Captivate – Page 11 – The Logical Blog

December 11, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: A Production Tip That’ll Save You Time

by Kevin Siegel

After inserting an object onto a Captivate slide, you have multiple ways that you can control when the object appears on the slide. For instance, you can change the Appear After timing for the selected object on the Properties panel, Timing group.

Setting the Appear After time in Adobe Captivate.

You can also drag the left edge of the object left or right on the Timeline to change the Appear After time.

While adjusting an object's Appear After time isn't difficult, you can save yourself the effort by establishing the Appear After time before you insert the object. At the top of the Timeline, click at the exact time where you want an object to first appear. After clicking, the red box shown in the image below will appear. The red box is known as the Playhead.

With the Playhead positioned on the Timeline, the Appear After timing will already be set for any objects you insert on the slide. In the image below, I inserted three text captions after positioning the Playhead. Notice that all of the text captions are set to the same Appear After timing.

Multiple objects added to the Timeline after positioning the Playhead.

I've found that this kind of production forward-thinking will save a significant amount of production time over the life of a project. If you've got a nifty production tip or trick that you'd like to share, feel free to share them as comments.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? I teach two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

November 26, 2012

Adobe Captivate: Adding Assets Doesn’t Have to Be a Drag

by Kevin Siegel

When it comes time to add assets such as images, animation or audio to your Captivate project, it's no secret that you can accomplish the task by choosing Insert and then selecting Image or Animation. To insert audio, visit the Audio menu.

The process of adding assets to a project isn't difficult, but it could become a major drag–especially if you need to add several assets. Perhaps you need to import 100 audio clips. How many times will you choose Audio > Import before you begin to go insane?

Take it easy, breathe deep and check out this sweet technique that will surely save you time when adding assets to a Captivate project.

First, create or open a Captivate project. Next, open the folder containing the assets you'd like to import. Position the Captivate and asset windows side-by-side, and then drag the asset directly onto a Captivate slide.

Drag an image onto a Captivate slide.

Using this technique, you can quickly add multiple assets such as images and audio files to your project (to add multiple assets, shift-click the assets to select them, and then drag them onto a project slide).

After dragging the assets onto a slide, they will appear on the slide and within the Library so they can easily be dragged onto other project slides later (you can display the Library via Window > Library).

Speaking of the Library, you can import multiple assets directly to the Library, instead of to individual slides, by clicking the Import tool at the top of the Library.

Import tool on the Library.

Drag assets onto slides? Import assets directly to the Library? Surely one of these two techniques will fit the bill for you. And I think you'll agree that neither technique is a drag.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? I teach two live, online Captivate classes. You can learn more here.

November 13, 2012

Adobe Captivate: FPS Your MP4’s

by Kevin Siegel

I received an email from a Captivate developer who was publishing a Captivate project as an MP4 video so that it could be used in Adobe Premiere. She was required to deliver an MP4 that was published at a frame rate of 30 frames per second (fps). She checked her Captivate publishing settings (via File > Publish Settings) and verified that Captivate was set to publish at 30 fps.

Frames Per Second

After publishing the MP4 video, she learned that the Frames Per Second setting in the Publish dialog box controls published SWFs, not MP4s. In fact, the MP4 she published was actually set to 15fps, which was unacceptable for her needs. Unfortunately, there is no Captivate setting that controls the fps of MP4 videos… she was stuck.

I sent a quick email to the Adobe Captivate team on her behalf inquiring if there was a workaround. It turns out that there is. Adobe has received multiple emails from Captivate developers requesting a way to output MP4 videos at 30fps instead of 15fps. The Adobe team responded by creating a small text file (MP4Settings.ini) that simply sets the fps for published MP4 videos to 30fps during the Publish process. I've included both a link to the MP4Settings.ini file and quick instructions on its use below

Download the MP4Settings.ini file to your computer.
If necessary, close Captivate.
Copy the downloaded MP4Settings.ini file to the Captivate install directory (this is typicallyC:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate.
Start Captivate and re-publish the project again as an MP4.

While videos will work nicely on sites such as YouTube and play on mobile devices such as the Apple iPad, the video is, well, simply a video. Any interactivity that you might have added to the lesson won't work at all. If you want to publish content that will remain interactive while accessed with a mobile device, you should consider publishing as HTML5 instead.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? I teach two live, online Captivate classes.

November 8, 2012

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.

32 bit color in a Video recording (Adobe Captivate 6).

While changing the Video Color Mode to 32 bit will have no effect on any videos in existing projects, all new videos recorded from this point forward will use the enhanced mode, and you'll enjoy fantastic color in your videos.

Note: As stated in the image above, using 32 bit color instead of 16 bit color will result in larger videos and therefore, larger published files. However, the increase in quality may well be worth that price (assuming you don't go overboard with the amount of video in any one lesson).

