Using Captivate content in Articulate Presenter
21 Comments Dave blogged on Friday, April 14, 2006 at 4:03 PM.
Recording Size
When creating a Captivate demonstration make sure that your recording area is no larger than 720x540. Articulate Presenter only supports inserted Flash Movies up to 720x540 in size. You can use the preset Breeze recording size in Captivate which will size your recording dimensions to the optimal size for Articulate Presenter.
Note: When inserting a Flash Movie in Articulate Presenter from Captivate sized at 720x540, you might get a warning that the dimensions of the Flash movie is 721x541. You can ignore this warning.
Movie Preferences
Make sure that you use the default loading screen in Captivate to make sure that your content will play back without any issues. You can set the loading screen option under Movie>Preferences inside of Captivate.
Remove the Playback Control
If you are going to insert your Captivate demonstration inside of Articulate Presenter there is no reason to use the Captivate Playback controller since you can set the Flash Movie to 'Play Flash movie and slide in sync'. You can remove the playback controller in Captivate by selecting Movie>Preferences>Playback Control and selecting None for the position. To set Articulate Presenter to play the Flash Movie in sync follow the directions below:
- Select Articulate>Insert Flash Movie
- Select Display in slide
- Click Next
- Select the Flash Movie
- Click Next
- Under Synchronization select 'Play Flash Movie and slide in sync'
or - Select 'Play Flash movie after slide has begun'
- Select 'Allow Player to control inserted Flash movie'
Note: You also have an option in Articulate Presenter to Display Flash Movie in new browser window, and in this instance you might want to keep the playback controller. Using this option will also allow you to make your recordings larger than 720x540.
Audio
If you choose to include audio with your Captivate demonstration, and you want it to be synchronized with your Captivate demonstration make sure that the recording is either done in Captivate, or recorded and then imported to Captivate. This will keep your audio synchronized when viewed in Articulate Presenter.
Captions
I would also recommend making sure that you use a caption style and fonts inside of Captivate that match your Articulate Presenter template and presentation. This will help ensure that the content looks and feels professional.
Frames Per Second
Don't change the Frames Per Second rate of either your Captivate demonstration, or Articulate Presenter. This can cause issues during playback, and there really aren't any advantages to lowering the FPS, or raising it.
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I've been told one can create a flash presentation in Captivate, then use Flash MX to resize the dimensions, i.e. resize to fit within an AP presenter presentation. This is especially true when you want to capture an area slightly larger than what AP can import...
What are your thoughts on that, how is that done?
Hello Mark, sorry for the delayed response on the comment. I thought my comments were set up to automatically post, but I guess they were not.
But..to answer your question, you actually don't even have to export to Flash MX to resize your Captivate demos. In Captivate, select Movie>Resize Movie, this will allow you to rescale your Captivate demo to a smaller size for Articulate Presenter. Just as an FYI though, the resize feature in Captivate will cause issues with any Full Motion Recording that you have in the demo.
Yeah, check out the part of the post that says "Note: When inserting a Flash Movie in Articulate Presenter from Captivate sized at 720x540, you might get a warning that the dimensions of the Flash movie is 721x541. You can ignore this warning."
The warning is a known issue. It doesn't really make it blurry if the Captivate SWF is 720x540.
I'm having an issue with limiting my Captivate capture size to 720x540 because when I set it to that size, I can hardly show any of the application I'm creating training for. Do you have any suggestions? I tried creating the Captivate movie at full screen and then having it open in a separate window in Articulate, but it kind of opens off to the side and isn't optimal...
Any suggestions?
Hello Leslie,
I personally wouldn't recommend making anything larger than 720x540 in Captivate for various reasons. One of which is that there is still a larger portion of people running 800x600 screen resolution, according to this website up to 20% of all users are still using an 800x600 resolution, which means if your output is targeted for larger than that, they won't be able to see it anyways. If you are having trouble capturing all your data at 720x540, try resizing your desktop so it is running at 800x600, this will allow you to capture more of your desktop. When I worked at Macromedia we had a limitation of only beging able to record at 450x450, which is much more difficult than 720x540, and we were able to find creative ways of making things fit in that small of an area. Also, check out this KB article I created while I was at MM that shows you how to create a scrolling window with Captivate, it allows you to reduce your capture area. Smooth Scrolling Window
Thanks Dave - I tried (reducing my resolution) and, although I still can't "get it all in", it definitely helps. Plus I played a little with not capturing the menu, tool and address bars, which gives me more "real estate" too. Also thanks for the link to the information on "scrolling" seamlessly in Captivate - I'm sure that will come in handy as well.
By the way, when changing my resolution, I was wondering if I should change the Color setting as well or if it makes a difference?
