Sounds and animations are not synchronized in your PowerPoint presentation (331873)

SYMPTOMS

When you view your Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 or PowerPoint 2000 presentation, sound effects that you add to an animation on a slide may not always be correctly synchronized with the animation. Sounds may play at a different time than the animations.

CAUSE

PowerPoint 2000

This issue may occur in PowerPoint 2000 because synchronization of media events is not supported. PowerPoint 2000 sends a message to the media player that tells the media player which sound to play. The sound file and slide show are played independently, and as a result, these elements may not always be consistently synchronized. This issue may become more noticeable when you use large sound files, .ppt files, or both.

PowerPoint 2002

This issue may occur in PowerPoint 2002 because there is limited support for synchronization of media events. PowerPoint 2002 uses a timing mechanism in which it sends a message to the media player to start playing the sound at a specific time. Although the sound may start at a specific time, the sound file is still being played by a separate program. Because of this, the sound files and the slide show may not always be consistently synchronized.

WORKAROUND

When you use smaller sound files with smaller .ppt files, you may receive improved synchronization performance between sound effects and animations when you view your presentation. This improvement occurs because there is less demand on system resources. However, note that the use of smaller files does not always guarantee multimedia synchronization with animation. Many factors including random access memory (RAM), available hard disk space, third-party programs, and different media player programs can cause fluctuations in the synchronization of sound with animation.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about timing animation sequences in PowerPoint 2002, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/2002/articles/ppTimingAnimationSequences.aspx

For additional information about how to troubleshoot a similar issue, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

285587 PPT2002: Multimedia Playback Delay During Slide Show