Developing your own Captivate Playback Controller

Been working on a course that relies heavily on integrating Captivate demos into a large Flash based course environment. Was getting very frustrated at the limitations of the swf that Captivate exports and started wondering if there was a way to access variables within that swf file to control it's playback.

Sure enough thanks to an article at pipwerks about using Javascript to control captivate, I was then directed to the Captivate Giant Manual, which eventually gave me this list of variables that you can use to control a captivate swf if you load it into your flash movie:

rdcmndPrevious
set to 1 to go previous slide

rdcmndNextSlide
set to 1 to go to next slide

rdcmndPause
set to 1 to pause the project

rdcmndResume
set to 1 to resume showing a paused project

rdcmndRewindAndStop
set to 1 to rewind and stop the project

rdcmndRewindAndPlay
rset to 1 to rewind and play the project

rdcmndGotoFrame
go to a specific frame

rdcmndExit
set to 1 to exit

rdcmndInfo
display the information window

rdinfoFrameCount

total number of swf frames in the project (this is not the number of frames in the main Timeline, but the sum of
all slide frames)

rdinfoSlidesInProject
number of slides in the project (including hidden slides)

rdinfoCurrentFrame
current frame (goes from 1 to rdinfoFrameCount when you play the project)

rdinfoCurrentSlide
slide currently playing (zero based)

rdinfoSlideCount
number of slides in the project (not including hidden slides)

rdIsMainMovie
can be used to identify whether the SWF corresponds to the main Adobe Captivate project

Note: To control the project through the skin file, add the prefix cpSkinLoader_mc to the variables.

How to import flash object with multiple swf's into Adobe Presenter

I ran into this little problem when I noticed importing a flash file into presenter only takes the root swf, and does not handle any external resources that swf may need.

For instance if you have a captivate demo, some of those full motion recordings may not show when you import that demo into presenter!

Not very helpful is it!

Worry not, this is a simple copy and paste solution. First do your import into Adobe Presenter and publish. Then copy any other swf file that the imported flash object is going to need and paste it into the /data/resources folder found from your published presentation file.

If you want something done right, sometimes you gotta do it yourself I guess!

Layer a Capticate recording on top of a Recorded Captivate Slide

Not to go all Fellini on you, but I've recently ran into a situation where I am creating a software demo, and on one of the slides recorded I want to have another recorded animation show during that slide. You follow?

For example, let's say we are demonstrating how to save a file in Word, now instead of a standard recording of the mouse clicking file -> save, we want the actual animation of that activity to occur in the center of the screen.

1. Record you slides, in this case, one snapshot of Word would do.

2. Open another instance of Captivate

3. Choose blank recording, custom size, and full motion.

4. Make that magical red captivate box just big enough to record the file menu drop down. And focus it on that area.

5. Record your action.

6. Last step, in the Slide editor click the animation you just recorded and Copy it, now in your main recording choose Paste.

Bingo Bango, a recording on top of a recording!

Note: I've seen some weird transparency issues so you may want to put a white highlight box behind your animation....

Advanced Note: You can even export your recording to flash to make advanced edits on it for some really funky stuff before reinserting it to your main recording as a swf...that's probably a story for another day though.

Use flash to develop an Avatar for Captivate

Have been spending sometime looking into a good way to build an Avatar, or "Talking Head" for Captivate Simulations.

I came across a really good tutorial for building a talking head in flash and syncing it with Audio:

http://www.flashframer.com/create-a-realistic-flash-animation-lip-sync/

But how do we apply this to a Captivate Simulation?

Here is the strategy:

1. Build your Captivate Simulation

2. Using advanced audio, export the audio to mp3(s)

3. Using flash, import those mp3's to use as the sound, follow the above tutorial to build your talking head, synced with the audio.

4. Remove the audio from your Flash project and publish, now it should just be your talking head animation.

5. Return to captivate, on the first slide choose to import an Animation, select your talking head swf.

6. In the options panel for the swf select Show for rest of project, and select Synchronize with project.

This is just a basic strategy feel free to adjust it for your own project (maybe you just need a talking head for slide 2 and so on)...

A method for recording Captivate Simulations with Narration

Depending on the size, and the number of people involved, recording a simulation in captivate with narration can be a little frustrating.

I've recently started using a new method which is working out really well. Since i'm not a huge fan of Captivate's audio editing tool, I try and record all the narration separately in something like Audacity (free) or Audition (not so free).

With some nice narration recorded, I then start recording a new simulation while listening to my recorded track. The trick here is to select "record narration" before you start recording, this way the slide timing will match the audio you are listening to.

Once you've created your simulation, all that is left to do is to go into Advanced Audio and delete all the audio tracks that were recorded (which would be blank or just a poor recording of what you were listening to). Then import your recorded narration to slide one and select retain current slide timing.

You may need some slight tweaks depending on how good your video timing was but most things should line up great for you. Hope this helps, and feel free to share any other practices you use that work!

Fixing Captivate Slowdown

Quick note on a problem i've encountered with Adobe Captivate.

It's seems that when working with some larger simulations with audio my captivate files become increasingly large in filesize and in turn cause the program to run very slowly.

I'm certain that this is because I was doing a lot of editing with the internal audio editor (cutting/pasting and moving slide cues around). Anyways there is a way to quickly solve the issue:

(Note: I suggest saving a backup of your file prior to this, not that anything could possibly go wrong....)

1. In the advanced audio options, choose to export your audio as one mp3.

2. In the advanced audio options, delete all the audio from your slides.

3. Run Captivate again so you have two windows, create a new blank project.

4. Copy all your slides from your project and paste into the blank project.

5. Import the exported mp3 on the first slide and choose to "Retain Current Slide Timing and distribute audio files over several slides"

6. Save your new smaller quicker project and get back to work!