictures and using Windows Movie Maker (is that still included in your edition of
Vista?) to make a movie with synchronized sound, then make a DVD from it.

You won't get the high resolution you would by playing the PPT back on a computer, but
nearly everybody's got a DVD player these days. It'll be more universally accessible.
 
First, to answer your question, Steve, Windows Movie Maker is installed on my
computer, but I have not checked it out yet.

I wish I had good news about the PP slideshow, but I don't. My son-in-law
tested the latest revision of the PP slideshow today.
He said he executed the show by clicking on play.bat. I did not see a
play.bat file in the list.

The show played the first song only after he clicked on the screen.
The slides advanced for seven slides and stopped.
The song played for approximately another minute and stopped.
NOTHING happened after that.

Both of the XP computers are having more issues with trying to play the
slideshow after I changed from "packaging to a CD and burning it in PP" to
"packaging to a CD, sending it to a file," and copying the songs from my hard
disk to the file. A reminder, when I copied the files from my hard disk to
the file, this created duplicate copies of the songs in the file. Wouldn't
this cause a conflict?

At least, when I packaged the file to CD and burned it from PP, I only had
trouble with the one song, which I have now deleted from the slideshow. So,
should I now revert back to packaging the CD and and burning it from PP?

Another thing, all of these songs have the Itunes symbol beside them on my
hard disk. I am contemplating unistalling Itunes and quicktime, because I do
not use them at all. I don't like the idea of Itunes taking ownership of my
music files.

As usual, I welcome any suggestions or comments. I can't believe I am the
ONLY one who is having these problems with PP.

Also, I would like to have the answer as to whether or not PFC is compatible
with VISTA.

Deloresw
 
If you're using Package for CD, whether to folder or to CD directly, you
don't have to copy the music files into the folder separately. It shouldn't
cause a conflict, because the duplicates will have "copy 1" or whatever
appended to their file name automatically when you paste the duplicate, but
you don't need to do it.

But I don't know what the problem with the sound files on the CD is.

And yes, PFCPro works on Vista.

--
Echo S [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com
 
First, to answer your question, Steve, Windows Movie Maker is installed on my
computer, but I have not checked it out yet.

I wish I had good news about the PP slideshow, but I don't. My son-in-law
tested the latest revision of the PP slideshow today.
He said he executed the show by clicking on play.bat. I did not see a
play.bat file in the list.
Click to expand...

Do you see something called just Play? Your copy of windows may be set to the default
settings, which include "Hide the file extensions that I need to see in order to solve
problems" <g>

Make Windows show file extensions and hidden files
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00781.htm
 
I am doing the Happy Dance!

All of the songs play correctly now!! YEAH! I did some more experimenting so
don't know which experiment solved the problem.

1. I deleted the "problem song," I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" and
replaced it with "Sound of Silence," by Simon & Garfunkel.
2. I uninstalled Itunes and went through all of my music files and checked
to make sure they would be Media Player files. Jukebox came with this
computer, but I changed the ones with the Jukebox symbol to play on Media
Player.
3. I then went back and removed and reinserted the music files in all of the
slideshows.
4. I packaged and burned the CD from PowerPoint.

I did a test run today on one of the XP computers, and FINALLY, the music
works as it should!

I really appreciate everyone's patience and suggestions!

Now, back to my "Happy Dance." :-)

Deloresw

Echo S said:
If you're using Package for CD, whether to folder or to CD directly, you
don't have to copy the music files into the folder separately. It shouldn't
cause a conflict, because the duplicates will have "copy 1" or whatever
appended to their file name automatically when you paste the duplicate, but
you don't need to do it.

But I don't know what the problem with the sound files on the CD is.

And yes, PFCPro works on Vista.

--
Echo S [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

Deloresw said:
First, to answer your question, Steve, Windows Movie Maker is installed on
my
computer, but I have not checked it out yet.

I wish I had good news about the PP slideshow, but I don't. My son-in-law
tested the latest revision of the PP slideshow today.
He said he executed the show by clicking on play.bat. I did not see a
play.bat file in the list.

The show played the first song only after he clicked on the screen.
The slides advanced for seven slides and stopped.
The song played for approximately another minute and stopped.
NOTHING happened after that.

Both of the XP computers are having more issues with trying to play the
slideshow after I changed from "packaging to a CD and burning it in PP" to
"packaging to a CD, sending it to a file," and copying the songs from my
hard
disk to the file. A reminder, when I copied the files from my hard disk to
the file, this created duplicate copies of the songs in the file. Wouldn't
this cause a conflict?

At least, when I packaged the file to CD and burned it from PP, I only had
trouble with the one song, which I have now deleted from the slideshow.
So,
should I now revert back to packaging the CD and and burning it from PP?

Another thing, all of these songs have the Itunes symbol beside them on my
hard disk. I am contemplating unistalling Itunes and quicktime, because I
do
not use them at all. I don't like the idea of Itunes taking ownership of
my
music files.

As usual, I welcome any suggestions or comments. I can't believe I am the
ONLY one who is having these problems with PP.

Also, I would like to have the answer as to whether or not PFC is
compatible
with VISTA.

Deloresw
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I am afraid it would not be a pretty picture to see a 70-year-old woman doing
the happy dance! :-)
 
Unfortunately probably can't help with sound tracks. (Will try in a minute)

But with the automatic start problem, you probably need to be sure that all
of the files in your CD package are at the ROOTof that CD.

That is, if PPT (or you) have put the "Package for CD" packaged files in any
sort of folder, you need to remove that folder. Copy ALL of its CONTENTS
(the Viewer, your presentation, sounds, etc.) - - - with no containing folder
- - - directly to the CD.

Otherwise the Viewer does not immediately see an actionable file when your
CD hits it - - - it (the Viewer) sees that intervening folder, which is not
an actionable item.

So it just sits there. (I know. It shouldn't be that way. But, as many
of us seem to be painfully aware - - - there are a lot of things about PPT
that shouldn't be that way).


About the sound problem: it seems that sounds have a way of hanging up other
slide advancement, sound files, etc. (regardeless of what start and stop
times you put on them) because they hang up the program for the full duration
of the ORIGINAL sound file.

You might try editing those sounds in an external editor (Sound Forge,
whatever)where the edit can be "destructive", i.e. you actually render a new
file where the stuff you don't want is actually taken out - - - and not just
"non-distructively" hidden.

The "edit" you perform in PPT, with Start and Stop times, seems to be a
non-destructive edit that does not really remove the rest of what you don't
want to hear.

So, it seems, the unwanted stuff throws all of your PPT timings/setting off
by the amount of the original sound file's length.

I have not tried this yet, but I am certainly going to.

Maybe you'll get a better suggestion but, if not, give it a whirl. Hope it
helps.
 
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