Category: eLearning

 

• Select the New menu item.

 

 

• Choose the New command.

 

 

1. Exit Captivate.
2. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 3.
3. Find CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl.
4. Make a backup copy of the CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl file and store it in a safe place. (This is the most important step–if you mess up the CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl file during the steps that follow, you could always copy and paste the original file back into the Adobe Captivate 3 folder… no harm, no foul.)
5. Open CaptureTextTemplates_English.rdl with NotePad. (Open the version of the file still within the Adobe Captivate 3 folder.)
6. Scroll through the document–much of the text in the file won't make much sense to you. However, if you scroll down to the part of the document shown below, you'll see that this is the part of the document that controls the words "Select" and "menu item" in the first example above.

   

7. If you edit the text in this part of the template, the automatic text captions created during the recording process will allow you to skip much of the editing process during the post-production phase.

   In the image below, the template has been edited slightly so that the words "Choose the ???? command" will appear during the next recording session.

   

8. Save and close the file.
9. Record a Captivate project using any of the modes to see the verbiage changes in the text captions (ensure Automatically add text captions is selected as mentioned above).

 

Go ahead, give it a try. I think you'll find editing the RDL file to be easy and, in the long run, a real time-saver. But please, for your own sanity, please take my advice and backup the RDL file prior to making changes to the original!

by William A. Collins Jr.

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The following is a three-part series for the beginning to intermediate eLearning content developer. It’s designed to teach, from the ground up, how to add video to content for eventual delivery on the world wide web.

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Part One: Setting Up for Success

As the Creative Director for Multimedia Development at Learning Evolution, I’ve been involved in every aspect of developing graphic content for eLearning for several years. I’ve learned quite a bit from both knowledgeable colleagues and old-fashioned trial and error. The lessons I have learned throughout my career can be boiled down into good practices and an up-front acceptance of the following basic work flow processes. It is my hope that this three-part series will help you quickly learn the ropes of video production, as well as integrate dynamic video content with your eLearning projects.

Let’s face a simple fact. People like video. It’s dynamic, it’s colorful and it grabs people’s attention. Learners are expecting video more and more as bandwidths and budgets grow steadily larger. The sooner we get on this particular wagon, the sooner you can meet those needs.

Earmark a project…

Now that you’ve decided to do some video, you need to earmark a project for it. I would recommend doing something on your own (you really don’t want to use a client as a guinea pig). Is there something that you have been wanting to do in a personal context for a while? Is there some pro bono work you’ve been meaning to do for that local charity? Do you want to try your hand at something a little off the beaten path? Now is the time to do it. Pick a project, something small, and get going. You don’t need to do anything at this point aside from earmark the project… I’ll get to project specifics later. The important thing now is to start thinking about a particular project as a video project; this will allow you to add it to your scheduling and will help solidify it in your work flow.

Get the studio ready…

Most video work that makes it into eLearning is shot in a studio (as opposed to shot on location, although a lot of this will translate to that anyway), so I’ll start there.

"Talking Head" videos are commonly requested by clients; the format allows a manager or supervisor at the company to "personally" welcome learners. "Talking Head" videos are usually no more than a few minutes long–a perfect scenario to use for your project.

The studio needs to be a room in which you can control the lighting and sound. Not everyone can afford to dampen, soundproof, and dedicate an entire room for video, but you do need to find a nice quiet place that you can dedicate to video for the length of the shoot, or at least for a few hours for our intro video. Ideally, you want a place that can be shut off from the outside world for the entire length of the shoot. It’s good to have a door that you can close (put a RECORDING IN SESSION sign on the outside; if nothing else it will make you feel fancy) and walls that aren’t too echoey. To test for echoes, record something on your "room" and listen to it closely with some good headphones to see if you get echoes or hisses which might need to be addressed. Also, make sure the room has no windows (if there are windows, can they be easily covered?).

