Inspiring

Question

Calling all Captivate gurus---how do I stop a video or animation inserted as swf to stop auto playing

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
July 28, 2009
6 replies
7229 views

Hello guys, this is an issue that has been appearing over and over again and I need a fix. I am hoping that someone out there can help, please. This will determine whether we can use Captivate in the future or not or whether we need to change our design again!!!!! urghhhhh

here is the scenario.

We have a slide with text. The text will also have audio. On the same screen we also have either an animation or video clip. The animations embedded into the Captivate slide are created in Flash and contain buttons to start, pause, and show close captioning for the animation. The slide also has a click box to pause the slide and on click, take users to the next screen.

The videos (because of accessibility reasons) come with their own Flash skin to display close captionining. Therefore, we cannot insert the video as an FLV into Captivate. The videos are flvs wrapped in swf skins. We used AS 3 because of the ease in adding captions. The videos and animations are set to NOT AUTOPLAY and they don't when played outside of Captivate. BUTTTTTTTTTTT, inside Captivate, as soon as we arrive to the slide where the text and

video or animations are, the video or animations auto play even they are set not to in Flash. What is the problem? Please....how do I solve this? It's very frustrating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks

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katherineg66464357

Known Participant

Hi,

Although I know that this thread is old, I am having similar autoplay issues. However my issues are not within PowerPoint but online.

My organization utilizes Springshare LibGuides. Within, we can create media/widgets using either Java Script or HTML code. I have been able to embed my videos into this web software but I am having issues with autoplay. After a ton of research, I learned that because the video files are associated with Flash I have to change Flash coding or settings to disable autoplay because regular coding of autostart or autoplay will not disable it.

Are there settings within Adobe Captivate 8 to disable autoplay?

RodWard

Community Expert

Yep.

Project Preferences > Start and End > Autoplay checkbox. Deselect it. Then republish.

K

kind_days15B9

Inspiring

I am concerned about your issue here because I am going to need to do something similar in the next two weeks.

I don't mean to cause trouble but such actions (embedding swf with custom Flash skins) were easy to accomplish in Lectora. It worries me when I see these possible limitations in Captivate. My job requires that I find a way to do it in Captivate.

Please don't misunderstand, I really like Adobe products!

I

ItzelmAuthor

Inspiring

Well Shawn, let us know if you run into problems and how you solved them.

I've decided to do the following:

1) For animations built in Flash and that do not have any type of playbar, I embed those in Captivate. I have a simple animation with a "play" button that i insert in Captivate and it plays fine. I also have an animation that simply plays. but for that I use Captivate's button. and on click, i show/hide the animation.

2) For swfs with embedded playbars (play, pause, fastforward, close caption), I simply display those in a separate window. Too many issues. For example, eventhough the swf don't autoplay anymore, when i move to another captivate slide (and forget to pause the animation), the animation and audio keeps playing. it should automatically stop. have not figured out how to fix this. not worth wasting anymore time.

K

kind_days15B9

Inspiring

Thanks Itzelm,

It's members such as yourself, that make my transition to Captivate easier. Adobe should be paying you folks! Or perhaps we novices should be paying you.

This is my first time, working exclusively, with Adobe Captivate 4. In the past, I've done some work with Captivate 2 and 3 but the bulk of my projects were almost always completed with Lectora.

Unfortunately, without the ability to attend classes, there are apparently few Captivate 4 resources available. I have purchased the one Lynda.com course but I find this is far too basic (despite its title), and I have a Iconlogic workbook "Beyond the Essentials" but it doesn't cover half of what I am interested in learning.

Thanks to you and the others for your valued assistance. I hope I can give back to this community in short order.

M

Minidealer

Participant

I have a similar problem. multiple problems actually.

I am inserting a swf file with the animation and text to one slide, then I am also inserting a skin swf file (.1 seconds long) (the skin file has the default Captivate play/pause/mute, etc... functions so I can play/pause/whatever to the animation)

I then delete the first swf (if I don't, I hear the first swf play, then the second skin version starts, so I get an echo effect)

When I preview, all works ok.

When I publish, the skin is now up in the top left of the screen and none of its functions work.

I have tried timing, visibility, synchronize. I even tried not inserting the skin swf and using the default skin , but it does not work on the swf file. It keeps playing as if no buttons were clicked at all.

No idea what is going on...

I

ItzelmAuthor

Inspiring

Minidealer,

Hum... i don't know the exact answer but lets see if something I say can trigger a solution

1) are the swf and captivate been published to the same AS version?

2) did you try to externalize resources/swf?

3) did you publish your swf skin in the same folder as the captivate published folder?

4) could you, have a button on captivate that on click, shows animation? you would hide the animation on slide enter and then the button will show it.

I basically gave up on displaying SWFs with their own playbar controls within Captivate. Now I add a button on the Captivate screen that on click launches a separate window with the SWf. Less headaches.

M

Minidealer

Participant

Issues:

the swf files are from another source. I did not create them, so I have no idea what AS version, or even what captivate version they were made in. I tried changing to AS3, no help.
tried externalized, no help
I am publishing an exe standalone.
I reverted back to Captivate 3, but that did not seem to help. Going back to C4 so I can try the button - play animation option, but then I have to find controls that play/pause, fast forward, mute, etc... since a default skin does not play/pause the animation.

Good ideas tho'

S

SteveBeard

Participant

You have two sets of options to manage when you insert a video on a slide.

In your case, I think the following might work: Right click your video, properties, options, and open the "Display For" option box. Its normally set for "Duration of Video" but if you change it to "Duration of Slide" then you give control to the slide so if the user clicks to advance to the next slide, the video will stop. You will need to open the option settings for the slide and use the "Specific Time" setting. Just set it equal to or greater than the length of your video in seconds.

Note: If you want your video to play while several slides scroll in its background (such as a powerpoint presentation) you can load your video on the first slide, then set the "Display For" on each slide to an appropriate length. The total showing time should be equal to the length of your video. This is the same concept that Captivate uses in spreading audio over multiple slides.

Best Wishes

Steve

I

ItzelmAuthor

Inspiring

Steve, thanks for your suggestion but there is a problem. The video is inserted as a SWF not a video. The reason for this is that the video has its own skin (with close captioning features). The skin pulls an XML file with close caption text. I was not able to insert this type of video as an FLV in Captivate.

This option does not work. My video (SWF) is set to duration of slide. And the slide itself is set to 16 seconds. IF i set the video to "duration of animation" it does not display on screen. The video is 2 minutes.

I need to find a fix for the video to stop playing once the user advances to the next slide. i think this might require some advanced programming.

In terms of the animations autoplaying when I return to the slide, I figured out how to fix that. On slide enter, I set multiple actions to hide all animations.

J

JerMia

Participating Frequently

Something that we did was either:

a) house the swf that you want to play somewhere else on your server and then when you have the user press the "play" button it will "open another url" in a different window and watch that movie.

Or

b) have the swf on a frame by itself that looks identical to the slide before it and when they press the "play" button have captivate "go to next slide"

I know it is not exactly perfect but I think it will do the trick for you.

Thx

I

ItzelmAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for your response.

We fixed the problem for the videos inserted as SWF. We had forgotten to turn auto play off when we inserted the FLV in Flash and added the skin. Now the video waits for the "play" button click.

But the problem with the animations is still the same and I keep running into it. SWFs even though they have a stop command keep autoplaying. urghhh!

A

Anonymous

Please check the "synchronze with project checkbox in the properties dialog of the animation under the Options tab.

I

ItzelmAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for your suggestion but that does not work. The video still auto plays without clicking the video's play button.

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