Possible for end user to switch video files and audio channels on the fly?

Question

Hi all, I've never used Captivate and am trying to determine if it will work for my needs. While I've been creating animations professionally for many years, they are primarily pre-rendered and I have limited knowledge of interactive tools.

I'm wondering if Captivate can be used to make an interactive video, where the end user can do things like switch video streams on the fly, while the video continues to play (i.e. change to another camera angle), change audio channels (i.e. turn commentary on and off), and turn overlays on/off. I'm hoping all of these can be done while the video continues to play, through controls that are either always on screen, or ideally can be hidden until the user moves his/her mouse.

Are these all functions that Captivate is capable of doing? Any tutorials you could point me to? Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

Lilybiri · Answer

You seem to think that Captivate is a video tool, at least from what I see in your question you are only talking about interactive video, not about interactive tutorials.

Captivate can create interactive video, which I would situate to be a bit better than passive video, but a long way from real interactive tutorials. This presentation based on a webinar which I presented about basics of interactivity may be clarifying:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/interactivity-in-captivate-back-to-basics

To answer some of your questions: you cannot switch camera view, unless you do this in a video application and use Captivate's many tools to switch between videos. It is very easy to turn audio on./off, same for Closed Captioning and other similar situations. You just need to toggle a system variable (Boolean).

Overlays as they exist in Interactive video cannot be turned off. But if you create a real interactive course, the sky is the limit: branching, scenario-based, based on results tests, any control can be given to the learner. Show/hide control panels is possible for video and also for interactive courses. Beware: hovering is a feature which only exists for non-mobile devices (desktop/laptop).

You'll find the animation features in Captivate rather basic, primary goal is to make learning efficient.

If you want only interactive video, have couple of blogs about them. This is a published interactive video explaining the creation of a Play/Pause button (custom, there is a default one on the default playbar as well).

Custom Play/Pause button

You'll find tons of tutorials about Captivate, mostly passive video (too bad). The eLearning community which you can access from within Captivate offers not only videos, but also blogs and sample projects.

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