Hardware…

Let’s look at the hardware requirements. You’ll need a camera, a tripod, a microphone, some lights and a set.  "That sounds expensive, Will," you might say. Well, it doesn’t have to be. Remember that you are looking at an eventual web delivery here, so the video can’t be high definition anyway.

While it is true that high-fidelity cameras capture raw footage that is easier to deal with in the post-production environment because it makes it much easier to key out colors, for example, you can certainly do excellent, high caliber work with a mini-DV camcorder. If you won’t be keying out a background, just make sure the background you do shoot looks great.

Try and find a good tripod–you want your camera to be very stable.

As for the microphone, I wouldn’t recommend using the microphone that is built into the camera (even in an expensive HD camera); they are almost always tinny and pick up too much ambient noise.

For your purposes, you need a decent quality omni-directional lapel microphone. You can get one for a hundred bucks or so, and you really shouldn’t skimp on this step as your audio quality is very important. The microphone can be attached to the camera directly, or via wireless transponders which I heartily recommend (although they will, of course, cost you extra money).

You will also need some lights. Remember that you are recording audio with the video, so photography lights with fans won’t work well. Remember to get enough lights to light the subject (without too much shadow) as well as the background. If you are planning on keying out a background, pay special attention to making sure the background is evenly lit. (You might want a couple pieces of white foam core which you can use on the fly to bounce light where you need it.)

The Set…

The set is relatively simple. Will the subject be sitting behind a desk like a nightly newscaster? If so, you need a desk and a chair. Most of my subjects are shot standing, in which case you really don’t need anything else. Just make sure to direct your subjects properly so that they don’t sway–a common problem in first-time videos.

The Software…

Let’s look at some of the necessary software. Windows has a program called Windows Movie Maker, and every time I tell people that it’s free and already on their XP system, they don’t believe me. You also need a good piece of editing software, like Adobe Premiere (which will import your raw video footage).

If you have Adobe After Effects you will be able to add a lot of fun motion effects to your video in addition to letting you key out colors, but you don’t necessarily need it.

Likewise, companies like Digital Juice sell tons of reasonably priced, neat effects and graphics to augment your videos and really help them look professional without adding much time to your process.

You also want a dedicated audio editing program such as the excellent Adobe Audition (which I use almost exclusively) or you can get by with a free application like the very capable Audacity.

Finally, you will need encoding software to get your video ready for the web. There are many options, but the standard for eLearning is the Flash Video Encoder.

Setting things up…

Set the camera on the tripod so that you are shooting the background at the proper angle. If you are shooting a chroma key cloth hanging on a wall, make sure you are shooting it at a right angle, for instance. If you are shooting a drapery-type background, make sure it looks good in your viewfinder.

Now you need a pal to step in about halfway between the camera and the background. Make sure you adjust the tripod to shoot the subject head-on and level. Have your pal sit in the chair or stand on a tape mark, and if the subject is going to be standing, make sure your pal approximates the same height as your subject.

Look through the viewfinder and you’ll know right away if you’re going to be alright. While you do this step, mic your pal up with a lapel microphone and attach it to the camera. Go ahead and shoot some tests and have your pal read a page or two from a magazine, as you want a good cross section of pops and hisses in her speech so that you can level your inputs on the camera.

Shoot a few rounds…

Shoot a couple rounds of tests so you can import some sample footage to your editing station to see how things look and sound. Note the things you like and dislike, and make some more tests.

Try to change only one or two things between tests so you know exactly how certain changes affect your footage. Once you have some test footage you like, take a few minutes to document how you have things set up. Take some pictures to refresh your memory; put down tape x’s on the floor where you have things like light. You can do an overhead sketch to show things like angles of lights.

Once you feel comfortable here, you are ready for the next step: Scripts, Subjects and Shooting.

Next week: Scripts, Subjects and Shooting.

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About the Author:

William A. Collins Jr. is the Creative Director for Multimedia Development at Learning Evolution. An honored graduate of San Diego State University, Will has a B.F.A. with emphasis in Graphic Design. Will infuses the entire creative department at Learning Evolution with the ideal blend of art and science. He brings a professional, abstract and friendly demeanor to all his work. Will enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife Carolyn and their one year old darling daughter, Molly Jean.

