The Logical Blog by IconLogic

ADOBE PRESENTER: Sidebar Video

by Kevin Siegel, COTP

Inserting and editing video in Adobe Presenter is as easy as accessing the Adobe Presenter tab on the Ribbon and then clicking the Video tool. Once videos have been added to a PowerPoint slide, they can be manipulated just like any other PowerPoint object.

 

I received an email recently from a new Presenter developer. He wanted to insert a video, but instead of adding the video to the slide, he wanted it to appear to the left of the slide, above the Table of Contents. He had heard such a thing was possible but had been unable to find the feature.

 

The feature he was looking for is called Sidebar video and it’s shown in the image below. Adding Sidebar video to a project is simple and I was able to talk him through it with a quick email. If you’d like to learn how, follow these steps.

 

 

To begin, select a PowerPoint slide and then, on the Adobe Presenter tab, Insert group, click the Video tool and choose Import. (This will open the Adobe Presenter - Import Video dialog box.)

 

 

 

Select the video you’d like to use in the Sidebar and, from the lower right of the dialog box, select Sidebar video.

 

 

By default, the Sidebar video will appear at the left of the Presenter playback window (as shown in the first image above). You can hide the Sidebar or change its location by clicking the Theme tool and deselecting Show Sidebar (to hide it) or selecting Right or Left from the Location drop-down menu.

 

 

 

If you'd like to see the Sidebar video feature in action, check out this sample Adobe Presenter eLearning project. And if you'd like to learn how to use Adobe Presenter, check out our skills and drills workbook.

 

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

 

 

ADOBE PRESENTER 11: Creating Packages

by Kevin Siegel, CTT+, COTP

If you need to share an Adobe Presenter presentation with another developer, you’ll find the Presenter's Package tool very useful.

 

Presenter projects begin as a single, self-contained PowerPoint presentation. You can transfer them from one computer to another without worrying about leaving a part of the presentation behind. However, once you add audio or videos assets to a PowerPoint slide via the Presenter tab on the PowerPoint Ribbon, those assets aren’t embedded into the presentation. Instead, Presenter creates a folder that houses those assets every time you save. Should you forget to include the assets folder when you send the PowerPoint presentation to a colleague, the person opening the presentation will receive alert messages about missing files as Presenter attempts to load the assets.

 

When you package a Presenter project, everything a developer needs to open the project is included in the package (except for the actual Microsoft PowerPoint or Adobe Presenter software). A developer simply needs to double-click the prpkg file they receive from you to extract all of the project assets into a self-contained folder.

 

To create a Package, from the Adobe Presenter tab, Presentation group, click the Package tool.

 

 

 

Click the Browse button (the three dots) and select a folder for the package.

 

 

Click the Pack button and you're done. As mentioned above, the prpkg file contains everything a fellow developer needs to make changes to the project (assuming they have both PowerPoint and Presenter installed).

 

 

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My "Adobe Presenter 11: The Essentials" skills & drills workbook is available now on amazon.com. And if you are looking to learn all things eLearning, check out these live, online and awesomely interactive classes

 

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

 

Adobe Announces Major Updates its Technical Communication Suite

Adobe annnounced a major update to its Technical Communcaiton suite on January 31. The suite, which is available now, is a collection of tools including FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate, Presenter, and Acrobat. Here's a brief overview of the tools that make up the suite:

 

Adobe FrameMaker 2017

 

Author and publish multilingual technical content across mobile, web, desktop, and print with FrameMaker. Easily work with unstructured and structured content in the same documentation. Work faster and smarter with advanced XML/DITA capabilities. Explore FrameMaker’s endless possibilities faster with reorganized and more logial menus and the new Command Search. Publish content as Responsive HTML5, Mobile App, PDF, EPUB, and more. And all this in the brand new high-dpi screen compatible interface.

 

Adobe RoboHelp 2017

 

Create and deliver policy and knowledge base content for any device. Publish next-generation Responsive HTML5 layouts. Help users find relevant content faster with best-in-class search, including search auto-complete. Dynamically filter content for personalized Help experiences. Generate content-centric mobile apps.

 

Adobe Captivate 9

 

Captivate helps you create attractive and instructionally sound eLearning. Go from storyboarding to Responsive eLearning using a single tool. Dip into the exclusive asset store to enrich your content. Create amazing courses that run seamlessly across desktops and mobile devices.

 

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC 2015

 

Acrobat changes the way you work with important business documents. Create, edit, and sign PDFs anywhere with the new Acrobat DC mobile app. Protect important documents. Send, track, and confirm delivery of documents electronically.

 

Adobe Presenter 11

 

Presenter transforms your PowerPoint slides into interactive eLearning with stunning assets and quizzes. Leverage HTML5 publishing to deliver courses to desktops and tablets. Track learner performance with the integration of leading LMSs.

 

Learn more about the Technical Communication Suite

An eLearning Workflow

by Sally Cox  

I spent more than 15 years as an Adobe trainer, teaching people the latest features of new products. One of the things I have learned from this experience is that people don't just want to learn what's new in an application... they need guidance on incorporating the application into their workflow. They need to see the entire development process that will enable them to get their jobs done. With this in mind, the article focuses on the workflow I use when I create my eLearning courses.

 

From Paper to Adobe Illustrator

 

My eLearning courses begin life on paper (where I've sketched some ideas). I am a designer at heart, so Adobe Illustrator is a natural starting point for me. I use Illustrator to lay out the basic look and feel of my eLearning course, choose colors and fonts, and solve my design dilemmas. 

 

I start with the client's brand guidelines (or style guide), an important part of the design process. If you want to keep a client for the long term, respecting their brand is key. I work within the brand guidelines for colors, fonts, general look and feel, logo placement rules, etc.

 

I then begin laying out the cover/transition slides for my courses and a sample content slide. The image below is an example of a recent project I did. I did not have brand guidelines to work with here so I had a lot of freedom. I created these two slides in Illustrator, using swatches from the Swatches library to choose harmonious colors. I work out headers and footers, if there are any, and start to think about the interactions I will be using.

 

 

The Swatches in Illustrator have amazing color combinations. My favorite Swatch library? Baroque! Look at these rich colors... they typically show up in all of my projects.

 

 

 

I export my Illustrator graphics as transparent high-resolution PNG files for easy import into Microsoft PowerPoint, Articulate Storyline, or Adobe Captivate. To create the transparent PNG's, build the graphic on a separate artboard and note the artboard number.

 

 

Next, choose File > Export, select the appropriate artboard, and then select PNG as the output.

 

 

Illustrator shows you a preview of the artboard, and here you set options. I change the Resolution to High 300 PPI and Background color to Transparent. These settings allow the image to import beautifully into just about any application.

 

 

Microsoft PowerPoint

 

When it comes to eLearning development, I use PowerPoint as my "heavy hitter." It's the place I gather all my graphics, content and interaction ideas.

 

Why PowerPoint for eLearning? 

1. Most everyone has it--clients like to be able to make minor edits, so giving them something they can actually use is key
2. PowerPoint imports into Adobe Connect, Articulate Storyline, and Adobe Captivate easily
3. I can create custom colors using the Eyedropper tool
4. You are only limited by your imagination--think of PowerPoint as a "delivery tool," nothing more. My work doesn't LOOK like it was created in PowerPoint and yours doesn't have to either! (If you're looking to ensure your PowerPoint slides are optimized for eLearning, check out AJ's Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations class!)

Here's an example of how I grab colors from the artwork using the Eyedropper tool in PowerPoint.

 

 

Articulate Storyline

 

Storyline is my preferred authoring tool for creating eLearning courses.  My PowerPoint presentations import beautifully into Storyline which allows me to quickly get my courses up and running. Storyline recognizes PowerPoint's Master Slides, and every slide element comes in as a separate piece so I can quickly add transitions, set object timing, add Triggers, and a quiz in Storyline. Then I can quickly publish my content as HTML5 and I'm done!

 

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If you'd like to attend some awesome 3-hour mini courses that focus on eLearning, check these out.

Articulate Storyline vs. Adobe Captivate

A recent LinkedIn post asked eLearning developers: which tool is best: Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline? As I read through the comments, I was struck by how many people insisted that Storyline was the better choice because it was easier to learn than Captivate because it was so much like Microsoft PowerPoint.

 

As someone who uses both Captivate and Storyline, I have to disagree with that recurring sentiment. Sure, Storyline seems to be more like PowerPoint (there's a similar Ribbon and toolset). But honestly, how many of you are PowerPoint experts? I bet you can make a traditional presentation in PowerPoint including text, bullets, and images, but do you really know how to use PowerPoint efficiently and to its potential? I would submit that the answer is no... unless you received proper PowerPoint training. Both Captivate and Storyline seem simple at first glance... just like PowerPoint. However, PowerPoint, Storyline, and Captivate are robust development tools and if you aren't trained, you'll quickly find yourself doing the "hunt and peck" shuffle as you learn on-the-fly... spending double (perhaps triple) the time necessary to perform simple tasks.

 

I'm a big fan of both Captivate and Storyline (and TechSmith Camtasia Studio too). I'm constantly asked which tool is best (typically this question comes from new eLearning developers who are under pressure to pick one tool for their corporate eLearning initiatives over another). People want to know the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each tool.

 

My answer? It depends mainly on two things: your budget to purchase an eLearning tool (are you a one-person shop buying a single license or are you part of a team requiring multiple licenses?); and the output you are trying to provide your learners.

 

Captivate costs around $1,000. If you don't want to shell out the cash up front, you can subscribe to Captivate for around $30 per month. Given that Adobe upgrades Captivate approximately once each year, and you get the upgrades for free as part of your subscription, subscribing is a pretty good deal. Storyline is far more expensive (I've seen it listed for upwards of $2,000 and there isn't a subscription plan).

 

When it comes to output, both Captivate and Storyline can publish SWF and HTML5 content. However, if you're required to publish interactive PDFs or create responsive eLearning, the choice has to be Captivate (Storyline does not currently support either output).

 

Here's an analogy for comparing Captivate against Storyline. Consider the Toyota Tundra to the Toyota Takoma. Both are trucks. Both are awesome. Both have similar appointments in the cabin (some of the appointments are identical and if you learn how to use a feature in one truck, you know how to use it in the other). The Tundra (Captivate) can tow a house; the Takoma (Storyline) can tow a boat. The Takoma is easier to park in a small garage; the Tundra... not so much.

 

Do you need to tow a house or just a boat? If just a boat, go ahead and get the boat-puller. However, once you've purchased the boat puller and then need to pull a house... yikes!

 

If you use both Captivate and Storyline, I'd love to read your comments about both tools below as comments.

 

And of course, no matter which tool you choose, we've got an awesome collection of training classes to support you.

Development Corner: Image Formats

by Sally Cox  

When it comes to adding images to websites, PowerPoint presentations, or eLearning projects, you will likely be given JPEGs, GIFs, or PNGs. Let's review the three most common image formats and why/when to use them.

JPEG

JPEG is short for "Joint Photographer's Experts Group." It is one of the most popular formats used on the web and in eLearning. JPEG compression (the act of making the image as small as possible while retaining as much quality as possible) is "lossy" compression, which means every time you save an image as a JPEG, it loses quality.

 

The first image above is a JPEG taken with my iPhone. In the second image, I have opened the file in Photoshop and zoomed in on the child's face.

 

 

 

  

 

The little squares you see in the closeup image are called "pixels." Every time you save an image as a JPEG, it loses some quality by throwing out pixels. So if you are editing an image in Photoshop, always save it as the native format first, which is a PSD (Photoshop Document).

 

In the Save As dialog box in Photoshop, choose "Photoshop" as the file format. This saves as a PSD and preserves all details. Then after you finish your edits, do another Save As and choose "JPEG." The original PSD remains fully intact.

 

The image below is an example of the same photo saved multiple times as a low-quality JPEG. Notice that that there is a squarish effect happening and details are lost. This effect is known as "JPEG artifact."

