Question
Audio and other Bugs in 2.0 - are they fixed in 3.0?
I just completed creating an e-learning course using
Captivate 2.0 that used quite a lot of graphics and video. The
numbers of bugs I experienced when publishing to Flash in 2.0 were
so substantial that the delivery date had to be delayed almost two
months, much to the unhappiness of the client. I'll list the most
frustrating problems and hopefully someone can tell me if these
issues were fixed in 3.0. It's difficult for me to justify an
upgrade if I'm going to run into the same horrible problems.
I will start out by stating that I keep my project files under 20 slides and all the slides have audio. The slides are 800 x 500 and none of the animations/video I'm using are more than 20 secs long. I'm running Captivate 2.0 on a Dell laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo, running Windows XP (with all the updates) and with 1 GB of RAM. I've upped my Virtual Memory to 5 GB. My machine meets all the specifications listed for Captivate 2.0, but I suspect that one really needs a much faster machine with a lot more memory to work at anything other than a snail's pace. I also make sure that no unused graphics or animations are left in a project's library and I defrag my hard drive at least once a day (if I don't Captivate crashes everytime I try and open or save a file).
Problems:
- It takes up to 15 minutes to open or close a file. It doesn't matter how big the file is. And the more files I open and close in Captivate in any session, the slower my machine gets and I evenutally have to restart it. It also takes 10-15 minutes to save some of my project files, whose sizes have ballooned for no reason (see below). If Captivate crashes during the save or even right after a file is saved, the file is corrupted and cannot be opened. I've had to redo work two or three times because of this problem.
- A project file with 10 multiple choice quiz questions and two other simple slides (and only one brief audio file) is over 1 GB in size. I can't have more than 10 quiz questions because the file sizes get so large that the program crashes before I can save the file. I also have a number of 3-slide projects with graphics, no animations, and some audio that are over 1 GB in size. But then I have 20-slide project files with a lot of video and graphics and audio that never go above 200 MB. In fact, all my project file file sizes seem enormous for no good reason. And it's not from orphan files in the Library. It's going to take like 10 DVDs to turn over all my project files (about 40 project files - all under 20 slides each) to the client. It's ridiculous!
- If I import audio as a WAV file and then publish the project to Flash, the audio either moves to different slides or one audio file gets repeated in all the slides. The only way to fix this is to convert all the .WAV files to .MP3 files (but at a very low bit rate), delete all the old WAV files from the project, and replace them with the MP3 files. Using a WAV file always leads to major audio scrambling when I publish to Flash.
- If I use a .MP3 audio file with a higher bit rate, when I publish to Flash, the audio is slowed down by about 50%.
- Graphics fail to show up in the .SWF file after a publish to Flash. This is entirely random and different graphics are affected each publish, so I never know what the published file will look like.The only way to fix this is to go back to the Project file, double click on the graphic and make a change to one of the options, save the change, reopen the graphic and change the option back to the one you started with. Then cross your fingers that another graphic won't vanish during the Publish process.
- Objects that I have fading in and out on the timeline work perfectly in the project file, but when they are published as Flash output, the timings are all off by up to 15 seconds. This happens on a couple of slides and I can find no explanation or way to fix this. And it's completely random. One publish may have the timings out of whack and the next one has the timings correct.
- Adding any animation to a project file causes all drop-down menus to stop functioning. I see from other posts that I just need to click on an object in the Library. Wish I had known about that sooner. I ended up restarting Captivate a lot.
- After closing Captivate, it takes 15 minutes or more before my machine works at anything like it's normal speed. If I try to shut down my machine right after closing Captivate, I get an error message telling me Captivate is still running. It appears that Captivate does not release memory after it is closed. I have to restart my machine everytime I close Captivate just so I can continue working in other applications normally.
These are just the major problems which caused the most headaches and delays. Most of it seems to be the VERY buggy publish to Flash option and some problems with releasing memory.
I know a lot of other people have experienced these problems, as I've read about them in other posts. Has Capitvate 3 fixed any of these issues? There is no way I'd ever attempt another e-learining project with Captivate 2. This one about killed me.
Thanks,
Jim
I will start out by stating that I keep my project files under 20 slides and all the slides have audio. The slides are 800 x 500 and none of the animations/video I'm using are more than 20 secs long. I'm running Captivate 2.0 on a Dell laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo, running Windows XP (with all the updates) and with 1 GB of RAM. I've upped my Virtual Memory to 5 GB. My machine meets all the specifications listed for Captivate 2.0, but I suspect that one really needs a much faster machine with a lot more memory to work at anything other than a snail's pace. I also make sure that no unused graphics or animations are left in a project's library and I defrag my hard drive at least once a day (if I don't Captivate crashes everytime I try and open or save a file).
Problems:
- It takes up to 15 minutes to open or close a file. It doesn't matter how big the file is. And the more files I open and close in Captivate in any session, the slower my machine gets and I evenutally have to restart it. It also takes 10-15 minutes to save some of my project files, whose sizes have ballooned for no reason (see below). If Captivate crashes during the save or even right after a file is saved, the file is corrupted and cannot be opened. I've had to redo work two or three times because of this problem.
- A project file with 10 multiple choice quiz questions and two other simple slides (and only one brief audio file) is over 1 GB in size. I can't have more than 10 quiz questions because the file sizes get so large that the program crashes before I can save the file. I also have a number of 3-slide projects with graphics, no animations, and some audio that are over 1 GB in size. But then I have 20-slide project files with a lot of video and graphics and audio that never go above 200 MB. In fact, all my project file file sizes seem enormous for no good reason. And it's not from orphan files in the Library. It's going to take like 10 DVDs to turn over all my project files (about 40 project files - all under 20 slides each) to the client. It's ridiculous!
- If I import audio as a WAV file and then publish the project to Flash, the audio either moves to different slides or one audio file gets repeated in all the slides. The only way to fix this is to convert all the .WAV files to .MP3 files (but at a very low bit rate), delete all the old WAV files from the project, and replace them with the MP3 files. Using a WAV file always leads to major audio scrambling when I publish to Flash.
- If I use a .MP3 audio file with a higher bit rate, when I publish to Flash, the audio is slowed down by about 50%.
- Graphics fail to show up in the .SWF file after a publish to Flash. This is entirely random and different graphics are affected each publish, so I never know what the published file will look like.The only way to fix this is to go back to the Project file, double click on the graphic and make a change to one of the options, save the change, reopen the graphic and change the option back to the one you started with. Then cross your fingers that another graphic won't vanish during the Publish process.
- Objects that I have fading in and out on the timeline work perfectly in the project file, but when they are published as Flash output, the timings are all off by up to 15 seconds. This happens on a couple of slides and I can find no explanation or way to fix this. And it's completely random. One publish may have the timings out of whack and the next one has the timings correct.
- Adding any animation to a project file causes all drop-down menus to stop functioning. I see from other posts that I just need to click on an object in the Library. Wish I had known about that sooner. I ended up restarting Captivate a lot.
- After closing Captivate, it takes 15 minutes or more before my machine works at anything like it's normal speed. If I try to shut down my machine right after closing Captivate, I get an error message telling me Captivate is still running. It appears that Captivate does not release memory after it is closed. I have to restart my machine everytime I close Captivate just so I can continue working in other applications normally.
These are just the major problems which caused the most headaches and delays. Most of it seems to be the VERY buggy publish to Flash option and some problems with releasing memory.
I know a lot of other people have experienced these problems, as I've read about them in other posts. Has Capitvate 3 fixed any of these issues? There is no way I'd ever attempt another e-learining project with Captivate 2. This one about killed me.
Thanks,
Jim
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