The Keynote/Quicktime bug which prevents podcast exports from Keynote

Question

I too have been stymied by the bug which prevents export of .mov files out of Keynote when the presentation contains builds. I spent this weekend recording lectures which I would normally give to medical undergraduates in person but for which I will be away so have to prepare substitute podcasts. I have done this in the past very successfully. This weekend I recorded the audio for the lectures in Keynote and all worked as it should when I played them back within Keynote. The first lecture I exported successfully to a .mov file but this presentation was short and didn't contain animations. The next two lectures would not export, the computer often spent many minutes saying it was exporting but would then produce an error message saying that it could not be completed because either there was not enough memory or the file was the wrong format. I tried at different resolutions, shorter presentations etc. This was all very frustrating because last year I had successfully done the same thing with highly animated presentations.
Today I tried it on my office computer which is a recent 24" iMac with lots of memory and a powerful processor but the problem remained. It was then that I consulted the forums and found page upon page of people with a similar problem and lots of supposed fixes including reverting to earlier versions of Quicktime etc.
I am in a similar position to many other posters in that I have to produce these teaching materials by the end of this week and so cannot wait for Apple to produce updates that will fix these issues.
Some posters recommended the software Screenflow as a solution and I am posting this message to confirm this does provide a good solution. Obviously we shouldn't have to pay $99 to get round a problem that Apple has created from a system that previously worked effortlessly and seamlessly but if you are in a similar position to me then this solution will work. You simply take your Keynote presentation with audio commentary and run it whilst Screenflow is recording in the background and set Screenflow to record the computer audio. This produces a file that can then be exported into a number of different video formats optimised for different viewing platforms (e.g. iPod, iPhone, computer screen). It took 5 minutes to install the software and 5 minutes to learn how to use it. The transitions between slides and the animations within slides are all very smooth and the video and audio is perfectly synchronised.
Screenflow would also be useful in other contexts such as recording video tutorials to teach students how to use software programmes, e.g. aspects of Photoshop, so it will have uses which the Keynote/Quicktime combination couldn't deal with but I still feel aggrieved that I have had to spend $99 on software which I didn't need a few months ago.

Answer 1

I too wasted hours this weekend trying to export narrated KN files, which worked flawlessly last spring semester. I too am needing to get these narrated KN files published for my college students by the end of this week. Perhaps purchasing QuickTime Pro and pasting the audio file works, but that still does not solve the problem of exporting to iPod or YouTube, which continues to give a "not enough disk space" error message regardless of how small or large my presentation is (plenty of GBs on my computer too). Also, when I export to Flash, the movie works, but converting the Flash file results in error messages (saying the file is corrupt. I have tried this many times with new KN presentations).
Apple needs to fix this. I bought iWork'08 specifically for KN's exporting capabilities, otherwise I might as well have just stuck with PPT. I'd like to believe that Apple is working on the issue and that we will not be forced to purchase yet more software. In either case, any information by Apple clarifying this dilemma would be very helpful to and appreciated by all of us. Apple, will this be fixed in the future or should we buy new software?