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? I teach two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

October 30, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: Branch Aware

by Lori Smith

Branch Aware is new in Captivate 6. Unlike other new features (like HTML5 support and Themes), Branch Aware has gotten little attention and few people understand what the option does.

According to Adobe: "Use Branch Aware to calculate the final score based only on the questions in the branch that users have viewed. For example, consider that a project contains a quiz that branches into two modules that in turn contain a quiz. If a user reaches the module with three questions and 10 points each, the total score is considered as 30 points. If this option is not enabled, the scores are calculated on the total number of questions in the project and not the module that users actually viewed."

Huh? I don't know about you, but I find Adobe's description of Branch Aware to be confusing. Not to be deterred by Adobe's description, I set out to play with the Branch Aware feature and figure out what I could (and couldn't) do if I elected to use the option.

I created a simple project that is Branch Aware. You can download it here. The lesson has 12 questions. Each question is worth 10 points, so the total for the lesson is 120 (you can confirm the total point value via Project > Advanced Interactions).

I enabled Branch Aware by choosing Edit > Preferences > Quiz > Settings and selecting Branch Aware from the group of Settings.

Branch Aware enabled.

I broke the project into three quiz branches, each with four questions. The learner will only answer four questions for a total of 40 points. On slide 1, I added three buttons. Each button jumps to a different branch within the quiz (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert). Taking a quick look at the Branching Window, (Window > Branching View), you can see the layout for my project.

Branching view

To establish the branches, I not only needed to select the Branch Aware option, I also needed to set my question Actions properly. After the last question in each branch, I jumped the learner to the QuizResults slide.

Actions for Branching

If I hadn't set the last question in each branch to jump to the QuizResults slide, my question numbering would not display correctly.

Show Progress

Once a learner takes my quiz, the QuizResults screen will display the appropriate scoring for the branch that the learner took.

Quiz Results: Branch Aware

Even cooler? If the learner chooses "Review Quiz" once reaching the quiz results slide, the learner will only review the relevant part of the quiz.

I was also surprised to find out that you can still require that the learner answer all questions within a branch.

Quiz required

I tried everything I could think of to mess up the scoring results, but my lesson reported properly each time. The bottom line is that Branch Aware is one mighty cool feature. Give it a try and I think you'll agree.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We teach two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

October 23, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: Scrolling Text in a Text Entry Box

by Kevin Siegel

Text Entry Boxes (TEBs) allows your learners to type directly into your eLearning lesson. Personally, I think TEBs offer the highest level of interactivity you can add to a lesson without the need for advanced programming skills. To add a TEB to a lesson, simply choose Insert > Standard Objects > Text Entry Box.

The assumed default usage of a TEB is short bursts of information entered by your learner. For instance, many people use TEBs to simulate access into an application (the learner is asked to type a username and/or a password). However, there are instances where you might want the learner to type a sentence or two (to simulate the use of a word processor or a text field where multiple lines of text are acceptable).

In the image below, I previewed a lesson and typed a fairly long sentence into a TEB. Notice that once I reached the right side of the TEB, instead of wrapping to a second or third line, the text continued to move right.

If you'd like to allow the learner's text to wrap to multiple lines, the solution is simple. Select the TEB and, on the Options group of the Properties panel, select Show Scrollbar.

When you next preview the lesson and type within the TEB, the text will wrap to the next line (just like you'd see in a typical word processor).

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? I teach two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

October 2, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: Scalable HTML Content

by Kevin Siegel

I've published a ton of eLearning lesson using Adobe Captivate, and I have seen the Publish dialog box more times than I can count. Sometimes I get tunnel vision when working in a tool I've used for so long and often fail to notice when tiny little options are added to a dialog box.

Take the Scalable HTML content check box for instance. If you hadn't noticed the option in the lower right of the Captivate 6 Publish dialog box, join the crowd.

The Scalable HTML content option is off by default, leading me to believe is wasn't necessarily a good idea to use it. I was curious what the option would do, so I enabled it and published a SWF. When the lesson opened in my web browser, the value of the option became clear. If you record a lesson at 800×600, and the learner's display is large, the 800×600 will float horizontally in the browser window. If the learner maximizes the web browser, the 800×600 lesson keeps its original size, and continues to float (the learner will see more white space to the left and right of the lesson).

However, with Scalable HTML content enabled in my test project, the published SWF always resized to fit my browser window (proportionally), no matter how big or small I made my browser window. I was concerned that the quality of the SWF would suffer if I made my browser window too big (I have a pretty large display). I was pleasantly surprised when the lesson continued to look pretty good, even when I maximized my browser window.

