Category: Captivate

by Kevin Siegel  

I've been teaching and developing with Adobe Captivate for years. The program has always been able to record Full Motion Recordings (FMRs). Never heard of an FMR? You are not alone. Usually developers learn about them by accident. If you record your screen using Captivate's Automatic mode, every click of your mouse will result in a single screen capture. Those screen captures convert to single slides in a Captivate project once you end the recording session.

During the recording process, if you perform a mouse drag (click the mouse clicker and then move the mouse around the screen), Captivate won't capture a single screen. Instead, Captivate will capture the entire drag event as a video–it'll be as if you've pointed a video camera at the screen and turned it on. When you finish with the recording, you'll see a single slide in Captivate representing the captured event.

Since FMRs aren't as easy to edit or control as single slides, I usually tell new Captivate developers to shy away from dragging the mouse during the recording process. Instead, I encourage everyone to click on screen items to ensure they get single screen captures.

In retrospect, I may have been overly hard on FMRs–they do have a role. FMRs can be useful if you want to demonstrate complex mouse events smoothly. For instance, if you're trying to show someone how to use a specific filter in Photoshop, capturing the process with an FMR might be more effective than simple screen captures.

To create an FMR during the recording process, simply select Full Motion from the Recording Type area and record your lesson. 

 

Once you end the recording, the captured video will appear on the Filmstrip as a single slide. You'll be able to differentiate FMR slides from regular slides easily enough… FMR thumbnails on the Filmstrip have a little camera icon in the lower right.

Next week I'll show you how to edit the FMR. In the meantime, check out the FMR I created late last year (it shows thedifferences between Captivate 5 and 5.5).

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

Check out this awesome example of how to use Advanced Actions to create some nifty pop-up information in a Captivate lesson. I especially like the way the lesson makes full use of Captivate's Full Motion Recording and Panning features.

Adobe's Dr. Pooja Jaisingh shows you how to create a single Captivate project that contains multiple, on-demand languages. Check it out here.

by Kevin Siegel  

You can import or record audio to just about anything in Adobe Captivate. Right-click a slide object and you'll find you can selectAudio > Import to (or Record to). Right-click a slide and you'll find the exact same menu items. And if you want to import or record background audio, you'll find that you can do so by choosing Audio > Import to (or Record to) Background.

Once you've successfully added audio to the object, slide or background, you can then choose Audio and Edit the attached audio file. However, once edited the imported audio clip will no longer match the original file that you imported.

Ever wondered how you can get the edited audio clip out of your project so it can be used in other applications that accept audio? You'll be happy to learn that you can easily export audio clips. Here's how:

While editing an audio clip, click the Podcast button (located in the lower left of the Edit tab).

 

The Save dialog box will open where you can select from either WAVor MP3. When in doubt, I would suggest MP3. While MP3 files are not as high quality as WAV files, the smaller size of a typical MP3 will more than make up for what you might lose in sound quality.

 

Looking for a more direct method of exporting project audio? Check out the Library (Window menu). You can right-click any sound file you see in the Library's Audio folder and choose Export. You'll have the same export options (WAV and MP3) as those found when using the Podcast option.

 

If neither the Podcast or Library route is your cup of tea, then I've got one more method up my sleeve. Choose Audio > Audio Management to open the Advanced Audio Management dialog box.

From the lower left of the dialog box, select Include MP3 files in export, Include WAVE files in export (or both) and then click theExport button.

Using any of the techniques above will result in external files that you can use in other applications or share with other Captivate developers.

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by Kevin Siegel

I often hear from Captivate developers who are required to output smaller and smaller SWFs, while making their lessons more and more interactive. Fortunately, adding interactivity to a lesson does not negatively impact the size of the published SWF. Rather, imported assets such as audio, video and images are the main culprits behind SWF bloat.

There are some things that you can do while working in Captivate that may lower the size of the published SWF. Here are a few of my favorites:

Shorten the Lesson

Ideally, none of your lessons (modules) play for more than 5 minutes. However, if you can trim the lesson down to 2-3 minutes of playtime, you'll save on SWF file size. More, but smaller lessons are better than fewer, larger lessons. As a bonus to smaller SWFs, shorter lessons will allow your learners to move through the modules fast–something that all eLearning developers should make a priority.

Use Fewer Slides

Keep the number of slides in your Captivate project as low as possible. Simply put, the more slides in your lesson, the larger the published lesson will be, especially if your lessons are larger (a large width and/or height) and you captured pixel-heavy backgrounds.

Use Less Audio

I'm a huge fan of adding audio effects and voiceover audio to a lesson. However, nothing will bloat a published SWF quite like audio. If you need to use audio, check out the next section.

Use a Lower Audio Bitrate

The higher the bitrate, the higher the quality of your audio. However, since most people will be consuming your published content using a system with something less than high fidelity audio capabilities, consider a bitrate of 64kbps or lower.

Loop Background Audio

If you are going to include background audio, use a tiny portion of the audio file. During the import process, you can elect to loop the audio. The smaller the portion of the background audio used, the smaller the published lesson will be.

Avoid Animations

Adding animations to your lessons is a great idea. However, since the animations will be embedded within the published SWF, they will cause the SWF to bloat.

Avoid FMRs

Full Motion Recordings (FMRs) are videos created by Captivate when you drag your mouse during the recording process. Since FMRs are videos, they'll bloat your published SWF.

Externalize Resources

By default, your Skin, Widgets, FMRs and Animations are embedded in the published SWF. If you externalize them, the published SWF will be much smaller. However, you will now have to keep track of the resources and ensure they are stored in the same folder as the main SWF or they won't appear in your published lesson. You'll find the option to Externalize Resources by choosing File > Publish Settings.

Lower the Size of the SWF During the Publish Process

Earlier I suggested that you avoid or limit the use of audio, FMRs and use as few slides as possible. It's highly unlikely that you will be able to avoid those kind of resources completely (or at all). In that case, you can lower the size of the SWF when you publish.

1. Choose File > Publish Settings and select SWF Size and Quality. Select Compress Full Motion Recording SWF file to compress any SWFs in your lesson.
2. Drag the slider in the Settings area from High down to Medium or Low. As you do, notice that your Slide Quality Settings will lower to Low(8 bit), your audio quality will lower and the quality of the Jpeg images used in your lesson will lower.

   

Note: The lower you drag the Settings slider, the more your SWF will compress. However, the lower you go, the more you run the risk of altering the quality of the lesson's assets so much that the appearance of your lessons will suffer negatively. You can also drag the slider down to Custom and manually set the options for your lesson's resources.

The suggestions above aren't an exhaustive list of possibilities when it comes to lowering the size of your SWF. If you've got some sure-fire techniques to lower the size of your published SWF, feel free to send it to me. I'm happy to post your suggestions here in a future issue.

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