Email question: “Do you have any recommendations on ISU licensed software that I can download to my HOME machine that is EASY to use to put audio (not audio and video) to my PPT slides?”
This is a great question, because the answer is always changing as software evolves. It depends on what you want as a result:
- For a video of a PowerPoint, you can share the screen to a single-person ZOOM meeting or use Camtasia. But the result is a large file, because it is a video. Of course you can get around this problem by uploading the video to a streaming platform like Microsoft Stream.
- You can also embed audio files in PowerPoint slides, but this is tedious, and your students would have to click on each one.
- I just experimented with the PowerPoint narration feature, and I think they finally have it working well. The result is a narrated ppsx file that can (depending on settings you choose) be advanced to the next slide by the viewer, or advance as you did while recording it. I just did a narrated test file with 38 slides, and the result was only about 32 mb, which for a fully narrated recording is not bad. It’s not a small file (about 22 floppy disks), but still about one-tenth the size of an equivalent video with the same content.
This function used to be a little klunky but now it works great. (You will use the installed version of PowerPoint, not the web version) Here’s a video that explains the process very well:
NOTES
- This method was tested using the latest, installed version of Office 365 in March, 2022
- When you’re done, save it as a .ppsx file, and that’s a neat package you can upload to Reggienet or OneDrive.
- I recommend using either a headset or a lapel microphone when recording narration.
- Did I take the lazy way out and just paste in my email response? Yes, I did.