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M
M K B
Known Participant
April 8, 2009
Question

Have Tips On reducing .EXE File Size?

  • April 8, 2009
  • 2 replies
  • 4581 views

Hello,

Captivate exe file sizes are huge compared to comparable exe files produced by competitor software. I set my slide quality to Low, set swf conversion to 16 bit instead of 32 bit, set swf Size And Quality to 50%, and the .exe files are still huge. In fact, changing these settings made no difference to the file size.

Anyone have any tips on reducing the file size of the Captivate Exes, or do you know of any utility that can make .exe files smaller?

Thanks,

Mike

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

M
M K BAuthor
Known Participant
April 9, 2009

Hi Steve,

Yeah, I think you're right. Last night, I successfully included a swf in Opus Pro, but the right-click didn't work.

For now, I'm going to keep doing my tutorials in Opus Pro. If they fix the "right-click not working in swf" bug, I'll find a way to make it all work.

Thanks for yall our help, as well. It's nice to know that fellow users care enough to use their own valuable time to help others.

Mike

Steve Howard, ACP
Steve Howard, ACP
Inspiring
April 9, 2009

For now, I'm going to keep doing my tutorials in Opus Pro. If they fix the "right-click not working in swf" bug, I'll find a way to make it all work.

It's not really a bug. It's the way Flash works. Now, it might change, but don't hold your breath.

Steve

M
M K BAuthor
Known Participant
April 9, 2009

Steve, Adobe says that it's supposed to work. It doesn't work, for me or others. That's a bug.

I'ev got a case submitted to tech support. They wrote back, with a suggestion of clearing my preferences file. It didn't work.

If it wasn't supposed to work in a .swf file, they would have told me "it only works in executables".

Steve Howard, ACP
Steve Howard, ACP
Inspiring
April 9, 2009

Huge is usually in the eye of the holder. How big are your files? How small do you want them to be? What's the pixel-size of your project?

If you use captions, text, and native Captivate features, the file should be pretty lean. Ony time I see the Captivate files get huge is when you add audio. You can change the audio compresion used, but you have to trade off file size and audio quality. Changing audio quality will usually have a bigger effect than changing image compression settings.

Steve

M
M K BAuthor
Known Participant
April 9, 2009

Hi Steve,

Thanks for replying.

The tutorial is 33 slides, with captions and text only. No audio. I can't get it below 5.14 MB. That's about 2 mb more than tutorial  .exe files of the same scope that I create in my multimedia authoring program, Opus Pro, and 3 mb more than those created in another tutorial software I own, Demo Builder.

Mike

Steve Howard, ACP
Steve Howard, ACP
Inspiring
April 9, 2009

5 Mb? Are the slides made up of images you imported yourself? Or out of screen captures?

And again I ask - what is the pixel dimension of your lesson? The higher the pixel count, the bigger the file.

The Captivate exe contains the Flash player which adds around 1 Mb to the published file size. But 4 Mb still seems quite large for screen captures only, unless you have a large screen size - 1024x768 or larger.

Steve

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