 

 

 

JPEGs use the "RGB colorspace," which has more than 16 million colors. This allows for beautiful continuous-tone images with fluid gradations and a full range of colors. It's a good choice for continuous-tone, but does not allow transparency or animation.

GIF

The "Graphic Interchange Format" (GIF) works in the "Indexed colorspace," so its color palette is quite limited--just 256 colors. GIFs do, however, support transparency and animation (the once-hated animated GIF is making a comeback; I see it every day on Facebook). The oldest format on the web (created in 1989), GIFs are saved as "lossless" compression.

In the image below, I have saved the image as a GIF and it contains just 256 colors. You can see that the image has lost some of its detail.

 

 

Here is an example of an image containing just 8 colors--all detail is gone and the image has a "posterized" effect.

 

 

 

GIFs are perfect for "flat color," i.e., logos or flat design graphics that don't have gradations or continuous-tone (remember: only 256 colors). 

 

PNG

 

The "Portable Network Graphic" was created (approved as a web standard in 1996) to provide high quality continuous-tone but also allow for transparency and animation.

PNGs are saved in the RGB colorspace, so they have the full range of 16 million+ colors. What I like best about PNGs is the ability to save transparency, which I use every day in my workflow. I save my graphics as high-quality PNGs and allow transparency (a checkbox I choose in Adobe Illustrator when I export a graphic to PNG).

In a recent project I wanted to use an image of a headset, and I needed the background to be transparent. I opened the image in Adobe Illustrator and set the Export PNG options to High Quality and set the Background Color to Transparency.

 

 

 

Thanks to the Transparency option, I had the freedom to overlay the headset on the green background shown below.

 

To Recap:

	JPEG	GIF	"PNG"
COLORS	16 MILLION +	256	16 MILLION +
TRANSPARENCY	NO	YES	YES
ANIMATION	NO	YES	YES
CONTINUOUS-TONE	YES	NO	YES
FLAT COLOR	NO	YES	YES

 

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If you'd like to attend some awesome 3-hour mini courses that focus on eLearning, check these out.

Adobe Captivate or Adobe Presenter: Which One Is Right For You?

by Jennie Ruby 

 

Adobe Presenter and Adobe Captivate have some overlapping functions. Both can create eLearning lessons that can be uploaded to and report results to a learning management system (LMS). Both can work with PowerPoint. Both can create interactive quizzes. And the list goes on. But what are the key differences that tell me which of these programs to buy? Or, if I already have both, which to use for any given project? Let's take a look.

Adobe Presenter is a PowerPoint add-in, and is marketed by Adobe specifically to educators. It is the easiest path from PowerPoint to eLearning. You can use it to take existing PowerPoint slides, add voiceover narration, optionally record a self-video while presenting the lesson, add eLearning scenes and characters, add interactive elements, add a quiz, and publish the lesson to an LMS. Presenter lessons can be used to "flip" the classroom--the homework is to watch the lecture, and then practice assignments, worked problems, and the like are done in the classroom with the teacher's help. 

Presenter is designed so that eLearning features are easy to add. But, as is typical with any kind of software, the easier the software is to use, the fewer choices you have about certain things. In Adobe Presenter, this is a good thing. This software allows you to focus more on the content than on eLearning functionality. With this software, the feeling is that you are designing your content, and the software handles the work of deciding things like how the learner advances to the next slide. Your energy goes into your content.

For example, if you want to create a scenario, where the learner chooses options and receives feedback by traveling down various "branches" after decision points, you can click a few buttons, choose between pre-designed options, type your content on designated slides, and let Presenter take care of which button takes the learner to which slide. Your choices are somewhat limited, but getting a functioning scenario lesson up and running is fast and easy.

Adobe Captivate is powerful, stand-alone eLearning development software. It can import PowerPoint slides as the background and basic content of a project, but from that point on, the file is a Captivate project file. You are no longer in PowerPoint. In fact, using PowerPoint is just one of many options for how to create a Captivate project.

Arguably Captivate's greatest strength is the ability to create software demonstrations and simulations by simply recording screen actions as you do them. You can create still shots of each screen or record a live video of a procedure. Captivate can add text descriptions of the actions automatically. But after recording, you can edit the recorded steps to add highlights, additional captions, voiceover instructions, hints, feedback messages, and much more.

