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edwardcurley
Participant
March 26, 2008
Question

Captivate with Premiere Pro Integration: Where is It!!

  • March 26, 2008
  • 2 replies
  • 1502 views
Adobe is great at integrating their video and graphics pacakages. So WHY, WHY, WHY have they not done so with Captivate. Captivate has 1 output --- a Flash file. Where is an AVI option!???? How could they not offer other output options e.g. AVI, MOV, WMF?????

Are we the only production house that has a need to incorporate standard (talking heads, etc.) video with screen capture for a training DVD????

Don't tell us about Flashants SWF2 Video plug-in for Premiere. It crashes Premiere everytime. And if you want to hear about the horrors of third-party Flash to AVI converters like SoThink, read on.

Flash to AVI nightmares:
We have had major problems with the conversion of Captivate's SWF files in an effort to create an AVI from which to edit within Premiere Pro. We tried three differnet conversion software packages including SoThink. BTW, they are in China and have no USA suport --good luck getting a timely of straight answer out of them anyway) When we load the Flash file, these converters only see the first 150-180 (6 seconds) or so frames -- in our case the videos are thousand of frames in duration. Captivates playback is fine but there is something about their Flash creation or their instructions about how to export it that is lacking. You will note that there are several associated SWF files created. If you use the largest of the created SWF files, it plays back as expected within a web browser with full duration, but when you load that same file in a converter, only the first several seconds are recognized.
What is unbelievable to us is why there is only a Flash output option. After all, Adobe is a video editing player ---don't these development groups consult among each other. Captivate is a powerful application. But not having multiple output formats is a MAJOR, and unforgivable design omission.
By the way, don't try Flashants's SWF2 Video Plug in for Premiere that is supposed to allow you to import SWF files. It will crash Premiere. We tried several times.
We have been tearing our hair out with this problem and will welcome any advice. Let's all appeal to Captivate to get output options!!!!!!
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    N
    Newsgroup_User
    Inspiring
    March 27, 2008
    > Adobe is great at integrating their video and graphics pacakages. So WHY,
    > WHY,
    > WHY have they not done so with Captivate. Captivate has 1 output --- a
    > Flash
    > file. Where is an AVI option!???? How could they not offer other output
    > options
    > e.g. AVI, MOV, WMF?????

    I think that since Captivate is intended to produce *interactive projects*,
    not video, then outputting to a plain movie format is not a priority.

    Don't hate me, but you could try creating your Captivate project, then
    publish and run it ... while using Captivate's Full Motion Recording to
    record the application as it runs. This new recording will be an FLV that
    you can export out of Captivate and then use wherever you need to. It will
    also be fairly easy to edit it etc.

    Steve


    --
    Adobe Community Expert: eLearning, Mobile and Devices
    European eLearning Summit - EeLS
    Adobe-sponsored eLearning conference.
    http://www.elearningsummit.eu

    Captiv8r
    Captiv8r
    Legend
    March 27, 2008
    Hi Steve

    Unless something has recently changed, I don't believe Captivate is capable of creating .FLV directly. One would have to export to Flash possibly, then create a .FLV from there.

    Normally a full motion recording ends up as one or more "fullmotion.SWF" files.

    Cheers... Rick
    N
    Newsgroup_User
    Inspiring
    March 26, 2008
    I agree it would be nice to output to more than just a SWF. Camtasia
    offers such options, so all the more surprising that Captivate does not.

    That said, what exactly are you needing to do?
    You can import video into Captivate. With Premiere lacking in any type
    of interactivity options (right?), if your piece requires any such
    interactivity, it would seem to make sense to import your video into
    somewhat of an 'authoring environment' (and I use that term loosely)
    like Captivate.

    Now, if you're just exporting video (as seems to be the case), then I
    certainly see why you'd want to convert the Captivate captures to a
    video, bring that in to the Premiere edit, and combine it with whatever
    other video you have. However, I don't think that's as common a need as
    those who are using CP for the interactivity/testing features.

    Until CP offers such exporting functionality, there's a converter tool
    called 'Super' which may be a better conversion tool. The site is ugly
    but the tool seems decent. I've only used it to convert between true
    video formats though so I can't guarantee it does SWF to AVI (or
    whatever) well:
    Tool page: http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
    Perhaps a better download link:
    http://www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/119/SUPER-Converter.aspx

    Otherwise, perhaps try Camtasia?
    Erik

    edwardcurley wrote:
    > Adobe is great at integrating their video and graphics pacakages. So WHY, WHY,
    > WHY have they not done so with Captivate.
    A
    Anonymous
    March 26, 2008
    I hear your pain. Some of the Adobe Captivate work seems to come from a team in India and they may not be part of the Flash development group (this is no secret since Adobe even talks about some of the team from India coming to USA events). Who knows, maybe Adobe will combine the Flash groups and finally give us a unified Adobe Flash development format. Call it XML for FLASH or something? Just kidding, that would make too much sense.

    I have had good luck with the Southink DHTML editior and it makes great and reliable web toolbars and menus. Just update on JS file and deploy the Java library to the server once.

    The link mentioned above for SUPER is a crazy series of web pages that you need to read through. It is on the bottom of the third page. They just updated it again.

    I like freeware utilities and another good one to look at would be:
    MediaCoder
    This is aprt of the SourceForge GPL license movement. Quite a handy tool for free.

    I am also using AVSMedia tools for some conversions. It is very reliable, but I wish that the file size options were more flexible. Still a good tool for about $50.00

    You can also look at the Captivate site of Silke Fleischer where she talks about talking avatars and Captivate. She's the Captivate product management director Silke Fleischer Blog

    Best f luck with the above options and press-on for the solution, you'll find it.

    Joe C.
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