Category: Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite

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.

 

By Lori Smith 

I love Adobe Captivate's variables and advanced actions. One of my favorite strategies when working with complicated branching and quizzing in projects is to turn off the playbar on key slides via the variable cpCmdShowPlayBar (assign with 0 to turn off, 1 to turn on). I'm guessing that more than a few fellow Captivate developers have used this feature over the years because Captivate 6 has added a brand new quiz feature allowing the playbar to be hidden during a quiz. It is simple to set up. Choose Quiz Preferences > Settings and select Hide Playbar In Quiz. 

There's a glass half full/half empty situation for the Hide Playbar in Quiz setting. Not only will the playbar be hidden for every quiz slide, but it will be hidden for any slide that contains a scored object (such as a button included in the quiz).

No points need be assigned. The object just needs to be included in the quiz. Even if there are no actual quiz questions in the lesson, as long as there are scored objects, the Hide Playbar In Quiz setting will work.

This is great if you want all of the slides with scored objects to have no playbar. But if you want that playbar, it can be a bit frustrating. In that scenario, just take the old variable out of your back pocket and use it! You can override the Hide Playbar In Quiz option by setting cpCmdShowPlaybar on entry to a slide, or via a button or advanced action–whatever you prefer. To add the variable on entry to a slide, select the slide on the Filmstrip and, from the Action group of the Properties panel, choose Assign from the On Enter drop-down menu, cpCmndShowPlaybar from the Assign drop-down menu, and then type the number 1 into the With field.