About Learning Evolution:

Learning Evolution is a recognized leader in providing best of class customized eLearning and performance improvement solutions available to clients on their Learning Management Systems and Portals. In addition to eLearning services, Learning Evolution provides in-house video and audio production facilities and expertise.

Last week I ran an article about the best microphones to use for recording audio in Adobe Captivate. At that time I asked for comments from readers of this newsletter. Here are a few of the responses:

From Tina Silverstein, Course Designer, Alameda County Office of Education:

First of all, I second the recommendation for the BlueMic Snowball microphone. When you see the microphone, there is no question about how it got its name. I’ve heard people with professional audio experience comment on the good quality of the audio when using the Snowball microphone.

It has been my experience that the quality of audio when recording via a laptop is not as good as when recording via a desktop computer. When using a laptop, the microphone seems to pick up the laptop’s "internal sounds," probably due to the fact that we tend to be very close to the laptop when recording. I ran some tests recording narration using a desktop and laptop with the same microphone (within minutes of each other). The quality of the audio recorded into the laptop was definitely inferior.

From Mary E. Hughes:

Here are two audio accessories that I have found to help improve audio quality by either saving time or increasing voice quality when recording:

I purchased Harlan Hogan’s Portabooth for about $150. Hogan also provides instructions to make your own sound proof box in which to house your microphone. The sound proof box keeps out feedback and other noises as well as creates a rich, full and consistent sound. As its name implies, the Portabooth is portable for recording offsite.

Another accessory I use is a pop blocker that I purchased from a music store for about $20. This screen goes in front of the microphone and eliminates post-editing clean up of plosive ‘p’ and ‘b’ sounds when they cause a burst of volume in the audio recording.

Got any more suggestions or comments about this topic?

Please send me your emails and I’ll be happy to post your responses here.

When inserting a text caption in Adobe Captivate 3, you can add bullets to selected text simply enough by clicking the Bullets tool.

Of course, if you use the Bullets tool, you’ll quickly realize that the tool is a bit limited. If you only want standard (round) bullets, this is the tool for you. But let’s pretend for a moment that you’re feeling a bit frisky. So frisky in fact, that you’d like to use a wacky bullet symbol like a happy face, a sad face, thumbs up… thumbs down. Whatever. Hmmmm… given that the Bullets tool only returns standard bullets, what’s a Captivate developer to do? Read on.

While Captivate’s bulleting ability is limited, you can export your project’s text captions to Microsoft Word, apply a custom character bullet in Word and then perform a round- trip back into Captivate. Once the round-trip is complete, you’ll find that the custom character formatting used on the bullets is retained. Nice!

To Export Your Captivate Captions to Word:

1. Open a Captivate project
2. Choose File > Export > Project Captions and Closed Captions
   
3. Name the resulting document and specify a save destination; then click Save

   You will be notified when the captions have been exported.

4. Click Yes to view the Word document

   The captions will open in a Word table. There will be five columns: Slide ID, Item ID, Original Text Caption Data, Updated Text Caption Data and Slide. You can make any changes you want to the Updated Text Caption Data, but you should not change any of the other information. The Slide ID identifies which slide your edited captions go to. The Item ID identifies which caption goes with which caption data.

To Apply a Custom Bullet Character in Word

1. Select text in the Updated Text Caption Data column
2. Choose Format > Bullets and Numbering
3. On the Bulleted tab, click the Customize button
4. On the Customize Bulleted List dialog box, click the Character button
5. Select any Font you like from the Font drop-down menu and then select any symbol you like (in the example below, the happy face Wingding symbol was selected)

   

6. Click OK
7. Click OK

8. Save the Word document and then close it

To Import The Captions from Word Back into Captivate:

1. Back in Captivate, choose File > Import > Project Captions and Closed captions
2. Find and open the document you edited in Word

A dialog box will appear confirming the number of captions that were imported. And that’s that.

