Timing your Karaoke

If you want to make a Karaoke that will play automatically without manually advancing the slides, you can record times for each slide. The beauty of PowerPoint is that you can record the timing in realtime by simply advancing the slides manually. To do that, choose REHEARSE TIMINGS in the Slide Show menu and click away! (For more info on this feature, consult Help)

   

You will surely have to tweek your timings many times. After you record the timings, you can go in and manually tweek them by changing the time in the Slide Transition window. You may find, as I have, that this becomes tedious because the timings get off and PowerPoint can't advance slides automatically as quickly as I can manually. This is an important point: if you are going to automate, you need to keep the slide up for at least a second! So the fewer slides you have, the easier it will be to automate your karaoke. I prefer to advance the song manually in realtime or output to another medium such as video tape. If you want to make a PowerPoint Show that stands alone, you'll have to work the timings out. It can be done!

Bouncing Ball

If you want a 'bouncing ball' in your Karaoke, simply create your 'ball' and put it in your slides. Of course, it isn't that simple: You need a slide for every word! This will make a HUGE PowerPoint file which tends to crash more and will be impossible to automate. That's why I often opt to use a laser pointer in real time for my bouncing ball. If you are outputing to video, by all means, have a bouncing ball! Or change text color. Get creative!

Next:  Playing your Karoke

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