I have seen a couple of posts on the forums lately concerning Captivate content inside of Articulate Presenter. So I wanted to go over some tips and tricks for optimizing the Captivate content to make the content integration successful. Following the steps in this article will ensure that the content integration is successful.
Recording Size
When creating a Captivate demonstration make sure that your recording area is no larger than 720×540. Articulate Presenter only supports inserted Flash Movies up to 720×540 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 720×540, you might get a warning that the dimensions of the Flash movie is 721×541. 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 720×540.
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.
{ 38 comments… read them below or add one }
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.
Hello Mark,
I’ve tried to insert 720 x 540 .swf slides developed in Captivate into Articualte but I’m getting a message saying that my .swf slides are 721x 541 when I try inserting the .swf slides into Articulate. The resulting slides in Articualte have a blurry quality. Any ideas on fixing this problem?
Yeah, check out the part of the post that says “Note: When inserting a Flash Movie in Articulate Presenter from Captivate sized at 720×540, you might get a warning that the dimensions of the Flash movie is 721×541. You can ignore this warning.”
The warning is a known issue. It doesn’t really make it blurry if the Captivate SWF is 720×540.
I’m having an issue with limiting my Captivate capture size to 720×540 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 720×540 in Captivate for various reasons. One of which is that there is still a larger portion of people running 800×600 screen resolution, according to this website up to 20% of all users are still using an 800×600 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 720×540, try resizing your desktop so it is running at 800×600, 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 450×450, which is much more difficult than 720×540, 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!
Hi all! I also have found the tips and the discussions here most helpful for embeding Captivate flash into Articulate – thanks!!
One issue I have – it seems that when you come to the Captivate file, it takes a long time to load…I’ve tried this from my LMS and also from Articulate Online
http://exlibrislearningcenter.articulate-online.com/p/2146881537/DocumentViewRouter.ashx?Cust=21468&DocumentID=3a8e8ed9-ca68-4bfb-b18b-504fab6989cf&Popped=True&InitialPage=player.html/
1) Does anyone have some kind of solution for this? Or..
2) How can you embed something that says “loading” that moves, so that the user at least knows something is happening?
Thank you very much,
Sam Kamin
Hi. Sorry in advance for my bad english….I have an issue to import swf files created by captivate (v3) in articulate presenter (v5). If I export the captivate files with audio, later I am not able to control the audio in the published presenter scorm (if I jump with the scroll bar during the presentation, the video jump in the right mode while the audio doesn’t jump). If I export separately animation and audio and import them in articulate, in the LMS presentation the audio starts when the program is still loading the video file, creating a gap between images and narration.
How could I solve these problem??
Thank you very much…
Hi Luca,
It has been such a long time since I worked with Captivate, and when I wrote this blog entry it was back when Captivate version 1 was out. You might want to contact our support department and see if they can help you out here:
http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/
Thank you..I will try with the support. But did you ever have these kind of problems when you import a swf in articulate? Because the swf going out form captivate should be a normal swf, no??
Thank you again
I don’t recall seeing those issues, but honestly I don’t remember. I don’t know if I would consider all there SWFs normal…they do some weird things with full motion capture and preloading that has caused issues when they are integrated in other applications.
Thank you again
I will try with the articulate support.
Bye
Hi Dave,
I am losing my preloader in my captivate 4 movies (as2) when I use the “synch movie with slide” option when embedding the swf…Do you know why this is, and if there is a way to fix it?
Hi Chris,
I am sorry I don’t have a whole lot of advice for you. It has been a bit since I have used Captivate (about 3 years) so I am not quiet the expert I once was.
Hello,
I am using AP with Captivate 4 files. Everything looks good and works fine except for at the end of Captivate file the slide hangs and does not advance (AP settings set to auto advance for this slide) to the next slide. I have the settings not to show the AP Player as the captivate file needs to have the player. Does anyone know how to make AP captivate slide advance to the next AP slide when Captivate is finished playing?
Hey Elle,
It has been such a long time working with Captivate that I am not exactly sure of all the details on how to use Captivate.
You might want to try posting in the Articulate forums here:
http://www.articulate.com/forums
and see if someone can give you some advice.
One thing I would check is to make sure you are using the latest version of Articulate Presenter (Help>Check for Updates). I know in Captivate 4 at one point they changed some of their API commands and didn’t tell anyone, so we had to release an update to address some of the Captivate integration issues.
Hi Thank you
Do you know if it has to do with “Start and End” of the project in preferences? I don’t want to do an update as my project is due tomorrow and I don’t want to take any chances on my system not working well with an update.
Hi Dave,
I need your help. I have an articulate presenter course and I am using Captivate 4 to create sims. When I insert the sims, everything looks great when I preview. After the course is uploaded to LMS, the sims have a mind of their own. The sims size properties 720 x540. On the screen that takes up about 75% of the slide. Also if I use the menu feature , to view where I am in the course the sims change size. I have a co-worker who uses Captivate 2 and she is not experiencing any problems.
Hey Alice,
I unfortunately no longer have Captivate
so I can’t test this out.
Have you checked in our forums to see if other people are experiencing this:
http://www.articulate.com/forums/
-Dave
Wait. Why is it that I don’t have step 8 of the playback control in my version of Articulate Presenter???
I really want that feature. I’d love to be able to give articulate control of a flash movie even if it starts 5 seconds into the slide. I have AP ’09 V6.2.907.1413 Pro.
Thanks!
Hi Peter,
These directions are fairly old. In Presenter ’09, which you are using, just select the option to “Syncronize Slide and Movie” when inserting the Captivate SWF. That is the equivalent in Studio ’09.
-Dave
Hello everyone,
I am creating an E-learning course for the internal user in our company.
I am having some difficulties of using cativate 4 and Articulate 09. I am wondering why the slide on my articulate 09 presentor does not run automatically after a captivate 04 slide? i have added the click box interaction tool in captivate slide.
Do the the leaners have to click by themself to continue the presentation?
I am a bit lost… I would be relly happy if you could give me some tips of resoving this problem-
Thanks
Piyaboot