Got a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

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Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.

One of the most fundamental steps in any Captivate development process is running a simple spell check via Project > Check Spelling.

If you already include this step as a matter of course, you will be surprised to learn that your project’s closed captions will not be spell checked when you spell check the project. That’s right… when you run your spell check, the closed captions are skipped 100% of the time. Ouch!

Many Captivate developers aren’t writers (or typists for that matter). Those developers copy and paste their closed captions from a word processor like MS Word into the closed captions. Other developers type the captions directly into the Closed Captioning dialog box. Between the two processes (copying and pasting versus typing from scratch), the former typically results in fewer typos. Of course, copying and pasting content into Captivate isn’t a guarantee against typographic errors–typos could have existed in the Word document prior to copying and pasting, and it’s simple to "accidentally" key the typo directly into the closed caption.

I’m betting that Captivate’s inability to spell check the closed captions will be addressed in Adobe Captivate 4. But what are you supposed to do between now and then? Read on…

1. Export the project’s closed captions by choosing File > Export > Project Captions and Closed Captions
2. Click Yes to open the exported captions in MS Word
3. Once the Word document opens, perform a spell check by clicking the Spelling and Grammar tool on Word’s Standard toolbar
4. Save and close the Word document and return to the Captivate project
5. Import the corrected captions back into Capitvate by choosing File > Import > Project Captions and Closed Captions

   Note: Prior to importing the captions, choose Project > Calculate Caption Timing in Captivate (to turn the command off). Otherwise the timing for your text captions will automatically adjust and throw off your object timing on the Timeline throughout the project.

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Got a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

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Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.

Adding Adobe Captivate Movie Clips to a PDF file

Jeff Freeman, a technical writer at First Advantage CREDCO, has written an article that demonstrates how you can embed SWF (movie) files created in Adobe Captivate into a PDF file.

Click here to read the article.

When publishing your Captivate projects as SWFs, it’s important to pay attention to the Project Title in the Publish dialog box. Why? The text you type in the Project Title field will be used in the HTML, SWF and Skin SWF files that are created when you publish a typical Captivate project (the skin SWF will be created if you use a skin).

In the example below, the words Kevin Project Name have been typed in the Project Title field. The problem isn’t with the words themselves… it’s the spaces between the words that will prove lethal. Published Captivate SWFs are typically uploaded to a Web server and spaces in file names are a very bad idea. If you allow spaces in your file names, you’ll end up with either broken links, network errors or both.

In the picture below, you’ll notice that I kept the name the same, but simply used underscores between the words. While spaces are a bad idea, underscores and perfectly acceptable.

Watch for Spaces in Media File Names

If you’ve added Full Motion Recordings (FMRs) or Flash Video (FLV) to your project, be wary of spaces in the media file names. When you publish your project, the FMRs and FLVs are actually published as external files. (This fact comes as a surprise to many developers who assume the FMRs and FLVs are contained within the main SWF that is created when the project is published.)

If the FMRs or FLVs have spaces in their file names, your good naming habits in the Project Title field when you publish won’t matter since both FLVS and FMRs keep their original media names (or the names the files were given when they were created or imported into a Captivate project). What’s a developer to do? Read on…

Prior to publishing, show the Library (View > Show Library) and observe the Media folder. If your clips contain spaces (such as those shown in the picture below), right-click the clips and choose Rename. Remove the space from the name and then press Enter. Then go ahead and publish the project.

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Got a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

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Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.

When inserting buttons onto a Captivate slide, you can elect to use a Text button (you’ll end up with a gray button and you can control the text that appears on the button’s face) or an Image button (you can select from several images containing canned text).

The process of inserting a button is simple. Choose Insert > Button, select your button type, select the button action and click OK. Done.

