[bc130]

I've been working on a 200+ slide show in powerpoint with photos, music and sound clips. When I insert the sound clips, they won't play. However, if I take the same sound clip and test it on a powerpoint file on my PC it works without a problem. When I insert it, it asks if I want it to play automatically and of course I say yes but to no avail. They are all .wav files. I just don't want to have to start over on my PC when I've got most of it done. One of the reasons I bought a mac was to produce a better presentation and the fact that I could export it to iDVD or QT to reproduce and play on a TV or any computer with or without powerpoint. Unfortunately, I've had nothing but problems, including powerpoint just shutting down unexpectedly (about five times now) - so I'm saving after every slide I edit. This is my last ditch effort before I give up on this computer.

[peeb]

Well, we'll get to your powerpoint problem, but this does sound like an issue with PP, not with your Mac.
When you say they won't play, you can add them successfully, and you set it to automatically play when the slide displays?
First, take one of the .wav files, and open a new powerpoint document. Will the file play in that?

[bc130]

I started a new presentation and yes, it played and after that powerpoint shut down! I'm in need of a sedative!

[peeb]

So your new presentation is just that .wav file, and when you play it, PP shuts down? How big is the file? I'm beginning to think the audio file might be the issue here.
Incidentally, what computer do you have?

[bc130]

I'm not sure how large the file is...it can't be too large though, it's a one liner from a movie. So while I was building the presentation on my mac, I would often have to switch views from the slide to the sorter and it would take forever, yet I just got done copying the presentation off the mac onto the pc and I'm doing the same thing but much faster. I don't get it. My imac is an upgraded 17 inch with a gig of RAM compared to an older pc laptop with less ram. What gives?

[peeb]

Not sure - is it an intel iMac? If so it could be a Rosetta issue. PM me if you want to send me the file and I will see if I can replicate the problem.

[bc130]

How do I know if it's an Intel iMac? What's a Rosetta issue? How do I PM you?

[peeb]

What does it look like? Did you get it in the last year and a half? Does it have any writing on it?
A Rosetta issue is to do with running older software on newer machines.
You can PM me by clicking on my username, then clicking on 'send private message'.

[bc130]

Yes, it's an intel...found it.

[bc130]

I bought it less that 3 months ago. It's running the newest version of Microsoft Office for Mac.

[peeb]

OK, so it is an intel mac, and it's running an old version of office, which is a PPC program (for old macs). It is using Rosetta to translate. I suspect this may be the issue. Email me the files, and I'll take a look on my PPC machine.

[JKT]

Just to be clearer about Rosetta (note, this is a pretty simplistic description that follows and not entirely accurate but it gives the right gist):

Until January last year, Apple computers used PowerPC (PPC) chips from IBM or Freescale (formerly Motorola) as their CPUs. Then Apple transitioned their entire line up to Intel x86 CPUs. The problem here is that the PPC and x86 architectures are completely different and the way apps are coded for each type of CPU means that they are incompatible with the other form of CPU (this is why you can't install and run Windows on PPC Macs, but can on Intel Macs). To be able to run on the other form of CPU the applications have to go through a level of translation that mimics the architecture of the CPU they were initially designed for. This has a big negative drawback of slowing the application down (the translation process takes time).

To enable applications that were originally written for the PPC to run on the Intel Macs, Apple includes a technology in the Intel version of OS X that they have termed Rosetta.* This translates the code from the PPC app so that it can run on the Intel machine. Unfortunately for you, MS Office 2004 is a PPC app which requires Rosetta to run on your Intel Mac - MS is taking its own sweet time to upgrade the Mac version of Office so that it will run natively on Intel Macs without the need for Rosetta. The upshot of all this is that Office 2004 does not run as fast as a native application on your Mac (it runs at about the same speed as it would on a 2 to 3 year old PPC Mac). While it does a pretty good job overall, Rosetta can't work miracles and there might be some bugs that are preventing the .wav file from inserting and/or playing properly, or the .wav itself is corrupt and the corruption is only exhibiting itself on the Mac and not on the PC (fwiw, this is not an atypical occurrence - I had the opposite effect where the corruption in a long word document I was working on didn't show up on the Mac but did on the PC).

Edit: Note - make sure you have installed the latest update (v11.3.5) for Office 2004 as each update includes fixes that improve the apps performance in Rosetta.

When you buy applications for your Mac you should be on the lookout for one or two magical descriptions - either that the application is an Universal binary (which means that it contains the code needed to run on both PPC and Intel Macs at native speeds) or that it is Intel only.

Incidentally, Office 2008 is meant to be released later this year and is set to be Universal.

* After the Rosetta stone which is how the Victorians were first able to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics - the stone contains hieroglyphics and their translation in Aramaic (IIRC) and Greek.

[ewiser]

Should have looked at the Keynote trial in your applications folder.
That's what Al Gore used to make the movie An Inconvenient Truth.

[bc130]

Well thanks for that information. I'll go to the microsoft site and look for updates. Unfortunately, it's so unstable I gave up and put it on my "old" pc. As far as keynote, it doesn't have the capability to change audio files mid way so I would have to have the same song loop for an entire presentation - 15 - 20+ minutes which I don't want. Believe me, I've been in the forum about that issue too because I started with Keynote and loved it until I discovered how simplistic the audio is and decided not to go forward.

I can't wait to spend more money on MS Office 08 when it's released.

Thanks again for the info!

[ewiser]

I have also used Photo to Movie for slideshows.
I make documentaries and use several different pieces of software to pictures and audio depending on the budget and time crunch.
LQ Graphics Photo to Movie