Full Motion Recording SWF Plays Audio -- Video Stalls

Question

I have recorded dozens of full motion videos for training
customers on how to use different parts of our website. I've
recorded browser movement, recording audio simultaneously through a
microphone. The videos are anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes in
length, and include anywhere from 2 slides to 10 slides. I
published each video to SWF 9 (also tried versions 7&8 with
similar results). Each of the SWF files within each video end up
being anywhere from 1 MB to 6 MB in size. They play perfectly on my
computer, locally. After I upload them to the web server, however,
when I view them through a browser, the pre-loader appears, then
the audio starts playing and at the same time the first slide
appears, but it appears very faded and it sticks there and the
video, if it does start playing, is extremely lagged behind the
audio.

Once the audio finishes, if you reload it to play it again,
it plays fine. However, the first time through the video freezes on
the faded first slide, and lags throughout the presentation, if it
plays at all. (I've tried taking out fade in/out effects, but the
problem is still the same either way.)

Why are the slide files so big, and why is the video not
playing correctly?

CatBandit · Answer

Hi "sneven" and welcome to the Captivate User Community!

The size of the files is a related but separate issue, I think, so I'll just tackle one item at a time. It sounds like the file plays fine once the entire thing is "cached" or downloaded. There can b a lot of reasons for this, but the underlying problem is just that - the file needs to download completely to play correctly.

The answer to that might be as simple as to add the default preloader (Project > Preferences > Start and End) if you are not using one, or if you are already using a pre-loader, to change the percentage downloaded (on the pre-loader) to a higher number - perhaps even 100%. This can be done by opening the default pre-loader FLA in Flash and editing the Action Scripting, then saving the file to a new name when republishing (so you don't overwrite the original). The path to the pre-loader FLA should be:

C:\Program Files\ Adobe\ Adobe Captivate 2\ Gallery\ Preloaders\
(Note: This path should be the same regardless of version)

That is what I think might be a solution, but ... back to the cause of the problem. You might have some object - most likely an audio file - that is taking an exceptionally long time to load (probably due to size but it could also be due to other complexities). If that object is near the end of the problem movie, you might want to address the properties of that object; let's say you have an animation object near the end that is very large. By eliminating or otherwise shrinking that one object, you might be able to speed and "smooth" the play-time of the whole project.

One obvious thing that does come to mind along those lines is "Background Audio". If you have background audio in the project, try removing it - or reducing its' size.

It is hard to be more specific since I don't have enough information to properly address the question of exactly what the cause is, but I hope those thoughts are some help in getting it sorted.

Thanks!
.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded