Captivate

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In part one of our article, we created a very basic Captivate movie. Now we'll enhance our project with some audio elements - narration, sound effects, and music.

Recording Narration
A word about narration and audio: remember to think of the environment your users will be in when viewing your project, and make sure that any audio used will enhance the project and not distract from learning.

We've already recorded our demonstration, so we'll need to do the following steps to put a script into Captivate and then record our narration:

1. Open an existing Captivate project. For this article, we'll open the demonstration movie we previously made. Make sure your microphone is connected and active.
2. Select the slide to which you want to add audio (or where you want the audio to begin) in either the Storyboard or Edit mode.
3. Choose Edit > Properties then click the Notes button.
4. Type in the text you want to be spoken, and click OK. You can also insert a Caption for users who can't hear the audio to ensure that users can navigate successfully and that they can comprehend the information even when the audio is off. Continue this process for each of the slides that you'll narrate.
5. Click the Audio button on the Main toolbar.
6. Under View Script, select either of the following:
   Captions (to view the contents of a Caption that's present on the current slide) Slide notes (to view notes for this slide)

Now that you have the text to speak, you can begin recording your voiceover.

1. Open Background Audio preferences and click the "Record new" button to open the Record Audio dialog box.
2. Click the Options button. The Audio Options dialog box opens.
3. Select Microphone as your input source.
4. Click the "Calibrate input..." button. The Calibrate microphone dialog box opens.
5. Speak into the microphone. The Recording Level meter on the right side of the dialog box changes color and will tell you if the input level is acceptable or not. Once it's okay, click OK to return to the Audio Options dialog box.
6. Select your audio quality from the Audio Quality pop-down menu and click OK to return to the Record Audio dialog box.
7. Click the Record button and speak the caption text or slide notes into the microphone.
8. When you've finished recording your narration for this slide, click Next.
9. Read the contents of the next slide note or caption.
10. Repeat Steps 8 and 9 until you've read all of the narration for the entire movie.
11. Click the OK button.

Captivate now adds each of the audio clips to the appropriate slide.

Listening To and Modifying Narration
Once you've finished, the audio files are converted into MP3 format and added to each of your project slides.

To listen to the audio track, press the spacebar. A red line (also known as a playhead) moves from left to right across the timeline to indicate where in the timeline you're currently hearing the audio. You can drag this line back and forth to pick up the sound at that point.

Editing Audio
So now that we've played back our narration, we may have found parts we want to edit. We may have left too long of a pause, said "um," or left out a dramatic pause. Whatever the reason, editing the audio is simple. You can modify the audio file using Captivate's built-in audio editor.

Here's one way to remove an unwanted sound snippet:

1. Choose Audio > Edit Audio. You can also open the Edit Audio dialog box by right-clicking the audio slide of the timeline and selecting Edit Audio from the context menu, or by clicking the speaker icon located on each slide with audio.
2. Play the audio track by clicking the Play button or pressing the spacebar.
3. Locate the unwanted audio and make a note of where it starts and stops.
4. Position the playhead at the beginning of the noise (start time) and then click and drag until it's at the end (stop time) to select the entire area. You can play the audio to make sure you haven't missed any of the sound or accidentally selected too much.
5. Click the Delete Selection button to remove the sound.
6. Play the selection to ensure that you're happy with the deletion.
7. Click OK to close the Audio dialog box.

Adding Silence
The Insert Silence command lets you remove mistakes, unwanted hissing sounds, or create pauses in your audio track. You access the Insert Silence command through either the Edit Audio or Edit Timing dialog boxes.

To insert silence, do the following steps:

1. Open the Edit Audio dialog box.
2. Select the block of audio where you want to add the silence, pressing the spacebar to play the audio track if needed.
3. Click the Insert Silence button (on either the Edit Audio or Edit Timing dialog boxes) to open the Insert Silence dialog box.

   You can specify the amount of silence (in seconds) to add to the audio file. If you select a snip of audio that you want to silence, Captivate will calculate how many seconds to add and select the Current Selection option.

   The menu options are:
   _Current selection
   _ Playhead position
   _ Start of audio
   _ End of audio
   

4. Click OK to add the seconds of silence you specified.

Importing Audio
Now that we've added some narration and done some basic edits, let's look at how to add a sound effect or supporting audio file to our movie.

Tip: You can also attach sounds to objects in your movie to emphasize actions or reinforce learning objectives.

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