However, since Captivate does not currently offer a "button editor" where you can create buttons on the fly, you might think it’s beyond you to create your own buttons. Maybe you think you need to know PhotoShop to create a custom button. Or maybe you think custom buttons are too expensive? Read on…

There are many sites you can find on the Web that allow you to create custom buttons. The site that I use (because it’s inexpensive and easy to use) is ButtonGenerator.com. Many of the buttons you create at ButtonGenerator.com are actually free (and you can’t beat that).

Using ButtonGenerator.com, I created the following three buttons in about 30 seconds:

I gave the three buttons the following names:

• kevincustom_up.bmp
• kevincustom_over.bmp
• kevincustom_down.bmp

The names are important. Notice that the three buttons are very similar, but contain the words up, over and down. When inserted onto your Captivate slide, the buttons will automatically include a JavaScript rollover behavior–but you won’t have to know anything about JavaScript. If the button is not clicked by your users, the "up" version of the button appears on the slide. If the user points to the button with their mouse, the "over" version of the button will appear. If the user clicks the button, the "down" version will appear. Sweet!

I saved all three buttons as bitmaps (ButtonGenerator lets you save as PNG or BMP… I had better luck with BMPs) to the following location: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate 3\Gallery\Buttons. (Note: The buttons you add to the Buttons folder will not be available for use within Captivate until you exit and restart Captivate.)

After creating the buttons, start Captivate and open a slide. Choose Insert > Button and select Image button as the button Type.

Select your custom button from the button image drop-down menu.

Finally, preview the project to see and test your new button.

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Got a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

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Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.

When you add buttons, click boxes, text entry boxes or slidelets to a slide, you can select several options from the On Success area including: Continue, Go to previous slide, Go to next slide, Jump to slide, Open URL or file; Open other project, Send e-mail to, Execute JavaScript and No Action.

Most users who insert an interactive object on a slide elect to use Continue. Why? Because Continue is the default action in the menu and many new developers simply don’t realize what the other options do or how they might be different.

I would recommend that you select one of the jump options instead of Continue, with Go to next slide being the one you are most likely to use in a standard project (without branching).

As a general production rule, I try to keep the number of objects on any slide to a bare minimum. For instance, in my simulations I only use one caption per slide, teamed with a single button or click box that holds the action until the user is finished reading the caption (the button normally says something clever like "Continue"). If more captions are needed to describe what’s happening on a given slide, I’ll duplicate the slide as many times as needed. While I’m not advocating that you create a project with hundreds of slides, a project that contains a more slides, each with fewer objects, actually streams better over the Internet than projects with fewer slides, but multiple objects per slide.

Using a minimalist approach to production (where I insert as few objects per slide as possible), I actually save production time. How? If I only have one caption on a slide, and a button or click box that uses a Go to next slide action instead of Continue, the result of a user click will bounce the user instantly to the next slide, regardless of how much "dead air" remained on the Timeline when I published the project. However, if the interactive object used the Continue action, the "dead air" would play after the user clicks the button. And that’s a maddening problem for you as a developer, where even a few seconds of "dead air" can throw off your project.

If you use a Go To action, you will no longer have to concern yourself with a sloppy Timeline (a Timeline with lots of "dead air"). If you’ve been properly trained to use Captivate, you were probably taught to keep the Timeline as clean as possible. That’s good advice. But you’ll no longer have to worry about "dead air" because the "Go To" action will basically ignore anything on the Timeline once the user clicks the button. The trick will be to fight your instincts and leave the "dead air" on the Timeline. It’s okay. The "dead air" will no longer hurt anything.

The picture below shows what I’d consider to be a sloppy Timeline. If your user were to click on the Click Box shown below, and the action was set to Continue, you’d be looking at more than two seconds of "dead air" before the end of the slide was reached and the next slide appeared.

To prevent the "dead air" problem and still use a Continue action, you’d have to make your Timeline look like the picture below.

Look, I’m not saying that the Timeline above isn’t pretty when compared to Mr. Sloppy just above it. It’s a real looker! However, if you spent time making the Timeline on all of your slides look like the picture above, I’m betting you added a significant amount of time to your work load. Give yourself a break… use the "Go to" actions instead of Continue. And as tempting as it is to make your Timelines pretty, go ahead and embrace the ugly… as shown in the first example above.

