In Keynote, we can add audio files to our slideshows. These might be music or sounds of nature or city life, or our own commentary to go with our slides.
This option can make presentations more efficient and entertaining.
Keynote documents accept QuickTime and iTunes files, including the popular MP3 and MPEG4 formats.
This recipe describes how to add audio files to Keynote documents.
Prepare the audio file to be added to your Keynote project. This might be a single audio file or a playlist.
Note
If you are using audio clips produced by someone else, be sure you have ascertained their copyright status. Many popular melodies, even though we may hear them every day, are protected by copyright. Or we might have bought a CD or downloaded music to iTunes for our personal enjoyment, but copyright may not allow us to use them for public broadcasting or in commercial material.
To add an audio file to your Keynote presentation, follow these steps.
- In our Keynote document, open Inspector, and click on the document icon (first icon on the left).
- In Document Inspector, click on the Audio tab.
- To add an audio file from iTunes, click on the iTunesLibrary button. This opens the Media Inspector.
- In the Media Inspector, click on Audio, find the file you want to add to your document, click on it, and drag it to the Soundtrack well in Document Inspector. As you drag the file, its icon will appear as though hanging at the tip of the cursor. When you reach the Soundtrack well, a green button with a white cross will show on the cursor. This signals that Keynote is ready to take the audio file. Let go, and the file will sit in the Soundtrack window.
- If your audio file is not in iTunes but on your desktop or in another folder, drag it from there. The process is the same, except that you don't need to go through the Media browser.
- In Document Inspector, click on the playing options tab and choose Play Once, if you want the audio to be played only once during the slideshow. Choose Loop to set the audio file to play continuously through the slideshow.
- Click on the play button under the Soundtrack window, and adjust the volume by dragging the Volume slider.
- Save the Keynote document.
You can add an audio file to just one slide of the document instead of the whole slideshow. To do this, drag the audio file to the slide itself, and not to the Document Inspector window. The audio file will show in the document as the audio icon, but will not display when the slideshow is being played. To set the audio to play when the slide is displayed, click on the audio icon, go to Build Inspector, click on Build In, and from the Effect drop-down menu, choose Start Audio. Then, click on Build Out and choose Stop Audio from the drop-down menu. When the slideshow moves to the next slide, the audio will stop.
For longer slideshows, we can add not one but several audio files—a playlist. Select several songs in your iTunes library and drag them all to the Soundtrack well in Document Inspector.
Another option is to record yourself while you are working on a Keynote project. This is how to do it:
- Select the starting slide where you want to add your speech.
- In Document Inspector, click on Record under the Audio section.
- Keynote starts the slideshow, but in the top-left corner of the screen there will be a pulsating red button indicating that your Mac is recording your commentary with its built-in microphone. Click on the red button, if you want to pause the recording.
- Keynote automatically synchronizes your commentary with slides. When you are finished with the first slide, click on the current slide to advance to the next slide and continue your commentary.
- When finished, press Escape, which will stop the slideshow and save the document. Click on the Document tab in Document Inspector to check that the slideshow is now set to Recorded under the Presentation field. When you start recording, this option is set to Recorded, automatically.
You can speak for as long or as little as you want to at each slide. Keynote will display each slide with your commentary while the recording is played back. Remember, though, that when you play the slideshow next time, only the slides with recordings will be played; others are skipped. If you want to add recorded commentary only to some slides, record it as a separate audio file and then add to individual slides in the same way as you would add files from the iTunes library.