When inserting an audio file into a project, the start position always snaps to a slide. Other than adding calculated silence to the beginning of an audio file, how can the audio file be dynamically slid into the timeline to start where desired (i.e., disable snap)?
You have to switch to the “Timeline” view. Then you are able to grab the left edge of the audio object and slide it to the right.
Ah, totally missed that. Thanks. So, left grab slides, right grab expands or shrinks, middle grab snaps to slides. Is there a shrink/expand for the left end to fine tune where an audio clip will begin? Say you want to remove the first verse of a song?
Also, regarding volume control, I could not find how to add key points to adjust volume in specific places within an audio track? Only the overall volume?
Audio-Adjustment: Please select the audio object and open the “Options” panel on the right. in the “Audio” section you will find the “Range” control. Here you can setup when the audio should start and stop. In the Action button right next to the control you find options to fine control those in and out points.
Volume-control: an Audio object only has one overall volume. But you can use the “Ducking” feature to automatically lower the volume on other audio tracks. E.g. you have a background music track spanning several slides with full volume and you add a narration track for a certain slide, you can select “Ducking: Lower others by 50%” in the Audio-Options panel for this narration track. This means that all other audio tracks currently playing back will be lowered by 50% when this narration track is played back.
The big advantage is that in a live playback situation you may not know exactly when to lower the background music track (because you jumped between slides while the presentation is running, without jumping in the music) and then the narration track controls the volume of the music track whenever it comes in action.