Month: April 2013

I was teaching a recent Adobe Captivate Advanced class how to create and edit a Video Demo using Captivate 6. One of my students agreed he could see many reasons to create a quick video of a computer process instead of using Captivate's capture other modes (Demo, Assessment, Training or Custom). However, since creating a video of a process is much like pointing a video camera at the computer screen and pressing the record button, he was concerned about the lack of editing that could be done during the production process.

In reality, once you've recorded a Video Demo, there is plenty you can do to it post-production. For instance, you can trim the video, split it, add images, text captions, characters and Pan & Zoom effects.

While all of those editing capabilities were great (and I taught the class how to perform many them), the student was still concerned about the apparent lack of mouse editing controls.

If you've recorded screen actions using Captivate's Demo mode, then you know that the mouse pointer is included during the capture by default. You also know that after recording, the mouse pointer can be changed from slide to slide, the pointer path edited, sound and visual effects added for each click, and the mouse pointer removed entirely.

With a video recording, the student believed that you are stuck with the recorded mouse motion and appearance. I can't blame him for thinking that way. Check out the image of the video on the Timeline below. There isn't anything on the blue bar that would indicate an ability to edit the mouse. In a Demo recording, there would be a mouse object on the Timeline than you can see and manipulate, along with a mouse pointer on the slide. (The image below is cropped pretty tightly so it would fit in the space. But trust me, the Video Object on the Timeline is just a nondescript blue bar that goes on and on and on.)

I learned long ago that just because I can't immediately find what I'm looking for in a program, I shouldn't assume a thing cannot be done. In fact, while not obvious, it is possible to edit the mouse within a video. First, choose Edit > Mouse Points to display an icon for every mouse click on the Timeline (one of those icons is shown in the image below).

After selecting the mouse icon on the Timeline, you will be able to change (and even delete) the mouse pointer on the video (much like you can with a Demo recording).

I've found this capability invaluable, especially after trimming parts of my videos. After trimming, I've noticed that the mouse pointer speed gets really, really slow. If I delete a mouse point prior to the part of the video that I trimmed, the speed issue goes away.

Note: If you would like to see a video demonstration of editing the mouse pointer within a Video Demo, check out our YouTube channel.