Skip to main content
J
Jeff_H-oYgDJz
Participating Frequently
November 17, 2010
Question

CP5 pre-loader questions re: video

  • November 17, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 1093 views

Forgive the long post..

I published a Cap 5 project in which the first 4 slides contain short videos.  The pre-loader is set to 70%.  When playing the course from a server or LMS the initial load ranges from 1 minute to 5 minutes depending on location and computer.   After the initial load reaches 70% the first video shows its own loading screen for a few additional seconds and begins to play.  Subsequent videos will also show a brief loader before they play.  The video and project sizes are as follows:

- Course SWF is 12.5mb

Slide one video is 827kb

Slide two video is 1.2mb

Slide three video is 1.9mb

Slide four video is 950kb

- All videos are encoded F4V

- Project is published from CP5 on a Mac

- Latest Flash player is being used for all user machines

The Problems:

- On high performance machines with fast internet connections, the content loads and plays as expected, however on slightly older machines, or slow connections the playback is jerky and unpredictable

- Playback performance from a web server is generally better than from the SumTotal LMS regardless of the machine capabilities

- On several occasions the audio for the next slide plays simultaneous with the video from the current slide.  Also bullets that are synched with the slide and video will fall out of synch.  After reloading or using the nav bar to back up, the slide generally plays as expected.

My questions for the community:

1 - Will the pre-loader load F4V videos before playback?  Can someone explain what the pre-loader will load what it will not?

2 - If the preloader does not load video, is there a downside to setting the preloader to a minimum number (say 10%) to at least reduce the initial load cycle?

3 -  How do I ensure that audio from the next slide will not play on the current slide or video synchronized with timeline elements do not fall out of synch?

Thanks

Jeff

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    A
    Anonymous
    November 18, 2010

    Hi there,

    Please find the answers for your questions.

    1 - Will the pre-loader load F4V videos before playback?  Can someone explain what the pre-loader will load what it will not?

    <ashwin> No, preloader only loads the main Movie. Once the slide with video is encountered the Video load is initiated and this loads the video. FLV video and Animations (if they are externalised) are not loaded while preloading the movie.

    </ashwin>

    2  - If the preloader does not load video, is there a downside to setting  the preloader to a minimum number (say 10%) to at least reduce the  initial load cycle?

    <ashwin> Yes you can do this but i am not sure if this reduces the project loading time. I will try to explain you the way preloader works.  A 10% preloader percentage indicates to load 10% of the SWF size, For instance if the SWF size is 12 MB then the project starts to play once 1.2 MB of the project is loaded. So if the project has rich content in the first few slides then loading may take time as it has it has to load the first slide fully to show the first slide. So it all depends on how the project is created and how the content is distributed in the project.

    </ashwin>

    3 -  How do I ensure that audio from  the next slide will not play on the current slide or video synchronized  with timeline elements do not fall out of synch?

    <ashwin>Do you have the audio from first slide to n slides continuously, if thats the case then in the published output a single audio file will be created with the published SWF and is stored in the SWF (In this case we say audio is sitched). So if a preloader is set to 10%, even though only 10% of the movie will be preloaded the entire audio should be loaded which might create sync issues as the movie will have started to play while the audio is being loaded.

    To overcome this you may choose to increase the slide time of the slides containing audio by around 0.1 second. This activity will split the audio in the published output and hence will have small audio fragments to load while the movie is loading.If around 20 slides have audio continuously then you can increase the slide time for around 6-7 slides and not all.

    </ashwin>

    Try them and let me know if this information helped.

    Thanks

    Ashwin Bharghav B

    Adobe Captivate team

    J
    Jeff_H-oYgDJzAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    November 19, 2010

    Ashwin,

    Greatly appreciate your answers.  We have tried the following:

    - Reduced pre-loader percent to 15%

    - Removed video on slide one and converted to slide with animation

    - Removed video on slide 3 and converted to VO with image animation

    - Slides use mix of video and VO so "stitching" audio should not be an issue

    Result:

    After 15% load we get a white screen for a few seconds then a grey screen with "loading"  then first slide plays.  Playback of first few slides is still erratic.  For example sometimes slides will advance before reaching the end of the slide.  Animation of still images is jerky.  Playback will freeze and then resume after a few seconds on the next slide.  Exact performance will vary with each playback.

    We are now publishing again and increasing the preload to 40%, removing text and image animations.  Just a guess that this will improve the situation.

    One key question is, it seems that no matter what the preloader is set to, we will always see the grey loading screen subsequent to the preload screen.  Initially I thought this was because we are using a video on the first slide but even with this video removed it still displays. 

    A few other detail:

    CP5 on Mac; testing from Moodle server, latest Flash Player version, Safari browser.  We have seen similar results on IE as well.  We love developing in CP5 but have many complaints from our customers about loading and playback.  Same customers seem to have very few issues with courses we develop in Articulate which takes a different approach by making every slide a swf.  We end up with a ton of files versus CP but it seems to work efficiently.  

    Thanks again for your help.

    Jeff

    Sony
    Sony
    Participating Frequently
    November 22, 2010

    This thread might help you solve some of the video issues. To ensure video plays back smooth with the slide, you need to follow these guidelines.

    Adobe Forums: Video begins skipping several minutes...

    -Sony

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