How to chain several movies in one sco ?

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
October 24, 2007
6 replies
619 views

for obvious reasons of size, I want to chain several movies, which belong to a same sco.
that means that :
I want to load an animation A1.1 (the official sco). At the end of the A1.1, the A1.2 is called and loaded, at the end of the A1.2, the A1.3 is loaded, and so on.
if I use the action "Load another film" at the end of a movie, the A.1.2 movie will be considered as a new sco
if I import the A1.2 on a empty slide at the end of the A1.1, I increase I will actually get only one movie, and that is what I don't want.
I cannot use the menubuilder, because the movies are playing in a lms

and finally, I'm using captivate 1, because the customer doesn't want to upgrade to captivate 3

does someone have a solution ?

thanks

Jean-Paul

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

jbradley88

Participating Frequently

Jean-Paul,

As you have seen, you CANNOT break a SCO into multiple parts and link them together via Captivate. SCORM does not support this. Captivate treats separate files as separate SCOs, so you must specify each animation as a separate SCO in your manifest: a_2_1 must be a distinct SCO, a_2_2 is another distinct SCO, a_2_3 is another SCO, and so on.

SCORM works by initializing the tracking mechanism for each SCO separately when it is launched. The LMS only expects results from the SCOs that it launched, so stringing a bunch of them together via Captivate without the LMS's knowledge will just generate errors when the subsequent files try to report back to the LMS.

Lindsay,

The "menu" in a SCORM-compliant system is generated via an XML file known as a manifest (I think the actual filename is typically imsmanifest.xml). The manifest describes the entire course, including lesson names, filenames, descriptions, runtimes, etc. The LMS takes this information and uses it generate the course in the system, including the menu.

To create a multi-SCO manifest, you can either create it by hand from a sample file using Notepad or any XML editor ( http://www.adlnet.gov/news/articles/index.aspx?ID=406), or you can use a 3rd-party tool such as a free Dreamweaver extension or a dedicated software product.

If your LMS only supports SCORM 1.2, the Manifest Maker extension for Dreamweaver can do the job. SCORM 2004 requires something else... there's an L5 SCORM Producer extension available for Dreamweaver, but I don't know for sure if it outputs SCORM 2004. The extensions are available on the Dreamweaver Exchange, although I think they are only available through Dreamweaver 8 so CS3 users may be out of luck.

There are also a few commercial tools available. Here's a link that may be a bit outdated but if you go this route and find something that suits your needs, maybe you could post an update on what worked for you:

http://adlcommunity.net/mod/data/view.php?id=201

A

Anonymous

All,

I am looking to utilize mult-sco for the first time and am a bit confused... how do you actually create the "menu"? Does that happen in Dreamweaver?

A

Anonymous

Hi Bradley,

my problem is not to link scos and navigate from one sco to another, that's under the responsability of the LMS.

my question is how to launch a sco containing several animations (cp movies).

but actually, I think I have the solution : that is that I must create a frameset page.
it will contain the API scripts, and two frames, one empty, and the other with the object and embed tags.

I let you know about the solution.

and thanks for your help

Jean-Paul

A

Anonymous

Hi Bradley,

my problem is not to link scos and navigate from one sco to another, that's under the responsability of the LMS.

my question is how to launch a sco containing several animations (cp movies).

but actually, I think I have the solution : that is that I must create a frameset page.
it will contain the API scripts, and two frames, one empty, and the other with the object and embed tags.

I let you know about the solution.

and thanks for your help

Jean-Paul

J

jbradley88

Participating Frequently

FYI - What's not clear from the Adobe Knowledge Base article is that SCORM 1.2 doesn't allow you to "link" multiple SCOs together for navigation purposes.

The method described allows you to build a single manifest that you can import into your LMS as a multi-SCO course, but the SCOs are not "linked together" in any way - each SCO must be launched individually from the LMS menu.

If that's ok with you, then you're golden.

Otherwise, you'll need to create your course as SCORM 2004, which DOES allow the LMS to seamlessly launch one piece after the other (a process known as "sequencing").

What's the catch, you say? Captivate also can't create multi-SCO manifests for SCORM 2004. You'll still need to use Manifest Maker or something similar to create your SCORM manifest.

<- That's *supposed* to be a frowny face...

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi Jean-Paul

See if the link below helps in any way.

Click here

Cheers... Rick

A

Anonymous

Thank you for your answer, but my pb is quite different, because I know how to create a manifest for a multiple scos project.
but I have some problem to create a sco with multiple animations.
I.E : i have a sco which is very long. I have cut it into four animations a_2_1, a_2_2, a_2_3 and a_2_4.
I declare the a_2_1 animation as a sco, and it is linked to the a_2_2, and so on.
the problem is that the lms sends me a error message because the a_2_1 sco is considered as completed, and the a_2_2 movie isn't known by the lms, or if i declare the second animation as a sco as well, the error is that the lms is already initialized.

I think that the solution is to create a frameset page with two frames (one invisible and one visible), and of course to load the animations in the visible frame. the api scripts must be in the frameset page.

Thanks

Jean-Paul

F

flowburner

Participant

Hi,

Jean- Paul, did your solution work?

I have tried two approaches to merge two Captivate projects in a SCORM compliant way. So far without success.

Environment:
IE6
Captivate 3, Flash 7 & ActionScript 2.0
Reload player for testing

1. Attached JavaScript event to Captivate Button or Slide:

var movie=document.getElementById('Captivate');movie.loadMovie(0,'NextMovie.swf');movie.TGotoFrame("/", 0);movie.Play();

(In Captivate, use parentheses or write JavaScript without newlines as above)

Results:
Presentation works as wanted in IE 6.
loadMovie calls do not work in FireFox.
SCORM works ok with the first movie. But the loaded second movie does not emit any SCORM events. You can't add SCORM quizzes to presentations with this technique.

2. Created a wrapper swf to chain two movieclips with the following ActionScript:

_root.createEmptyMovieClip( 'my_mc' , 1))

my_mc._x = 0;
my_mc._y = 0;

my_mc.loadMovie("FirstMovie.swf", 1);

if(my_mc._currentframe==my_mc._totalframes){
my_mc.loadMovie("SecondMovie.swf", 1);
}

This always loads the SecondMovie.swf immediately after FirstMovie.swf. I debugged this with trace and found that the Captivate-generated movieclips run in a single frame:

function traceFrames():Void {
trace("my_mc._currentframe: " + my_mc._currentframe);
trace("my_mc._totalframes: " + my_mc._totalframes);
}
setInterval(this, "traceFrames", 1000);

Obviously, the previous script didn't work in detecting the end of the first clip. I also tried to load two clips in different movieclips.

Results:
With a single movie in a wrapper swf SCORM tracking worked fine.
With two files in different movieclips SCORM tracking didn't work at all.

After this, I decided to give up and stay in one Captivate project, even if this restricts available controls. For example, I would like to show a menu in a presentation sections but not in a final test that allows forward-only navigation.

-flowburner-

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