Adobe Captivate 6: When It Comes to Video Color Mode, Every Bit Counts

by Kevin Siegel  

A student attending a recent Advanced Captivate 6 online class was lamenting the poor color quality in her Captivate lessons. She had recorded a lesson using a combination of the Simulation and Video modes. When she previewed her lesson to the class, we could clearly see a shift in color quality between the slides in the simulation part of the lesson and the video portion. (The slides themselves looked great… the color in the video was not very good at all.)

Before showing you a fix to the color-quality issue, you should understand how easy it is to create a part-screen capture, part-video eLearning lesson using Captivate. All you need to do is record a lesson using any of Captivate's Automatic recording modes (Demo, Assessment, Training or Custom). During the recording process, simply drag your mouse within the recording area. Instead of Captivate creating a single screen capture (as would normally be the case with any click you make during the recording process), Captivate will create a single slide containing a video showing the entire drag process. This automatic video feature is handy if you'd like to demonstrate a more complex concept on the computer beyond what would be effective with individual screen captures.

By default, Captivate will create videos using 16 bit color (instead of 32 bit color). The lower setting will result in smaller videos. However, you will see some pretty nasty color degradation between the standard screen captures and the video portion of the lesson. The solution to the color degradation issue is to increase the Video Color Mode to 32 bit before recording the lesson. It's a simple process. ChooseEdit > Preferences (or Adobe Captivate > Preferences if you are using a Macintosh). Select Video Demo from the Recording group of Preferences and then select 32 bit from the Video Color Mode area.