For those of you who haven’t heard…Articulate announced it’s new product Articulate Engage today. For anyone who has come to my blog looking for advice on how to add Flash Video (FLV) to a slide, Engage now allows you to easily add slide level FLV without a bunch of complicated work arounds or having to know Flash. You can find out more about Engage here.
To see an example of how you can add FLV video to a slide in Articulate Presenter click the presentation image below.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Very cool demo, Dave! I like it. And it really shows what you can do with Engage, as well as a creative use of getting FLVs into Presenter via Engage. Rock on!
Dave:
You have to get better information up on the main website about how to use Engage to embed flv video. We struggled with a number of other work arounds with web objects, silent audio, etc, etc and always ended up with one problem or another. Engage actually solves these problems and makes the process very simple. So, get some info up where people can see it so you can make everyone’s life easier…and sell your product!
I would like to know what compression settings you used for this particular video(Jose + 10), it looks pretty good.
Thanks!
Hello Sarah,
I honestly can’t remember. I think it was a pretty low compression setting, like around 768kbps or something around that.
Dave, how do you get around the problem with engage not liking you using the _root command in your flash files? We can not even get it to use the parent command either? This sucks because it really limits how much interactivity we can inlcude in the flvs. Any suggestions?
Well, the reason you can’t use _root is that you will be referring to the Engage SWF when you use a _root reference. _parent should work as long as you are referencing the correct level.
Does engage suport target paths? I used _parent, _global and when I try to load the swf into engage it locks up. The size of the file is only 272kb. If I don’t use target paths and I put everything in the main time line Engage will except the swf file. Still scratching my head!!
I built another simple file with a button and mc to test the paths, but as expected, engage froze. I tried _parent as well as declaring a _global path. Both work when tested locally but again when I try to bring it in … FREEZE. Has anyone had any luck with mapping paths, or should I steer clear all together of mapping, or maybe reinstall the software, hoping.
The one thing that I found frustrating with Engage is that it shrinks my video into a tiny box, how can I make sure that it doesn’t shrink the video?
Hello Mindy,
Yeah, depending on the interaction type, the video will be sized differently. In the Media Tour Interaction the video should be bigger by default. I have heard of ways mentioned on the forums where users have come up with hacks to allow you to insert bigger video, so you might want to check out the Articulate forums.
Also, if you have not done so, I would strongly suggest submitting a feature request to ask for more flexible video sizing options in Engage.
You can do so here:
Feature Request
I am currently using the articulate video encoder 09, I have noticed that after converting my mpeg files, there is a loss of quality. There are blurry areas. Is there a way of improving the quality of the output files within the video encoder, possibly a setting that I have not discovered? Also, are Sorensen FLV 6 files compatible with both Articulate Engage and Presenter 09? I do like the look of the Presenter and Engage templates. Keep up the good work, and of course the example above is great, as I have commented before.
Hi Ronnie, are your videos actually MPEG, or are they MP4 videos? If they are MP4 I would just import those into Engage by themselves as Engage and Presenter both now support MP4 video, and MP4 video is generally of higher quality at lower file sizes.
Hello, Dave I am currently using MPEG as opposed to MP4. Can I easily convert MPEG into MP4 format, or would it be easier to use FLV 6. I have a few programs to convert the MPEG files into FLV 6 and FLV 8. The FLV 6 files seem to be a slightly higher quality. Can Engage and Presenter support FLV 6 files?
Hi Dave, I was able to increase the video bit rate within Articulate video encoder 09, and get the higher video quality that I was after. However, MP4 is something to consider for future projects. I am still a little green in the video conversion world, but I’m getting there.
Thanks again