Hello Leslie,
Changing the color settings shouldn't make an change to the dimensions of the file, but it might have an effect on the output file-size (in terms of MB). If you are going to use Captivate, you might also want to check out the following article:
File-Size Considerations for Captivate Demonstrations
It is probably the best written article on working with Captivate. The author is really bright ;-)
Dave,
Yes, the author of that article is quite bright (and looks a lot like the author of this blog!). It's a great resource - thanks again!
Another question for you regarding Captivate embedded in Presenter... I created a kind of "knowledge check/review" movie in Captivate so learners could practice what they have learned in the previous section of the course. I set the slide that has the Captivate swf file to be "slide only" and the next slide of Articulate content is set to the standard/default view. However, when I publish it to the Web, the slide with the swf shows just the slide, but when it goes to the next slide, it stays in that view (i.e. doesn't show the Articulate "shell"). Do you think this has something to do with a setting on my Captivate movie?
Disregard my last question - I figured out I need to go the slide manager in Presenter and manually make the next slide the default view.
My next question - do you know if I can use Captivate to create a simulation that's an assessment and then embed it in Presenter and have it tracked by our LMS? Since I'm using Presenter to create training on an application, I think the assessment would be more robust if I were able to use Captivate to test their knowledge of specific steps.
Hello Leslie, sorry for the delayed response, I have been out on vacation and wasn't able to respond. Unfortunately that will not work. The tracking for simulations in Captivate is done through JavaScript, and when you insert a SWF from Captivate into AP you will loose all the JavaScript.
Hi Dave -- Have you tried incorporating the branching scenarios features of Captivate 2.0 into Articulate? Any best practices to suggest? Thx
Unfortunately I have not. I asked some of the folks over at Macromedia for a copy for testing and nobody has been able to get me a copy so far, and I am not willing to shell out the money for it. I have tested some Captivate 2.0 content, but not an extensive amount.
Dave,
One issue I'm having is the captivate movie being the correct size when view locally, but appearing much smaller viewed online.
Unsure what the issue is there. I've also had the blurry problem, but I found a way to minimize that.
Hi Dave,
I've managed to get my Captivate flash output showing in Articulate Presenter, however when I embed video using Captivate it fails to display in Presenter.
The funny thing is, the rest of the Captivate content shows just fine, it's only the video I'm having trouble with.
Any ideas?
Hallo Dave and others,
I have followed Dave fine explanation about how to insert captivate files in Articulate. I have recorded the file in 720 * 540 in captivate, but when I import it to Articulate presenter and publish it the picture is in bad quality. The flash is being stretched out. My monitor is in 1280*1024, and when I try to go do down to 1024*768 there seems to be no problem. How can this be? And what can I do? It’s not cool that it’s just people with 1024*768 which can see a clear picture.
Hope you can help
Best regards
Martin
I have solved my problem. The presentation was'nt set to resize to optimal size in Player Template Builder. When I changed that everything was fine :-)
See U
Martin
Any ideas why an Articulate presentation that contains a video file captured in captivate would play out of sync (video images and audio are out of sync by about 4 seconds) when posted on an LMS? It plays just fine stand-alone.
Dave,
I am trying to publish an Articulate presentation that has a full-motion Captivate flash file in it and am running across a problem: the image of the item (in this case, it is an IP Communicator) and the full-motion movements are not visible. The recorded audio is playing but the screen just shows a blank white screen.
What are your thoughts?
Well, not sure if you will like my suggestion or not, but the suggestion would be to drop the full motion capture. The full motion capture in Captivate is based on a 3rd party tool that was purchased a really, really long time ago (about 5 years). That tool was never all that great to begin with, and the SWFs that it created (that Captivate uses) have all sorts of problems, like memory leaks, performance problems, occasionally going red for no apparent reason.
So in essence, the full motion capture in Captivate sucks, so I always tried to avoid it.
There are plenty of work arounds that people have posted on the adobe Captivate forums about how to achieve full motion effects, without actually using full motion, so I would first try that.
All AP does is call the swf using the flash command loadMovie, so I am guessing this isn't a specific Presenter problem as it is a Captivate full motion problem.
Thank you everyone for your tips on this! I finally have been able to successfuly embed a Captivate flash presentation into Articulate, and make it look good!
Dave - Thanks for pointing me to the resize presentation in Captivate. I did not know this existed. For those using Captivate 3, it is located under "Projects\Resize Project...". Now I can embed my flash into my slides like I had originally intended, as opposed to launching in a separate window!
Anonymous - Thanks for the tip about "resize to optimal size" - This is why my flash was so blurry after I had embedded it. Obviously it was auto-adjusting to the maximized browser size and thus pixelating the video (I wonder if this works for single images too...)
Dave (back to you again) - With the help of Support, I was able to located this blog post by Daveperso (maybe that's you?):
http://www.articulate.com/forums/23324-post2.html
...which explains how to make supporting files for the .swf available. I copied my Fullmotion swf's into the data\swf folder, and my screencast now shows the full motion video, instead of the white screen.
Hope this helps anyone having the same issues!