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knowman
Participant
May 2, 2016
Answered

Self-running output video with selectable content?

  • May 2, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 489 views

I have some familiarity with Captivate but not enough to confirm whether or not the request I got is an option in Captivate - I'm not even sure if there is some specific language/words I should be using to help find the answers.

Basically, we're producing five 3-minute videos with different features of our software. The request we've gotten is to combine all of those into one file that allows someone to choose to play some or all of the segments. So to start you'd open the video, see the ToC with the five segments, choose the two or three you wanted to see and hit play, and it would only play those two or three instead of all 5.

I expect there are other ways to do this - via Javascript and JQuery, for example - but I thought I would ask if any of the power users on the forum happened to know if this sort of functionality is available via Captivate?

Thank you,

David

(we're using Captivate 7 if it makes a difference, but if it's available in a later version, that would be good to know too.)

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer RodWard

You mention this is "self-running" output.  When we see that in the Captivate world we usually think you are referring to an EXE format output. It's basically the same as SWF output but runs in its own window without requiring a browser.

Is that what you are looking for?

If using SWF or EXE, I would suggest you investigate publishing your modules to SWF and then use the Aggregator tool that comes with Captivate to bundle them all into a single EXE that shows all of the topics under a single Table of Contents on the side.  This is going to be your easiest solution.

I wouldn't actually be advising you require the viewer to make an initial selection of which topics they want to play in order.  I think that's probably overkill. Just letting the viewer click the TOC items they are interested in so that they are jumped to the first slide of those topics.

However, if you DO have your heart set on having the user pre-select which topics to play in order, then I would recommend you just copy slides from all five topics into the same CPTX, set up a menu slide at the beginning where the viewer can nominate which topics they want to see and a button to initiate the play.  This solution will require that you use Variables and Conditional Advanced Actions to control which topics then get played and which ones get skipped.

All of these things are possible with the functionality found in Captivate 7, but Cp9 has a lot of goodies too.

1 reply

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
May 3, 2016

You mention this is "self-running" output.  When we see that in the Captivate world we usually think you are referring to an EXE format output. It's basically the same as SWF output but runs in its own window without requiring a browser.

Is that what you are looking for?

If using SWF or EXE, I would suggest you investigate publishing your modules to SWF and then use the Aggregator tool that comes with Captivate to bundle them all into a single EXE that shows all of the topics under a single Table of Contents on the side.  This is going to be your easiest solution.

I wouldn't actually be advising you require the viewer to make an initial selection of which topics they want to play in order.  I think that's probably overkill. Just letting the viewer click the TOC items they are interested in so that they are jumped to the first slide of those topics.

However, if you DO have your heart set on having the user pre-select which topics to play in order, then I would recommend you just copy slides from all five topics into the same CPTX, set up a menu slide at the beginning where the viewer can nominate which topics they want to see and a button to initiate the play.  This solution will require that you use Variables and Conditional Advanced Actions to control which topics then get played and which ones get skipped.

All of these things are possible with the functionality found in Captivate 7, but Cp9 has a lot of goodies too.

K
knowmanAuthor
Participant
May 3, 2016

Thanks, Rod. It's not so much what I have my heart set on as what was requested by management.

I think the idea is to set up a kiosk computer/tablet and have someone be able to come up and pick the modules they want to learn about and then hit play, rather than having to come back to the ToC for each one. Seems like it's not a lot to ask people just to select the videos one at a time but I was asked if it could do this. I'll have to read up on Variables and Conditional Advanced Actions, but I very much appreciate being pointed in the right direction and am looking forward to learning more about the capability.

Thank you for your help!

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 3, 2016

You can start here and work your way through some topics via the links at the bottom:

Using Adobe Captivate's Advanced Actions to 'Program' E-learning Interactivity | Infosemantics Pty Ltd

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