No narration or audio tracks

[Lyn123]

I am using Photoshop Elements 6.o and Premiere Elements 4.0. I am assuming that it is an integrated package because they came in the same box. I made a slide show in Photoshop E. with voice and music and imported it to Premiere E. (using the send to premiere function) Premiere Elements displays the slides, but there is no narration or music populating the audio tracks. As a matter of fact there are no narration or audio tracks appearing on my Premiere screen ever.

The narration and music are actually there though. The Premiere screen does not show them. You can you not hear the audio in Premiere elements. However, using Premiere Elements to cut a DVD the narration and music from the slide show are on the finished product. The DVD plays well.

Does anyone have a suggestion. I am assuming that we have an option turned off or something simple like that. I have tried Premiere help...but could not find an answer.

[ATR]

Lyn123



It would be one thing if you were telling me that you cannot hear the audio in Premiere Elements 4, but it is my understanding that you are saying that you cannot hear the audio and not see the “narration and audio tracks”. I am not sure if this is a misunderstanding matter or a seriously bugged Premiere Elements 4 and/or computer.


1. What is your operating system, how much available RAM and free hard drive space do you have? Are your audio drivers updated? Do you have a Widescreen or Standard Computer Monitor, what is its diagonal measurement in inches, what is your screen resolution via Control Panel/Display/Settings? All that being said let us explore some things after we have ruled out factors mentioned above:

Leave Photoshop Elements 6 closed and open a new project in Premiere Elements 4.
Go to and click on the Window Menu at the top of the Edit interface, select Restore Workspace in case you may have distorted your workspace somehow by moving panels around.
Go to the Timeline, not Sceneline View. The track setup should look like this. You will have to use the scroll at the right of the Timeline to scroll through these from bottom to top:
The default status is:
Video 3 (top)
Audio 3
Video 2
Audio 2
Video 1
Audio 1
Narration (there is only one of this type of track)
Soundtrack (there is only one of this type of track)(bottom)
You can delete unused video & audio tracks, but NOT Video 1, NOT Audio 1, and NOT the one and only Narration track, and NOT the one and only Soundtrack.
Do you see all that?

If so, import just an audio file via Get Media/Files and Folder from its saved hard drive location and place it on Audio Track 1. Does that play?

If so, close out of Premiere Elements 4, open Photoshop Elements 6, create your slideshow with narration and music and use the “Send to Premiere Elements” output to get this slideshow into Premiere Elements 4 Timeline. Once it is there you should find the following:
a. the video portion of the import will be on Video Track 1.
b. all of the audio portion (music + narration) will be combined in Audio Track 1.
When you created your slideshow in Photoshop Elements 6, the bar under the Filmstrip housed your music, individual narrations were housed individually within the slides that you designed and each slide had a Narration Icon if it contained Narration. But, when this content gets to Premiere Elements 4, video goes to Video 1 and all the audio (music & narration) to Audio 1.

We can get into the Breaking Apart the Slideshow feature in Premiere Elements 4 next. In addition we can explore placing audio instead in Premiere Elements and creating Narration in Premiere Elements. For now let us try to figure out why you cannot SEE nor HEAR the audio in Premiere Elements 4.

ATR

[Lyn123]

ATR

First off, I must admit to panic. Restoring the workspace was needed. I should have done that...but I wasn't thinking, that is embarrassing!

This is a new computer with 4gb of ram and running Vista Ultimate.

I now have the correct timeline details Video 1,2,3, and Audio 1,2,3, plus narration and soundtrack.

I have imported just an audio file and a picture into Premiere Elements 4.0 without any interface to Photoshop. I can see the picture but not hear the audio. I dragged the audio down to an audio track and can see it in the track, I just can't hear it. We can make a DVD of this from Premiere and the DVD is fine. But without being able to hear it play in Premiere editor we can't adjust the volume etc.

I am pretty sure this is operator error, not a Premiere problem...there is a remote chance that it could be something unusual with this computer. However, using the same computer I can hear both the narration and music in Photoshop Elements.

It was my original intention to narrate the slide show in Premiere Elements, so I read up on how to break apart the slideshow. Guess what, that is something that worked the first time I tried it. I want to add the sound track in Premiere too so that I can adjust the volume lower than narration.

Thank you for your time

Lyn123

[ATR]

Lyn123

I just did a test run, creating a slideshow in Photoshop Elements 6 with music in the bar under the Filmstrip and a different narration to each of 4 slides. The presence of the narration was only evidenced by a narration icon in the slide(s) to which narration was added.

After using the Photoshop Elements 6 Output option Send to Premiere Elements, as I said before, the slideshow ended up on the Timeline with:
a. Video portion on Video Track 1
b. Music and Narration all in one on Audio Track 1.

Then I used the Break Apart Slideshow option, then in the Timeline
a. Video portion remained on Video Track 1
b. The music was now visible on the Soundtrack
c. The narrations were now visible on the Narration Track, as individual narration clips.
d. There was nothing on Audio Track 1.
In the Sceneline View:
a. Stills used in video were now in individual Scenes in Filmstrip of Sceneline View
b. the individual narration clips were in the Narration bar underneath the Filmstrip, placed there under the appropriate still in Scene locations.
c. the soundtrack underneath the narration bar contained the music.

I have never done that scenario so I thought it might be interesting to post for anyone who was thinking about doing this, but did not know what to expect.

That leaves the matter of no sound for Timeline. I will do some homework on that. I seem to recall this being brought up before and need to see if and how that all got resolved.

To be continued...

ATR

[ATR]

I am back with two things for you to try.

1. Go to the Sceneline View. To the left of the Filmstrip (first Scene spot) in the gray area is what looks like a microphone icon with a very tiny arrow next to it. There is also one of these next to the narration track as well as the soundtrack. One at a time, for each, click on its tiny triangle, view the pop up slider and make sure that it is not set to the bottom of the slider (no sound level). Adjust to mid or upper level for each.

2. Also in the Timeline View. Click on Mix Audio above Timeline and make sure the audio adjusts are not set to mute or some very low negative value. You want that set to "0" or above "0". The "0" is this case does not mean no sound, rather it is the sound level of the original clip. So, going above 0 makes the sound level of the clip greater than the original and going below 0 makes the sound level of the clip lower than the original.

By the way, is there a Sony Vaio involved in this situation?

ATR

[Lyn123]

ATR

Once again thank you for your help.

I verified that the settings were correct for sound and they are. I am not using a Sony camera. I am putting still pictures into a slide show.

Lyn123

[ATR]

What I meant by Sony Vaio was the make of the computer or laptop that you might have Premiere Elements 4 installed on.

If not a Sony Vaio brand, do you have a desktop or laptop HP or Dell computer with that Vista operating system that you mentioned earlier?

I am still searching around for reports of this type of problem that I think that I recall. By the way, did you say that you have updated your audio drivers?

To be continued.....


ATR

[Lyn123]

ATR

No it isn't a Sony computer, I guess I don't know Sony products too well. I am not using a HP or Dell. I did read that laptops had a problem with narration. I think it was because the laptop was sending the narration data to something like the video camera setting...and Premiere wasn't finding it. That is a vague remembrance of the problem. I think one needed to correct the file type to fix that problem. I didn't think the laptop problem matched my problem...and I didn't understand the fix. I do not remember where I read about it. I have searched for a few days, and read many posts, trying to find the answer on my own.

Lyn123

[ATR]

Do not give up. We will find an answer yet.

I am still thinking....

ATR