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DrewNY
Participating Frequently
April 27, 2014
Question

Hide or Show a Synched Video Across Slides for Mobile Publish

  • April 27, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 278 views

I am new to Captivate 7 and to using video in mobile projects, so am hoping for some expert guidance from you folks.  I need to take an existing old FLV "talking head" video and span it across a series of C7 slides, but while I want the audio to run steadily throughout, I only want to show the actual video of the speaker talking on the first and last slides of the module, because the speaker is frankly not visually engaging.  😉

I see that I have the option to put the video on the TOC panel as opposed to the Stage, but then it's either hidden (which might work in a pinch) or always there (which I don't want).  My first choice is to have the image of the speaker at the start of the module to welcome the learner, then use only the audio portion until the speaker reappears on last slide.

Also: the published file needs to play smoothly on both iPad and Android tablets as well as pcs.  What is the simplest way to achieve this?  The end product will be a non-interactive lecture with standard animated text/images to accompany the audio, so I was assuming that MP4 is the way to go for maximum device compatibility.  Or would HTML5 publish still be safe?  What are the "gotchas" around playing on tablets?  Given that I'm starting with an old FLV file, when I publish the Captivate project, it sounds like the Adobe Media Encoder will automatically repackage the video to MP4; is that accurate?  If I publish to HTML5, does it still allow me to select MP4 as the video's new format?  I read somewhere that for an HTML5 publish, Captivate 7 automatically chooses F4V? I would definitely want MP4, not a Flash format.

Can anyone explain the simplest way to accomplish this use of video for pc/mobile publish?  Many thanks in advance for speedy assistance!  So far, it's been 17+ hours since I posted this question in the main Captivate forum, and over 50 people have viewed it, but no one has offered any guidance.  Can anyone in this Audio/Video sub-forum help?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
April 27, 2014

Hi there

First, I saw this posted initially to the General category, then a day or so later it was posted again in the Audio/Video category. Please don't do that in the future. If you want to know why, click here.

As for the issue, it should be fairly simple to insert the video and spread it across the slides. Just use the Video > Insert Video command and ensure you choose Multi-slide synchronized video when you do. That should produce what you want with the video spread across the slides. However, that will also likely not get the video in the physical location where you want it. So I would position the video at the size and position you like on the first slide where it will be visible. Now for the slides where you want to hear the video but not see it, try positioning the video so it sits in the pasteboard area. Admittedly, I"m a bit leery of just plopping it off stage and leaving things at that. Personally, just to be on the safe side, I'd size the video clip as small as I could possibly make it, then position it so just a pixel or two clips the visible area in the corner.

I'll have to leave it to someone else to answer the question about making certain it "plays smoothly" on all the devices. I don't have an ability to walk in that realm just yet. Although, I do understand the realm of HTML 5 and cross platform can be tricksy in and of itself. And video can be tricksy in and of itself. So my best guess is that you will get what you will get and there are no guarantees.

Hope this helps a bit... Rick

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DrewNYAuthor
Participating Frequently
April 27, 2014

Hi, Rick!  Thanks--I posted in the main forum first, but when 50 people viewed it and no one chimed in, I got worried, looked around, and found the Audio/Video sub-forum,  But I forgot to delete my question from the main forum; sorry about that.  I see a moderator has since done that, happily.

I like your idea of leaving a couple of pixels on the stage--worth playing with that.

As to the video format for publishing, I hope someone else on this forum weighs in.  I'm starting to think that people aren't adding their thoughts because the video and HTML5 publishes are, as you and Gollum would say, tricksy.  ;-)  I'll still hope someone out there has some hands-on experience with this situation and can provide some guidance that would save me a lot of time and errors.  Because, of course, I need a solutions that will work reliably on pc, iPad, and Android tablet.  Happily, I don't need LMS passback or even interactivity for this project.

Thanks.

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