Skip to main content
D
donaldw30326818
Known Participant
February 22, 2022
Question

Captivate 2019 Closed Captioning Synchronization Slips

  • February 22, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 723 views

Captivate has been pretty good for me in keeping audio and captioning synchronized - close enough that I haven't worried about the odd tenth of a second difference.

 

My current project is driving me nuts. I have gone through the closed captioning editing process three times now and every time I have had a series of captions that have slipped significantly - 2-3 seconds in come cases, 1 second most commonly. This throws everything off until it doesn't and the captioning is back in synch with the audio.

 

Yes, I am closing and saving the Captivate file between caption reviews, but that doesn't seem to help.

 

I am copying/pasting my captions from an ASCII text file, so I can't blame any errant Word artifacts. 

 

Anyone have an idea about how to keep Captivate captions locked to where they are supposed to be?

 

Many thanks!

 

Don

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    D
    donaldw30326818Author
    Known Participant
    May 19, 2022

    All, an update on my issue with closed captioning losing synch with the audio in a Captivate project.

    To recap: In long TEAMS interview captures, the CC synchonization will slip, often by several seconds, and it takes repeated re-synching passes to get the CC and audio to remain remotely in time.

     

    As was indicated by RobWard and others, two issues may be causing my issues, and I am cautiously optomistic that a workaround is reliable.

     

    The TEAMS interview captures come in at 8 FPS but the Captivate project exports out at 30 FPS. This I think is the main source of my synch issues. Using Camtasia to re-render out at 30 FPS seems to help the synch, along with having the MP4 start at 0:00:00.

     

    I did have the video start about 2 secs in to allow for fade-in and titling, but I am working that by a different method.

     

    What I have found to be more of an irk is that with straight MP3 audio tracks, I see the ROW number in the CC editor that corresponds to the flags in the time window, but those ROW numbers are not displayed when doing CC work on an MP4. Irksome.

    TLCMediaDesign
    TLCMediaDesign
    Inspiring
    May 19, 2022

    The best way around this is the create an html page for the video and use a .vtt file for the captions.

     

    The issue is that there are different timers at work here. The slide runs on a timer, the cc is on a timer and the video has it's own time. The slide timer doesn't wait for the video to load enough to begin playing. The timers end up getting out of synch.

     

    When you do it with html the synch stays perfectly since the captions are listening to the video's timeupdate events.

    D
    donaldw30326818Author
    Known Participant
    May 19, 2022

    Hmmm.... well.... that is a few levels deeper to solve the issue than I was hoping for.

     

    Thank you for the info!

    RodWard
    Community Expert
    RodWardCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 23, 2022

    I have never encountered this particular issue.  Like you I have found Captivate's CC synchronisation to be very reliable.

     

    If this is only occurring in one particular CPTX project file then I would begin to assume that perhaps the project or one or more slides on it had become corrupted.  If the issue is occurring on specific slides, try deleting those slides and inserting new ones rebuilt from scratch.  Perhaps that will remove the glitch.

    D
    donaldw30326818Author
    Known Participant
    February 23, 2022

    Thanks, Rod;

     

    Good thoughts, but this is the final stage of a very painful project, so rebuilding is not an option.

     

    I thought perhaps I was doing the pause/copypaste routine too quickly, that maybe Captivate needed this sequence slowed down so it could get all the updates written before moving on. Slowing my inputs has not helped.

     

    I will save to a new filename, and maybe that will help. 

     

    Note to Adobe: it wouldn't offend me in the least if Captivate could natively generate captioning. YouTube and TEAMS - unbelievably - can do this on the fly.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices