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Known Participant
September 6, 2017
Question

HD Video Imported into Captivate is Blurry

  • September 6, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 3699 views

Greetings, when pulling in an HD video into a custom project, we have to size it down to fit the slide (screenshot attached, please note the sections are blurred out) when we do this the video pixelates.  How do we go about figuring out what the ideal size the video/screen capture should be published in?

We are using Cornerstone to view our trainings.

 

Slide1d

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    1 reply

    Inspiring
    September 6, 2017

    Hi Johnny,

    A simple way to determine aspect ratio is to create a box in Captivate that you want the video to play in, and then record to those specifications. Return to your video editing software and publish to those exact dimensions. This may resolve your issue, but it might not.

    Like all eLearning software, Captivate will re-compress your video when its published if you have not linked it. This can be much more noticeable when playing a software sim, than in a regular video. A couple of work-arounds are:

    1. Host your video on an external media server and then embed it using the "Web Object". There will be no compression applied by Captivate since its just being linked.

    2. Render it at the highest resolution you can and the exact dimensions you want. This way when its imported into Captivate the compression won't be so pronounced.

    Cheers,
    Steve 

    Known Participant
    September 7, 2017

    Thanks Steve, have tried all those options except, Web Object, how do we set this up?

    We are using Camtasia to capture and publish the MP4s which are being imported, we found today that when you export it as a GIF file we can embed it into the PPT and it retains the quality, encoding takes time however the size is significantly small too, amazingly strange, but it works meaning the quality is retained.

    Inspiring
    September 7, 2017

    Hey Johnny, 

    Glad you found a solution!

    The GIF works because the actual number of frames (screenshots) is significantly smaller (probably less than 30)  and they don't cycle as quickly as video, (which is 30 frames a second) so compression doesn't impact them as much.

    If you are importing it from Powerpoint, that explains it also. PowerPoint compresses it even more than Captivate when exporting, so you are compressing it once when it was converted to video, then again when you converted it in PowerPoint, and finally a third time when you published it from Captivate.

    To use a Web Object, you have to host your video on a media server like YouTube or Vimeo,. From here you can get an embed code and then use Object > Web Object > Embed.  

    Cheers, 
    Steve