#1 2008-01-29 18:17:19

**_jameslloyd_**

Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

Hello wonderful connectusers,

I am for the first time incorporating Captivate .swf files in Presenter and have discovered that Full motion recordings (FMR) in Captivate 3 cannot be embedded in the .swf output and therefore are inaccessible to Presenter.

See: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/ … fullmotion

I just wanted to start a thread here to see if there are any workarounds or updates on the status of this issue.

I thank my lucky stars that I avoided FMRs for all but 2 slides in this :30 minute course out of a standard tendency to keep final file size small!

**_robva65_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

Hi James,

Came to this forum and saw your post.  There was another one just like it over at Adobe's Presenter forum...and since I recently weighed in on that topic, I thought I'd share the same commentary here.

When capturing screens, Captivate "listens" to changes in the Windows environment; mouse clicks, keypresses...and unfortunately...mouse movement!  The second you begin to click and drag with your mouse, Captivate goes into "full motion recording" by default. This is critical because as a result, you end up with a bunch of extra "_Fullmotion#.swf" files once you publish your session. The problem, to make matters worse, is that when you add a flash file using Presenter's Insert--Flash function, the inserted animation can no longer "communicate" with the other swfs that were created during Captivate's publishing process. That problem usually results in "blank spots" during the playback of a Captivate movie where the full motion recordings should have appeared.

So here's where I'm at with all of this, and what I'm trying to do to overcome the problem:

1. As soon as you publish your PowerPoint deck using the Presenter plugin, go to the data directory; from there, open up the resources folder. Within that folder, what you need to do is copy/paste all the "_Fullmotion#.swf" files from the published Captivate project.

Why? Because of the way that publishing works in Presenter. Each swf file you employ using the Insert--Flash method ultimately results in swfs that are stored in the resources directory of a published deck. And since Captivate uses dynamic loading to launch the FMR's at run-time, having everything in the same location means that the "base" swf file will be able to accurately call, and load, the FMR's appropriately. As an example of this, I set up a real quick project here:

http://www.robrode.com/Breeze_demos/FMR/

However, this assumes that you have the ability to publish your Presenter content locally to your computer. And even IF you had to publish to a Connect server, you could always publish locally first, add the full motion recordings into the resources directory, then zip the entire course and post on Connect or some other LMS for deployment.

The drawback: every time you publish, you're going to need to copy/paste the FMR's back into the resources directory.

2. After speaking with Silke Fleischer, Product Manager for Captivate, what we were able to determine is that you can take the full motion recordings and insert them into your Captivate project as flash objects (afterall, they're swfs!!!)...but just make sure that you insert the FMR swfs on new, blank slides. Then go back and delete any slide that have the camera icon (which denotes where the full motion recordings took place to begin with). If you republish, again without borders, you'll end up with one swf that can be incorporated into PowerPoint using the Presenter plugin.

The drawback: What I noticed after using this method is that there was a very brief "flash" of white at the beginning of every FMR. I recently attempted to use a static screen shot of the interface, and used that screen shot as a background image for the entire project. It looked better...only to the degree that I no longer had flashes of white, BUT now the movie had more "jump cuts" as the swf progressed from one slide to another in the Captivate movie. Tolerable up to a point, but then again, it'll depend on what kind of screen capturing you're doing and how much clicking and dragging is necessary.

That said, a couple other things to keep in mind:

1. set up your environment as best you can to reduce the amount of FMRs that would result from the recording process. Pre-sizing windows as they are needed will go a long way to controlling how much movement needs to happen.
2. Remember that Captivate records captures based on screen changes. When it comes to things like scrollbars, an easy method to reduce FMR's is to NOT scroll with the mouse, but rather click inside the scrollbar's trackbar to force your window to scroll up or down. Also in that same vein is to use keyboard strokes when possible. Example: rather than click/drag to select a word (let's say you need to change or edit text), try using Shift with your Arrow keys, or hold down the Shift key and left click with the mouse to select a word or words.

Rob
visit my new Presenter forum at:
http://www.robrode.com/yabb/

**_jameslloyd_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

Hey Rob, thanks for the reply.

I hadn't thought of putting the fmv's in the Resource folder.  So Connect must convince the embedded .swf that the resource folder is equivalent to the root directory of the .swf.  wild.