Rather than having a lot of automatic presets (although there are plenty of predesigned themes for colors, backgrounds, and fonts), Captivate puts you in control of the details of your lesson's appearance and functionality. What will the learner click to advance the lesson? You can create a button or make any part of the background a clickable object. Want a button that does multiple actions? You can create that. Want to add a screen character or multiple characters? Captivate lets you do that, too. 

Want a branching scenario? You map it out, you add scenes or characters, you create the buttons that take your learner down the various branches. You have complete flexibility as to how the lesson proceeds. But you are on your own. You have to remember to add that "back" button that keeps your learner from reaching a dead end. You have to create all of the links and make sure they go in the correct sequence. You have all the power, but you also have all the work of making the eLearning project function. 

So which should you use for what?

• If you need software simulations: Captivate
• If you need flexible, responsive lesson sizes for various learner devices: Captivate
• If you have existing PowerPoint slides and want to record your lecture with them: Presenter
• If you just want to focus on content, and want the rest to be mostly automatic: Presenter
• If you want detailed control over sophisticated branching, interactions, timings, and functions: Captivate

Budget

Captivate is a highly advanced, fully functional eLearning software development tool, and its cost reflects that:

• $999 to purchase
• $29.99/month to subscribe, with a year's subscription minimum
• Student/teacher edition: $299

Presenter is a PowerPoint add-in that gives you a lot of eLearning pizazz for a lot less development work and costs significantly less than Captivate:

• $499 to purchase
• $14.99/month to subscribe for a year
• $24.99 month-to-month subscription available
• Student/teacher editions upgrade: $149

Are you using one of or both of these programs? Give me your opinion. Which do you use for what?

 

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If you'd like to learn more about Captivate, come hang out in my just announced Adobe Captivate Quick Start mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, TechSmith Camtasia, Articulate Studio, or Articulate Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

eLearning: Become a Pedagogical Agent

by Jennie Ruby 

If you've taken any of our Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline classes, you are probably aware that these programs provide a selection of screen characters--cut-out pictures of professional actors in business, medical, or business-casual clothing posed as if they are talking to you. They are intended for use as a kind of avatar of the trainer.

There is research that shows that using a screen character as a pedagogical agent or learning coach, who speaks informally and appears to be giving the lesson, increases learning. (My reference for this is Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer, eLearning and the Science of Instruction.)

Over the past few weeks, I've had multiple students ask how hard it would be to use themselves as the learning coach. Believe it or not, becoming a pedagogical agent is easier than you think.

 

Put Your Picture into the Lesson. Place a professional head shot of yourself, your trainer, or expert on the introductory slide (including job title, credentials, etc.), and then have that individual record the audio narration for the project.

 

Create your own screen characters. Photograph your expert on a green screen background for a full set of screen characters in various poses. The IconLogic Blog has a whole series of articles on how to do this:

 

Green Screen Part I

Green Screen Part II

Green Screen Part III

Green Screen Part IV

 

Create cartoons of yourself or your in-house experts. You can use the images over and over in on-going training videos. Here is one article to get you started: Using Bitstrips Characters.

If you don't have specific, known individuals in your company to act as your learning coaches, you are not stuck with the same four or five actors that come with your software. You can purchase additional screen characters from The eLearning Brothers. Or you can just make good use of some inexpensive clip art. By trimming out the background in ordinary office photographs, you can get some nice effects.

 

Whether you use generic actors or your own home-grown experts, screen characters are an excellent way to add the personalization, engagement, and local feel that will bring your eLearning to the next level.

 

Once you have your screen characters, how do you know what to make them say? Join me for an afternoon mini course on writing voiceovers to find out.

Adobe Presenter: Get Control of Slide Titles and the TOC

by Jennie Ruby 

When you add a sidebar to your project in Adobe Presenter, you have the option of displaying a table of contents (TOC), which in Presenter is called the Outline. The Outline automatically lists the title of each slide, and viewers can click any title to navigate to that slide. Sweet! But let's say you preview your project, and one or more slides turns up in the Outline as "Slide x," where x = the slide number. Not quite as sweet. A slide title like "Slide 5" tells your viewer nothing, making navigation using the Outline a matter of guesswork.

