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R
Raymond_S__Cole
Inspiring
October 15, 2015
Question

How do I reduce the slide time/duration? The background layer won't let me drag its ending edge.

  • October 15, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 1327 views

Hi,

I've got a drag and drop operation implemented on a slide whose background was imported from a PowerPoint slide. When the slide was imported, the duration in Captivate 9 got set to 3 seconds. The drag and drop operation puts a pause at 1.5 seconds, where it waits for the learner to complete the drags and click Submit. I'm trying to figure out how to reduce the slide time to 0.2 seconds so as to not have the playback scrubber move distractingly across the bottom of the screen (there is no audio on this slide). Instead of the default 3 seconds (with a pause at 1.5 seconds) I want the slide duration to be 0.2 seconds with a pause at 0.1 second. Every layer in the timeline allows me to grab its right edge and drag it leftward until the duration is 0.2 seconds. But the background layer that I imported from PowerPoint will not let me drag its right edge. Although Captivate puts the double-arrow cursor there as if I should be able to drag the edge, when I try to drag it to the left to shorten the duration, nothing happens.

If instead I click the background layer and then click the Timing tab in the properties panel, I can change the Slide Duration value from 3 to 0.2 seconds. But doing so has no effect on the background layer in my timeline, and in fact, as soon as I click the layer in the timeline, the Slide Duration value in the properties panel gets reset to 3 seconds.

My question: How do I change the slide duration (and, therefore, all objects in the timeline, including the background image) to 0.2 seconds?

Thanks!

    -Ray

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    October 15, 2015

    That is a very bad idea! There is a lot going on in a D&D slide, some time is needed to evaluate all the scripting, loading. Never reduce a slide to such a short duration unless you need a dummy slide that is just needed to execute a script and not for viewing objects. This is my first answer, based on many years of experience with Captivate.

    How did you create the background? I hope you used the image and applied that as background, not imported the PPT slide? If you import a PPT-slide it is converted to a movie slide, which could explain your issue.

    Depending on the actions you specify for Success/failure, only the active part of the slide will be 'scrubbed', default is indeed 1.5sec. Why use a playbar if you find the movement distracting? You can easily create custom navigation and toggle buttons for other functionality like CC, TOC, Audio. Moreover, such a progress bar has only sense for a simple linear project, where most engaging eLearning courses will have branching, non-linear navigation which makes that progress bar not distracting, but simply confusing to the user. A default 3 seconds for most slides is just fine, allows possible actions to be executed On Enter and eventually On Exit, transitions and effects to appear. It is also very short, 3 seconds, unless you have a course with very few slides.

    Now the answer: it is possible to change the pausing point for the D&D on its panel, Tab 'Actions'.  I could easily reduce it to 1sec instead of 1.5secs. Use the Timing Properties panel to reduce the slide duration. But please, do not use 0.2 secs for the reasons I tried to explain.

    R
    Raymond_S__ColeAuthor
    Inspiring
    October 15, 2015

    Hi Lilybiri,

    Thanks for your quick reply! I guess you can tell I am a Captivate newbie. But I'm coming to the task with experience in a number of other tools. Reducing the slide duration is a strategy I have used many times in Adobe Presenter projects. I use animation to draw the learners eye, because movement on the screen does that so effectively. But the flip side of that is, when there is no audio, I don't want the movement of the scrubber drawing the learner's eye. Since there is no audio, there is also no need for that scrubber to move. Setting the slide duration to a fraction of a second has the practical effect of simply jumping the slider immediately to the end where it won't be a distraction.

    I prefer not to remove the scrubber because having it come and go a lot from slide to slide can also be distracting. In practice, I've found that reducing the slide duration to 0.1 or 0.2 seconds usually provides the least distracting compromise. But it sounds like you are saying that Captivate might not have enough time to execute all the internal setup code it needs to run if I give it such a short amount of time. That's good to know, but I'd still like to try it.

    I did indeed import the PowerPoint slide, so I guess that means my background layer is a movie? If I may be permitted a short newbie rant, I have to say that if I replace the imported background with an image, I will have replaced every element that I originally imported from PowerPoint, making the import from PowerPoint completely pointless. Captivate didn't place the drag objects or drop objects in my PowerPoint slide as separate elements on my Captivate timeline after import, so I had to remove all of them from the PowerPoint and reimport it, then import each drag object image and drop target image separately. Now it turns out that the background I imported from PowerPoint also needs to be replaced. One has to ask, what good is importing from PowerPoint then?

    Anyway, I do appreciate your help. Learning a new tool has its challenges, but I think learning a new tool when you have experience working with other similar tools can sometimes be even more frustrating because of the way the new tool violates expectations you've developed from working in those other tools.

    Cheers!

        -Ray

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    October 15, 2015

    Thanks for not being disturbed or frustrated by my answer.

    There are much better plug-ins to convert PPT to HTML than using Captivate. You discovered already the reason. Indeed, that is why you cannot change the duration because it is a movie (that will not play in HTML5 output). If you are serious about creating eLearning start from scratch in Captivate, using the assets from PPT. In this case use an image that you can import to the Library and put on a slide or master slide (even merge is possible).  Personally I never recommend importing PPT-slides unless for a quick presentation. To me PPT is a good presentation tool, but Captivate is an eLearning tool and whatever anyone tells those are as different from each other as a screwdriver from a drilling machine. You can use a screwdriver to 'drill' a small hole, but it is not as efficient. By definition to me each eLearning course is not linear, hence my reason for never using the playbar because its control buttons and progress bar are only useful for linear projects. I always create custom navigation and control buttons. The available TOC can be used as a better way for free navigation and for showing total duration and visited slides (even if they are not in sequence).

    Try to be open-minded, not transferring immediately your experiences and expectations from other tools to Captivate. It is a very flexible, multi-featured tool (more than just a drilling machine, you can attach other tools), but often acts as a thoroughbred Take the time to tame it and you'll discover possibilities that you cannot imagine today.

    Trust me about the slide duration, I will never go below 1 sec and even that is rare.

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