Branching problem

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
June 19, 2008
6 replies
641 views

I'm really confused. I'm building a software demonstration for our new software. To try and keep the size somewhat reasonable, I first created a project that provides the opening and then the closing of the movie. In the center I have a slide that has buttons that list the names of 6 different slide show examples they can watch. If the click on a particular button, I set the action to jump to another slide, and since I had six buttons for 6 examples, I went ahead and created 6 slides as "temporary place holders" to be able to test the branching to them from the buttons and the looping back that I set up. It all worked well.

Then I went ahead and created another project that is my first of the 6 different examples to view. However, I can't seem to figure out or find any documentation on how to get that to work. I went to the button for this example and changed the 'Jump to slide' and tried 'open other project' and also tried 'open url or file' I can't find any documentation that explains what option to select and what file to list and where to have them stored in order to have the movie load and run it at the time the button is selected and then return to the main movie?????

Please help...... Cary

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

jojolina

Inspiring

Hi Rick, thanks a mil mate, your stepping in is never a bad thing.

Cary

I hear and feel your frustration, Cap 3 is a wonderful tool, but the help function is a liitle short on explaining things and I have also lived through the frustration of trying to figure stuff out. TIP, at the bottom of most of Rick's posts, you will see a link to "Captivate Tips & Tricks" take the journey and you will find a wealth of information put into book form that is the result of personal experience and forum postings.

Re your project, you should now have enough info to get that baby put to bed regarding the links, but if there is anything else that worries you, then please call back at your friendly neighborhood forum and somebody will always be glad to assist.

A

Anonymous

Thank you so much Rick... that gives me some wonderful direction ... let me work with those comments and see how it goes.

Much appreciated, especially on a Sunday ;)

Cary

A

Anonymous

Hi Andrew,

I'm beginning to think that I won't be able to do what I've planned all along. I had asked the sales people when I read about the enhancements of 3.0 over the 1.0 that I had, especially the branching capability, and they told me that it would be no problem to do..... well it doesn't seem that is the case and I'm so frustrated that from having bought the training book and CD and months of parttime training of myself, it doesn't look like it is possible...

My problem is that I want to create a software demonstration movie to use as the focus of all our marketing on a new product shipping in a couple of months. It is a decision making tool so I wanted to try and peak interest by explaining the concept and the have about 6 different slide show examples that are specific to 6 major areas of decision making.

However, it is apparent after having recorded the main opening and closing that could always be used, but buidling the first of the 6 movies and publishing it to view as one movie... it takes way to long to load to expect anyone to sit there and wait for it to load when they click on a provided link to the movie.

So I thought I could make the 6 example slide show movies as 6 different movies and simply "branch to them" and come back to the short movie that provides the option to loop back to the example page to select another to view... or exit the main movie.

Nothing seems to work... I'm so frustrated that there isn't really any documentation on so much of Captivate.. I guess you have to just keep trial and error attempts to see if anything works or how to make it work, I can't find any indepth write up about branching that explains all the errors I get when publishing movies that 'open another project'.... I get errors that I don't understand about maybe needing to export something that it is referencing and open file.... all kinds of stuff that can't be searched on in the documents.

I guess this just isn't a capability of Captivate?

Cary

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi Cary

Hopefully Andrew will pardon my sticking my nose in here.

From what I'm reading, it would seem you want a simple Captivate menu of sorts. A slide that presents a list of links to six different projects. Right? And you want the user to open the project they choose, view it and return back to the menu?

Assuming that I'm understanding that correctly, you should easily be able to accomplish your goal.

Create each of the six projects and publish them.
Create your menu project.
Insert Button or Click Box objects that link to the projects. (No need to re-hash that here, as it seems Andrew has covered that.)
Now here is where you seem to be confused. There is a button you click that allows choosing how the link opens.

I"m attaching an image that should help.
Click here to see the image

Cheers... Rick

J

jojolina

Inspiring

Hi Cary, sorry, my mistake

Use the "Open other Project" option, this will allow you to choose another cp file (the cp files are your project source files).

J

jojolina

Inspiring

Hi and welcome from me as well Cary.

Rick and I shared a similar post a while ago where he assisted in explaining the exact route. So what I am about to say is basically a quote from Rick's previous work (credit where credit is due etc.)

When using the "link to other project" option, you will need to choose the source file of the other project, in other words the cp file and not the swf or exe. We know it sounds weird, but it works. Trust us on this one please and give it a try before just dismissing out of hand. Evidently Captivate was built this way, therefore it works!!

A

Anonymous

Thank you, So if I'm understanding... then in the same folder that I have the main project .swf files for the main movie, I also place ALL the published files for ANY and ALL additional movies I wish to branch out to AND I NEED to include the .cp file for each of those movies also. Then when I'm selecting the movie to branch to from the button, I actually select the .cp file for the movie I want to play?

Will it open another window to play the movie, or will it just play within my movie as it would had I imported all its slides/objects into the main movie if I wasn't worried about its size?

How do I direct the flow back to the slide I want to pick up at in the main movie after this called movie is played?

Thank you so much for responding. Cary

J

jojolina

Inspiring

Hi again Cary

It is pretty simple really:
Link to another project and select the cp file as the link. Next to this link dialogue, you will have drop down menu where you can choose whether it should play in the current window, new window etc.. Once you have made that selection, go BACK in to the drop down and select whther you want your original movie to continue or pause and wait for you.

Captivate does not care what you do with the cp file, it merely uses it as a reference (who knows how!!), just ensure that all you outputs are in the same folder and they will pick up the link themselves (relative links).

Lastly, if you were to select "Edit/Preferences" from the menu and then selected the "Start and End" node in the Preferences box, you would see that you can control what happens when the movie ends.

Hope this clarify things further for you, but PLEASE call back if there is still a problem.

Captiv8r

Legend

Welcome to our community, Cary

If you are linking from the button to a different movie, you would use the "Open other project" option. After you publish all of them, you simply ensure they are all placed in the same folder so they may find one another.

Cheers... Rick

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