End of text chopped off in narration (XP)

[Ronny]

I am recording narration for a number of presentations. I have a slight stutter so I often have to stop a recording and begin again at a slide in the middle. I have found that if I am not careful, I end up having the end of narration on slide say 10 chopped off when I stop recording in the middle of slide 11 and start over. It is as though PowerPoint is slow to clear a buffer and write the sound to the slide so say stopping two seconds into slide 11 stops the write of the last six seconds.

The only way I have figured out to minimize (but not eliminate) this is to pause for a few seconds at the end of each slide before advancing to the next one. However, I am sure this is annoying to someone listening to the slides; although, PowerPoint seems to reduce those few seconds somewhat.

Is there a better way to deal with this issue?

On a separate note, I have a hint. I tried several inexpensive mics and got really crappy sound out of all of them, both audio in and USB in. Then, I tried a $100 professional mic and the sound was fantastic. Anyone recording narration would do really well to break down and buy the best mic they can afford. I just love my Audio-Technica AT2020 USB but I'm sure any professional mic would be just as good.

[copemanm]

Hi Ronny,

These sorts of problems can be a complete nightmare and you can end up wasting hours trying to figure it out. It's often specific to your pc and the way the sound card is setup. Sometimes, as I've learnt over the years, it's best to accept it won't work properly (although try it on another PC too as a last resort if you can) and come at it from outside of the box!

I'm a massive fan of Camtasia's Studio 5. It has a PPT plugin to record shows and you can then stream the results effortlessly online. Details are http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/features.asp.

Good luck!