Is that documented anywhere?  I still don't plan to use it because of the bandwidth for fmv's, but then I should never say never.

thanks
-
james

**_robva65_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

Actually Jim, it's not Connect that's doing any "convincing" here...instead, it's Captivate that's doing all of the communicating between the various swfs as a result of publishing. 

If you've ever worked in Flash and used the loadMovie() method, Captivate is essentially doing/using the same protocols.  Meaning, that there is a "base" swf file that plays...and then as soon as the FMR is needed, the base swf file calls and loads the FMR as requested.  The problem is that you can't arbitrarily save the FMRs to any old directory you want. All of these files MUST be in the same location, relative to each other.  Thus stuffing all the swfs in the resource directory.

The key point in all of this is that inserted flash files (when imported using the Presenter plugin) are automatically stored in the resources directory by default; armed with that information, I was able to figure out how to get all the associated FMR files "hooked up" to the base swf of the Captivate movie.

And no, it's not documented anywhere (that I know of)...but was simply a matter of trying to dig a bit deeper in the publishing process.

Rob
visit my new Presenter forum at:
http://www.robrode.com/yabb/

**_robva65_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

One other thing...just came across this Tech Note to create smoother Captivate anims when scrolling is needed:

http://www.adobe.com/go/135575aa

Rob

**_peck0081_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

robva65,

I tried both of your solutions in Post #2.  With solution #1, I would still have a few FMRs not load (it seems the first three would load fine, but nothing after that; my current project has 12).  I tried solution #2 and got the same white flash at the start of each one.  I was able to get rid of the white flashes by turning on the 'Synchronize with project' option for each imported SWF.

**_catholicon_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

Rob's reply is pretty acccurate and informative. Although, I would add my $0.02 here.

A workaround to assist method#1 can be to have all the dependent "_Fullmotion#.swf" added as attachment using Presenter.
This would copy the file to resources folder on publish automatically.
The downside would be that you would have these files show up in the attachment pane as well.

BTW, I have not played with Captivate quite anough, But I guess you may like to try pasting all the files in the Captivate published output. That should work out fine.
You can then possibly prune the list but selectively deleting and checking if its still working or not.

alistairlee

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

Just a quick note - earlier this month, there was a patch released for Captivate that fixes some of the integration issues between Captivate and Connect Pro.

Check out this link for more info:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/captivate/a … patch.html

**_scottrbw_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

I found this note about the patch to Captivate 3, downloaded it and installed it.  I, too, had issues with the prior version of Captivate when using "full motion recording" and inserting the resulting Flash (SWF) output into a Presenter presentation or "breezo".  The issue was not being able to see the video once we published a presentation to the Connect server (we see a white screen, the audio plays, but the video doesn't work). 

I was hoping that this issue was resolved by the patch, but based on a quick test I just performed, it is not apparent to me that anything has changed (other than the fact that the full motion recording produced far fewer "slides" within Captivate than with using the prior version).

Anybody from Adobe have any ideas?  FMR is VERY cool, but it would certainly be better if we could use it within Presenter. 

Scott Richardson

**_dsynt_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

FMRs in Captivate are amazing! The problem arises when there are multiple _Fullmotion.swf files.

Here is one such problem: http://www.connectusers.com/forums/cucb … 3285#p3285

Is it possible to combine all these files into a single SWF and then into an AVI or movie format??

**_scottrbw_**

Re: Captivate Full Motion recording incompatibility

DSYNT asked:>Is it possible to combine all these files into a single SWF >and then into an AVI or movie format??

At this point in Captivate 3, the answer is no (as far as I am aware).  Apparently, this is relatively "high" on the radar screen for the next release, however. 

We've found that using one of the "regular" recording mode (i.e., NOT FMR) gives us more control over what the user sees -- we can control the path of the mouse, make things more visible, etc. 

However, it appears that using these modes creates a lot of very short duration slides, as well, which makes recording audio voiceovers a bit tricky, in that one has to really be aware of exactly what is happening on each slide to make sure that the voiceover accurately describes what the user is seeing.

I've found (and had this confirmed by one of the Captivate "insiders" at Adobe in a telephone conversation) that the easiest way to do audio voiceovers (by the way) is AFTER recording the screenshots.  We have tried to record the audio WHILE moving the mouse, etc, and have found it harder to work with after the fact. 

It might have something to do with my not being able to walk AND chew gum at the same time -- thus, your mileage may vary :)

Scott