QUESTION: Dear Luigi,
I broadcast public-school distance learning out of a studio. Just for the sake of preventing problems, I would like to know what you think about a concern I have. My PowerPoint files are getting larger as I include more .wav files. Is there necessarily any difference between a 30MB file and a 70MB file as far as operational problems might be expected?
And if I use something like ADPCM audio files to make the .wav files much smaller, is that actually, in the final analysis, making the PowerPoint file smaller? Does the decompressing of the file during the presentation just make everything equal again? Does it change anything about the load on the memory?
What I want to underline is that while a midi files for example are not included within the original PowerPoint presentation file, .wav files are completely embedded within the Powerpoint file and they travel with it anytime you copy your presentation file to another disk.
This makes .wav files really handy,
mostly because of how fast they load up, and also because they always
travel with the PowerPoint file you put them in.
In short, is there any need to be concerned about any of this?
Thanks.
Thomas.
ANSWER: Dear Thomas,
Yes, there should be concern about presentation with very large files and I would always avoid having to rely on such heavyweight files during my critical events.
.wav files have no inherent advantage in presentation use. Their file size maybe prohibitive and the higher quality these files may provide is not best taken advantage of in a normal presentation setting.
The smaller the file the better.
MP3 would be a much more ideal format for this use. Files of a few MBs at the most should be the norm.
To Insert your audio files click Insert-> Movies and Sounds -> Sounds from file.
Relating to the embedding files inside PowerPoint I personally don't find this to be of particular advantage though I understand it maybe certainly for others.
Please also note
Midi and WAV files are embedded if their size is less than the limit you set in Tools > Options > General. If the file size exceeds that limit, the file will be linked and must remain in the same location on your hard drive, and must be transported with the presentation if you move it to another computer.
ASF and MP3 files are always linked and must be transported. Note: When
transporting to another computer, PowerPoint will expect to find the linked
file in exactly the same location, i.e., drive, directory, and filename.
ASF: - Short for Advanced Streaming Format, is a streaming multimedia file
format developed by Microsoft. ASF has been submitted to ISO and IETF for
standardization. It is now an integral part of Windows 98 and is expected
to eventually replace the older AVI format.
ASF is a great file format for PowerPoint 2000. If you are distributing
your presentation via PowerPoint 2000 autorun CD you can include very large
ASF files (100 MB even!) because no "streaming" is required and only a minor
delay will occur when the presentation initiates and begins playing the ASF
file.
So, it is up to you whether you want to have externally linked small and
efficient MP3s or ASF files (which you can easily gather together with the
Pack and Go feature) or to have one large huge file that "embeds" your .wav,
.au or .aiff files inside it.
Luigi Canali De Rossi
