Editing Captivate Audio With Soundbooth

August 9, 2011 | Matt Sullivan

Recently I had an audio clip that was spread across multiple slides... I was lucky enough to find a useable version of a split word in the audio, but couldn't get Captivate to splice the audio without either an audible stutter in the word, or without a fairly large "pop" at the point of the splice. Read on to see how I solved it!It's pretty common knowledge that you can edit backgrounds in Captivate using Photoshop, right? (Just nod your head up & down if you're not sure, then right click on a background image in your library to check it out...)And if you're lucky enough to have Adobe Soundbooth installed as part of the Adobe eLearning Suite or otherwise, you can do the same thing with audio as well.

Finding the audio track

Make sure you're viewing the slide whose audio you'd like to edit. In the Timeline, right click on the audio track and choose Find in Library.This shortcut will quickly identify the track among the many ambiguous audio track names in the library.Hint: You may want to duplicate the track in the library so you don't overwrite your original recording.

Launching the editor

Next, simply right click on the selected audio track and choose Edit with... Note: Since I'd previously edited with Soundbooth, it's available to select directly from this context menu. A cool thing for the next time I need to use Soundbooth)Navigate to the installation directory of Soundbooth (Something like C:ProgramsAdobeSoundbooth CS4) and double click on the Soundbooth CS4.exe file.

Making the edit

I think the coolest part about this is that I'd never done any work in Soundbooth prior to this project...Even though I was a Soundbooth rookie, I was able to isolate the area containing the "pop". Then I dug through the menus and found the Processes > Remove Clicks and Pops menu item. Some quick noodling with the dialog got rid of my "pop", and then I simply closed the file from Soundbooth, saved my changes, and gave myself a pat on the back! That was way easier than explaining to the client why they'd have to re-record audio for that slide!Just like when you edit images from InDesign, Acrobat, or other Adobe apps, when you close the image and save changes to the temp file, the changes will be passed into the audio in your Captivate library clip!