Is it possible to import a png sequence to be used as an animation into Captivate 7?

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
December 4, 2014
2 replies
2027 views

Knowing that png files come into Captivate quite well, I am wondering if it is possible to bring in a sequence of png files, that are an animation, without having to bring them in one at a time and lining them up on the timeline one after the other?

Thanks,

Dan

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Lilybiri

Legend

I would rather use Edge Animate to create that animation.

daniel_sposatoAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for your reply. I have used Edge to make animations, and it works great. The problem is that with Cpt 7 you have 2 ways of getting the animations in. Either through the use of a Web Object (which shows you nothing in Captivate and you can't layer anything above it), or the App Packager (which is worse, because if you need to update the course, for any reason in the future, then you need to use the App Packager every time you make an update after republishing the course). Both are undesirable for what we want to do. Unless I'm missing something?

Not sure if Edge pushes out animated gif files but FLash does and I'm much more familiar with it.

eLearning Guy

Inspiring

I just ran into this very need yesterday!

If you have access to Fireworks or Photoshop then you can just create an animated gif from your png (or any other images you have). That is probably the best way to go.

The project I'm currently working on uses a lot of custom Javascript (via the 'Execute Javascript' feature for smartshape buttons, etc.). So I initially tried using the JS setTimeout() method but that does not work beyond two iterations for some reason. (i.e., if you have multiple setTimeout() functions only the first one or two would run). In the end I just combined the four images I needed to transition between into a single animated gif and imported that. Works great.

There is also a free online converter that will allow you to upload your images and export as an animated gif, if you don't have Fireworks/Photoshop.

daniel_sposatoAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for your reply. However, I have tried going the route of animated gif files already with mixed results (more bad than good) and was hoping there was an easy way to drop in a sequence of png files, as I would imagine that they would all show.

But may I ask the settings (to save the files) you used for your animated gif files? The problem with mine was that the animations would not play (most of the time) when I would run the slides with the animations in IE and Safari. The animation looked fine in Captivate but as soon as I pushed them out to HTML5 animations would not play. I have been using Photoshop with the following settings in the image below:

Also, if you could let me know if you tested your course with any gif animations in IE or Safari and let me know your results, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!!!

eLearning Guy

Inspiring

I didn't use Photoshop - I used Fireworks to do it. I simply imported the images and attached each to a separate 'state', set the timing, and published. There are tutorials online that show how to do it.

I just tested an animated gif in Captivate in both Chrome and IE11 and works fine in both. I am on my windows 7 laptop this morning so can't test on Safari but I can't imagine it wouldn't work fine. I am only viewing it in HTML5 output. I don't use the swf output anymore. That said, I just noticed that, oddly, upon import Captivate places the animated gif file into the Library with the swf extension.

Edge Animate is a bit overkill for this type of thing, as it is just more external source you'll have to keep an eye on, but of course that would work too.

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