Flash movies in Articulate Presenter

by admin on April 3, 2006

Hello again!

A little while ago I was asked by a couple of people if I could show some examples of effectively using Flash movies inside of Articulate Presenter. Well, I finally created an example, that is somewhat of a work-in-progress at this point.

The following example gives you an example of video inside of Articulate Presenter.

Articulate Video Examples (9:46 minutes)

The example contains examples of the following:

Software demonstration in a slide
Use of Presenter video
Use of Presenter video and slide video for the same slide
FLV Video in a slide
A Web Object in a slide

I say that it is a work in progress because I will be making some changes to it soon, such as adding audio, and making the presentation a little shorter in duration.

If you can think of any other examples that you would like to see please feel free to comment and I will do my best to accomidate:-)

{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }

Anonymous May 29, 2006 at 6:04 am: Hi Dave! thanks for your sample for Flash video. but, that still doesn’t fullfill my wish. I’m newbie and trying to insert Flash Video in Presenter panel and make this video sync with whole slides. How to make this happen ? Do I have to cut my Flash Video into small pieces for each slide ?

Thanks in advance
Dave Mozealous May 29, 2006 at 10:27 am: Hello,

Check out the following support article on syncing video with presenter:

Presenter Video Synching

This will tell you how to do what you are looking to do.
Anonymous May 29, 2006 at 8:38 pm: I’ve seen that article already, but when I insert my Flash Video on Presenter Panel and then I open Timeline Audio Editor, the wave length of Flash Video didn’t appear on editor panel. So, I couldn’t do anything to place the cue point. I’m trying AP trial to evaluate this feature. Cause I need it much.
Thanks
Dave Mozealous May 29, 2006 at 8:57 pm: Actually after reading the article I think there is a better way to do this. I knew we had an article on the subject, but never really read it. I recorded silent audio that matched the length of the FLV. I did this by muting my microphone and then recording. Then I played the FLV, and used the Sync Animation Timings option to sync the animations with the video. Hope this helps.
Anonymous May 30, 2006 at 12:40 am: Thanks so much Dave
Willard Snow June 24, 2006 at 2:58 am: I am inserting FLV files into the presenter panel but when I publish I dont see the video in all the slide. each slide has its own flv the first slide shows the video the second slide does not nor the third. number 4 does and the last slide does not whats up I have been trying to make this work for a week you can see the presentation at.oh and the video is smaller at the start of the show than it is near the end when it shows up. all the movies are recorded at the same size and processed exactly the same way. I am stumped ????????????????????
http://willardsnow.com/WhatIsMAP/player.html the presentation
Dave Mozealous June 26, 2006 at 2:24 pm: My first guess is that it might have something to do with the server that is hosting the files. If possible I would check to see if they play locally, before uploading. If that doesn’t correct the issue I would try checking with our product support department to see if they can troubleshoot the issue further.
snowillard June 27, 2006 at 1:49 am: Local is the issue. I havent even begun putting them on the web yet.
Willard June 27, 2006 at 2:17 am: It was the video codec. I figured it was I just wasnt sure where in my process I was generating the problem. Thanks for the great repository.
Willard July 5, 2006 at 11:47 pm: Okay so here is a major effort at bringing in an Oddcast avatar into the presenter panel. http://www.mortgageadvisorpro.com/movies/UseMyMAP/player.html. This was a real pain in the neck not because it was complicated or conceptually difficult. But the program gave me runtime errors and crashed all the time. Almost not worth the hassle. I would be nearly done publishing and I would get a runtime error message and or it would just abruptly quit. Also it would give me a runtime exception or error after I was almost finished inserting the swfs. The swifs do contain a Java script to call the avatar form Oddcast. But the result here while a bit imperfect is working and I will be doing another asap . we want to do hundreds of these for this product. I hope I can get some articulate help. thanks for the blog.
Anonymous September 5, 2006 at 5:34 am: Hi,

Thanks for this article!

I am trying to do the same thing and am simply stunned by the primitive nature of the Audio Timeline Editor.

I too am trying to insert silent clips to controll the timeline so that the video clips in the presenter panel play for the correct amount of time.

Something that I thought of this morning was that I need to create a silent audio clip of the same duration of the video clip so that I can have articulate go to the next slide when my audio clip ends.

This is a truly rediculous workaround and makes the system less than efficient to use… One could argue that this is not what Articulate was designed for. And I would say BOGUS!

They have all the elements in there to do it, it’s just that they’re poorly implemented. There should be a radio button in the import video clip wizard that allows you to specify advancing to the next slide when the video is complete. If Articulate has no way of knowing when the video clip is complete they could at least allow you to type in a time code to specify advancement timing!

Anyway thanks for the article. I love getting pointed in the right direction. Even if that way is a sloppy mess.