The solution to this problem is not difficult, but it does require visiting a number of places in your presentation and in Presenter. First, you need to know how Presenter got the titles for the slides that are listed correctly in your Outline. If your slide has a Title placeholder in PowerPoint, Adobe Presenter picks up that title automatically. So one solution is simply to give every slide in your presentation a title.

However, you may not want a title to appear on every slide. Some slides might be images or graphics only. No problem. You can still assign the slide a title in Presenter that will only be displayed in the Outline.

On the Adobe Presenter tab of the Ribbon, from the Tools group, click Slide Manager.

The Slide Manager dialog box lists all of the slides in your project. Notice in my example below that slides 1 and 2 have titles (in quotes after the slide numbers), but slides 3 and 4 do not.

  

Among the options for each slide is Navigation Name. Click the word None, replace it with the title you want to have displayed in the sidebar Outline, click the OK button, and you are done.

However, in my case, since these slides are just images, I decided not to give each a unique name. Instead, I want it to be clear from the sidebar Outline that these are merely continuations of the previous titled topic. For each, I want the navigation name to be (Continued). Now, I could give each one that navigation name right here in the Slide Manager, but there is a way to cover all unnamed slides at once.

After closing the Slide Manager, click the Theme tool on the Ribbon.

 

At the bottom of the Adobe Presenter Theme Editor, click the Modify Text Labels button.

  

Scroll to the bottom of the list of labels, and the second to last one is Unnamed slide title.

 

Double-click the text Slide %n and replace it with (Continued).

    

Click the OK button to save your change. Click the OK button on the Theme Editor to close it.

Now, when you preview your project, all of the unnamed slides show up as (Continued) in the Outline. As a bonus, this word also appears in the list of Thumbnails.

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Check out my mini courses on Adobe Presenter. To attend my class, all you need is access to the Internet, Microsoft PowerPoint, and a trial version of Presenter. Find out how easy it is to transform your existing PowerPoint decks into fully functioning eLearning.

Adobe Presenter: Synchronizing Voiceover Audio with Slide Builds

by Jennie Ruby 

Suppose you have hired voiceover talent to record the audio for your Adobe Presenter project. You give the voiceover artist the script. The script is organized by which slide in your PowerPoint presentation each audio segment belongs to. When you get the voiceover recordings back, you just import each segment to the slide it belongs to. When you preview your presentation, everything plays smooth as silk until--there is a click-activated animation on slide 12. Now, as the pre-recorded audio plays, the slide just sits there, and the animation is never activated. Uh-oh.

That's where synchronization comes in. In Adobe Presenter, you can synchronize slide animation with the imported audio in just a few mouse clicks.

Start with the animated slide active in PowerPoint's Normal view. The animation in my example slide is a simple text build, with each bullet point appearing on mouse click.

From the Presenter tab on the Ribbon, go to the Audio group and click the Sync button.

The presentation opens in Slideshow view, and the Synchronize dialog box opens. At the left, click the green Sync-change timings button.

  

The audio begins to play, and the Next animation tool becomes available.

  

When the audio mentions the next bullet point, click the Next animation tool to cue the animation.

Click through the remaining animations on the slide, then click the square Stop button.

Now that you have synchronized the audio with the animations, click the Play button to review your work. The slide audio plays, and the animations occur at the points where you clicked. If you are satisfied with the results, click Save. Otherwise, click Discard and try again.

Close the Synchronize dialog box and you'll find that your project now sports perfectly synchronized audio and animations.

Note: You could synchronize a longer audio clip across multiple slides. However, for ease of corrections and updates, the best practice is to have a separate audio clip for each slide.

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Check out my mini courses on Adobe Presenter. To attend my class, all you need is access to the Internet, Microsoft PowerPoint, and a trial version of Presenter. Find out how easy it is to transform your existing PowerPoint decks into fully functioning eLearning.