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.

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

1. Download the MP4Settings.ini file to your computer.
2. If necessary, close Captivate.
3. Copy the downloaded MP4Settings.ini file to the Captivate install directory (this is typicallyC:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Captivate.
4. 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.

Comments

[claire harter]

I'm still having problems publishing to MP4 after downloading the above and changing Frame Rate to 30. It seems that I can publish at 15 fr but the rendering of some of the video is not acceptable (squiggly lines/blurriness etc.) especially at transitions. When I try publishing to Mp4, the Adobe Captive Video Publisher generates the video until the very last few seconds and then message box reads, "Captivate has stopped working." Any ideas? My project is 1280X720. Does that have anything to do with anything? Should I rescale to smaller size? Or, is it all about the frame rate why set at 15 that my video doesn't visually look good. Any suggestions would be helpful here. Very frustrated.

[Kevin Siegel]

Hi Claire,

I've forwarded your post to the good folks at Adobe. I'm hoping they'll have an answer for you here soon.

[Asgarg]

Hi Claire, I am from Adobe Captivate team. Could you please tell me which version of Adobe Captivate you are using? Also, how much memory you have on your computer? 1280 X 720 at 30 FPS will need a large memory. To eliminate this problem, either have smaller project size or try to have a project with, say, 5 slides and see if that published properly. L

Ashish

[Mark Schultz]

Thanks for this solution, really helped a LOT. It seems obvious that we would want to publish at 30fps, Ashish, how about this feature in the settings of Captivate 7?

[Jesse]

Anyway to get this to work in Captivate 5.5? Just curious...