Excel Narrated Animated Business Chart

Sometime ago, I stumbled onto an interesting narrated chart at the NY Times that told the story of Oil's price and consumption.

I thought it would be an interesting challenge to recreate this chart in Excel.  Here's the result...

Click on the above image to see and hear a Flash video of this Excel 2010 chart in action!

I think this narrated and animated chart concept is very compelling for business presentations. I'm sure I would not have understood the story the chart tells, just by looking at a static version.

I love the fading images and how effectively they stir memories.  They really add to the chart story.

There's a lot of interesting bits happening behind the scenes with this one.  Jad's narration is a recorded WAV file from the NY Times original.  I'm using DirectShow from VBA to play and pause the WAV file.  It's important for the WAV file and the Excel workbook to be in the same folder, so please unzip them together before opening the workbook.

The animation plays at a different speed on every computer, so the big challenge with this project was to devise a way to keep the WAV file, which plays at a constant rate in sync with the animation, on every computer.  I'd be interested in your feedback on how well the solution I settled on (synchronization points) works.

Tear this thing apart and figure out how it works.  There are a lot of valuable techniques showcased with this chart project.

Here is the zip archive:

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