Cheers,

Ben
Dave Mozealous September 5, 2006 at 8:14 am: Hello Ben,

Not really sure exactly what you are trying to do, but if you are just trying to add presenter video, you don’t have to adjust the timeline at all. Articulate Presenter will automatically adjust the time for that slide at runtime without having to add silent video.
Dave Mozealous September 5, 2006 at 8:15 am: Sorry, meant silent audio, not silent video.
Anonymous September 6, 2006 at 5:47 am: Hi Dave,

Thanks for your comment.

I’m trying to have video play in the presenter panel for the corresponding slide.

When I imported the video to the presenter panel and publish the presentation the slide will only play for 5 seconds.

When I place a silent mp3 of the same duration as the Video in the presenter panel within the slide the video (and slide duration) will be the proper length.

It doesn’t seem that the presenter video time is understood by Articulate. Without importing a silent audio clip of the same duration of the presenter video for that slide I can’t controll the duration of the entire slide.

Any feedback would be helpful as this workaround is not ideal.

Thanks!

Ben Duffy
Dave Mozealous September 6, 2006 at 9:01 am: I am curious as to how those FLVs were created. In AP 5 the slide timings will automatically be adjusted during playback if you import the FLV into the Presenter pannel with the default options selected. So you shouldn’t have to adjust the timings at all. If for some reason we can’t extract the data from the FLV about length (i.e. malformed FLV) then we can’t adjust the timings.
Anonymous September 7, 2006 at 1:00 pm: Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply.

I created the FLV’s with Flash 8…

I set up the stage, then imported the video clip which I cut with Adobe Premier. The imported video clips are .avi files and .wmv

Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks,

Ben
Anonymous September 8, 2006 at 4:38 am: Hi Dave,

I filmed, then edited the video in Adobe Premier.

I exported the movies with Adobe Media Encoder to wmv, then opened Flash 8 and imported the video making an FLV out of it.

It was this FLV that I imported to Articulate.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Ben
Anonymous September 8, 2006 at 6:27 am: Hi Dave,

Thanks for your replys. I just found a post on your blog that says there is difficulty with flash 8 video in Articulate.

That’s what I’ve been using to make the FLV’s…

I tried saving the files as Flash MX and still am having an issue with Articulate knowing the length of the movie in the presenter panel.

Thanks,

Ben Duffy
Bill February 5, 2008 at 9:53 am: Dave,

Can I insert a different flv in the presenter panel for each slide?

I tried to do this for 3 slides. The first two gave me audio but no video. The third slide had audio and video. I tried playing this locally and not on a server.
Thanks!
Bill
Anonymous March 26, 2008 at 12:29 pm: Hi Dave:I’m having trouble getting Articulate to control my Captivate SWF.
I followed the instructions to deactivate Captivate controls and allow user to control movie using Articulate but I just can’t get it to work.
I am new to Articulate but can you show a demonstration of the process?
Thanks
oolu
Anonymous August 8, 2008 at 6:18 am: (INFORMATION: web object did not display with latest Safari download for Windows XP)
Guy December 4, 2008 at 12:18 pm: hi,

your example link is broken – will this be fixed soon? Thanks for all the great work!

http://www.mozealous.com/projects/ave/player.html
mozealou December 4, 2008 at 6:08 pm: Hi Guy,

I wish I still had it Guy. I switched to a new blogging software and when I did this I needed to clear out my webroot, and didn’t make a backup of this presentation before I deleted it…I know, totally boneheaded.

Sorry.

-Dave
Guy December 5, 2008 at 8:36 am: Thanks for the reply, Dave – fortunately I did find the sample on articulateGuru here:

http://www.mozealous.com/?s=examples

This sample is helpful for new users who want to see the options.

Congrats on Video converter, it’s a useful product. Keep on keeping on.

BlueVolt.com
Training the Trades
Archie December 28, 2009 at 9:53 am: Hi,

This is a message to Willard Snow. I seem to be having the same issue that you presented here:

Willard Snow June 24, 2006 at 2:58 am
I am inserting FLV files into the presenter panel but when I publish I dont see the video in all the slide. each slide has its own flv the first slide shows the video the second slide does not nor the third. number 4 does and the last slide does not whats up I have been trying to make this work for a week you can see the presentation at.oh and the video is smaller at the start of the show than it is near the end when it shows up. all the movies are recorded at the same size and processed exactly the same way. I am stumped ????????????????????
http://willardsnow.com/WhatIsMAP/player.html the presentation

What were your exact steps in resolving this issue?

Thanks!
Rahul Borooah June 29, 2010 at 10:51 pm: After I convert my powerpoint slide in Articulate Presenter, The flash animation which I had placed in the top right hand corner of the slide seems to get displaced and resized. Please help me out
Dave Mozealous June 30, 2010 at 6:31 am: Hi Rahul,

I would open a case with the Articulate Support department here:
http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/

They should be able to help you out. If I was going to guess as to the issue, my initial thought would be that the Flash movie you inserted contains some actionscript that causes the placement of the movie to move. But our support department should be able to figure it out.

-Dave