Got a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

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Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.

Here are some things you can count on:

• Death
• Taxes
• Sunrise
• Sunset…

… and version 4 of Adobe Captivate.   I don’t mean to get you overly excited about Adobe Captivate 4 since there hasn’t been any word from Adobe indicating when the next version will go into development… or even if it is in development.   And I don’t mean to assume anything (you know what happens when you assume). But let’s go out on a limb and suppose that Adobe will release Adobe Captivate 4 anytime between tomorrow and the year 2020. And let’s suppose Adobe was anxious to hear from you Captivate developers about the new features you would like to see added to the program.   If Adobe called you tomorrow and asked for your Adobe Captivate 4 "wish list," would you be prepared? Have you thought it through? Is there something missing from the program that you’d pay the Adobe-piper to see?

Here’s my short list:

Text Caption and Button Workshop

When inserting Text Captions, you can change the caption type simply enough, and you’ve often got up to five caption styles from which to choose. However, the captions as they exist today are really just bitmap images. You can create your own images in any image-editing application. Anyone who has attempted to create custom captions will tell you that it’s not as easy as it seems. In Captivate 4, I’d like to be able to launch a Caption Workshop from within Captivate and be able to totally customize the look and feel of the captions. Like PowerPoint’s AutoShapes, I’d like to be able to quickly and easily change the size and shape of the text caption pointer, the background and border colors, and the text inset within the caption (the distance between the border of the text caption and the text within the caption).

While I’m at it, I’d also like a Button Editor where I can create and manage text and image buttons. In the current version of Captivate, you can choose between creating a text or image button. There are several images available for free with Captivate. However, if you don’t like any of the choices, you’re once again stuck creating your own in an image-editing application.

Object Styles

If I’ve created custom captions, buttons or if I’ve edited my click boxes and/or text entry boxes, I’d like to be able to create Object Styles much like you can in Adobe InDesign. If I create a style for some buttons called Button1 and use the object throughout my project, I’d like to be able to edit the Button1 object style and make global changes throughout my project. Captivate’s current Change All feature is heading in this direction… the feature just needs a gentle nudge forward.

Playbar Editor

I love the Skins in Captivate. I’d love them more if there was a Playbar Editor where I could create my own button bars, move buttons around, etc.

Improved PowerPoint Integration

Captivate 3 was a huge leap forward when it came to PowerPoint integration. I’d like to see things moving forward by allowing me to edit the animation on a slide after the slide has been imported from PowerPoint. And I’d like all PowerPoint slide properties to be retained (such as hyperlinks) after the slides have been imported into Captivate.

Master Slides

I’d like to be able to create master slides in Captivate (like you will find in programs like PowerPoint, QuarkXPress and InDesign) where I can drop slide objects and be able to quickly apply them to project slides as backgrounds.

Enhanced Library

The Library is wonderful. And would be even better if it displayed slide objects such as Buttons, Click Boxes and Text Captions. Currently, only images, audio and animation assets appear on the Library.

FLV Onion Skin

I recently worked on a project that utilized dozens of FLV’s. Each of the FLV’s contained audio. I was trying to synch slide objects to the FLV audio. Since you cannot drag the Playhead left and right on the Timeline and hear the audio in the FLV, I was essentially working blind. I had to time everything out using a stop watch believe it or not. It would be nice if FLVs played without having to preview (by dragging the Playhead on the Timeline).

That’s my partial list, and I’m sticking to it. I’d say more, but I’d like to hear from you. What’s on your "wish list?" Email me your suggestions. I’ll combine em, wrap em up, put a bow on em and see if I can find someone at Adobe who might be interested in seeing em. Who knows, today’s wish just might become tomorrow’s Captivate 4.

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Got a Captivate production problem that’s making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience.

Want to learn more about Captivate? Click here.