The only downside to using Scalable HTML content that I'm aware of (I asked Adobe to confirm this), is that performance will suffer if the lesson is opened on an Apple iPad. (Yes, Scalable HTML content works if you publish as a SWF or HTML5. Of course, given Adobe's warning, I'd be hesitant to use the option with HTML5 output.) If you've had issues with Scalable HTML content, please share.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? I teach two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

September 19, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: Goodbye Quiz Playbar

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.

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).

Object scoring in Captivate 6,

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.

Assign a variable to a slide.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

September 12, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: One Quick Way to Purge Unsupported HTML5 Objects

by Kevin Siegel

I wrote about the HTML5 output option available in Adobe Captivate 6 a few months ago. I pointed out that HTML5 is an alternative publishing format to a SWF. Unlike SWFs, projects published as HTML5 will not only play on the Apple iPad, iPhone and the iPod, but the lessons will retain any interactivity that you added to the slides (such as click boxes and buttons).

I also noted that while most features you can add to a Captivate project will work when published as HTML5, not all features are supported. For example, Rollover Captions, Rollover Images and SWF animations are not HTML5 compliant. Prior to publishing as HTML5, you should use the HTML5 Tracker (Project > HTML5 Tracker) to flag features that are not supported.

If the HTML5 Tracker window has anything in the list (as shown below), you'll need to remove the unsupported feature.

HTML5 Tracker

Removing the unsupported objects is simple enough. Close the HTML5 Tracker, go to the slide containing the unsupported object and delete the object. Of course, prior to closing the HTML5 Tracker, be sure to note which slides contains the unsupported objects, and which of the slide objects aren't supported. Forget that little chore and you'll find yourself needing to revisit the HTML5 Tracker again and again.

There's a better way to remove the Unsupported objects. The next time your display the HTML5 Tracker, don't bother closing it if you're ready to delete the Unsupported Objects. Believe it or not, you can instantly remove the objects right from the Tracker. Simply select the Unsupported Object from the list and, on your keyboard, press [ctrl] [x]. The selected object will be simultaneously removed from the HTML5 Tracker list and the slide.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).

September 6, 2012

Adobe Captivate 6: Still Unable to Disable…

by Kevin Siegel

Last week I wrote about the project expiry issue people are having when they use the trial version of Captivate 6 to open projects created with the trial version of Adobe Captivate 6.

As I mentioned last week, if you are using the licensed version of Captivate, you can set an expiration date for a project by choosing File > Publish Settings. From the Project category at the left, you can select Start and End and then select Project Expiry Date.

Project Expiry Date set.

Last week I mentioned that the expiry issue can be resovled for trial users if someone using a licensed version of the software simply opens an expired project and sets an expiration date for a date in the future.

I've gotten several emails from people using the trial version of Captivate who are still having issues previewing projects that were created with the trial software. It turns out that the issue is with those projects that were opened with the licensed version of the software, saved and then closed (but never published with a future expiration date).

When I created the data files for my new Adobe Captivate 6: The Essentials and Adobe Captivate 6: Beyond the Essentials books, I created the projects with both the trial and licensed versions of Captivate 6. Just prior to posting the projects on my web server for people to download, I opened each projects with the fully licensed version of the software, saved and then closed.

Once I heard that people were having trouble previewing project files with the trial software I got nervous. As a test, I downloaded the project files used in both books from my server. I then opened the downloaded projects on a PC running the trial version of Captivate 6. I was able to work on the projects without issue. However, when I previewed the project, I was mortified to see a project expiration message.

Project expiry message.

Since I had never set an expiration date for any of the projects that were posted to the web server, it's clear that the expiration date was self-imposed by the Captivate 6 trial.

In the end, I re-opened every project using my licensed version of Captivate 6. I set the Project Expiry Date to March 31, 2016, and then saved and closed each project. (I did not republish any of the projects.)

Expiration date set for 2016.

I re-posted the edited projects to my web server. Then I re-downloaded the files to the PC running the trial version of Captivate 6. Not only did the projects open, they previewed and published perfectly.

This expiration drama is something new in Adobe Captivate 6, and I'm hoping the limitation will be lifted at some point by an Adobe patch or update. In any event, if you are using my Captivate books, you won't have to worry about this issue again until 2016. By then, I'm pretty confident we'll be talking about Adobe Captivate 8… or 9.

Note: If you are going to use the trial version of Captivate to work through my Captivate books, you should visit my site and download the newest data files. If you downloaded the data files last week, keep in mind that I just uploaded the "fixed" data files to my server over the past few days. If you downloaded the data files for either of my new Captivate 6 books earlier than last Friday, please throw the files away and download the updated files. All of the files will have modification dates of August 31, 2012. If you are using the licensed version of Captivate, there is no need to download the files again.

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Looking to learn Captivate quickly? We offer two live, online Captivate 6 classes. Adobe Captivate Essentials and Adobe Captivate Beyond the Essentials (Advanced).