A

Anonymous

Question

SWF Compilation Failed

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
September 6, 2010
19 replies
29308 views

I am using Captivate 5 on a Windows Vista machine. I upgraded from Captivate 4 a week ago and successfully published one project in Captivate 5 before this one. I have compiled the current project a dozen times without a problem. But, when I added the project information and then tried to publish the project, I got the following error: "Swf compilation failed. Note: Please verify if any of the actionscript keywords is used as user variable name." [sic] I am not using variables in this project, so this error does not make any sense to me.

I am able to preview each slide individually. However, I get the above error message when I attempt to preview the whole project. I tried copying the slides, audio, and captions to a new blank project and got the same error when I attempted to publish it. I also attempted to remove all the project information and publish to project with no success.

Any ideas why this may be happening and what I can do about it -- short of starting the project over from scratch?

Thank you.

Isaac

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john-player-one

Known Participant

I am having the same problem, and thank you for all the responses.

I think my problem could be too many Text Box Variables (over 100) and/or a TEB variable that actually has the same name as an actionscript variable.

I will post again once the problem is fixed.

G5_Matty

Known Participant

That is possible, John. Please let me know what you find.

Matthew McClellan

North Carolina, USA

Sent from my iPad

J

Johan_Greyling

Participant

Hi guys,

Had exactly the same problem, but none of these responses were relevant. No project information, minimal text boxes ect. I then started reverse engineering my project up to the point where I found the culprit:

I had a Text Caption box on a certain slide. Nothing wrong with this right. As soon as this text box contained the text [equals(1,true)] (Yeah, I needed a text box to show that), then the compile would fail. I then went on to discover that it is the [ ] causing the hassle. If I remove any one of them the compiler is happy.

Now, my guess is that as soon as you add a caption/text/project information which contains a [ and a ] that the compiler is trying to do something with this.

I hope this helps if you were still stuck at this point.

Johan.

A

Anonymous

This is a freaky issue, and is much deeper than it appears. People have different conjectures about the origin and fix of the issue, as can be seen in thread above, but none of the above solution is a sure shot solution.

To reproduce this issue, simply create 111 copies of a text entry box and the "swf compilation failed" error would start to appear.

Please find bug.cptx from this link https://acrobat.com/#d=u-oMRZ8t03Jg*MVSpQMfjA

J

Johnathan_Clayborn

Participant

I had this issue come up, but I have also resolved it. Yesterday one of my network techs and I were testing out the internal server reporting function. I made a "fake test" and it published fine, but the .php file wasn't working. This morning he moved the .php file and sent me a new link in an email. I copied the link and pasted it into the quiz preferences and then, suddenly, I got this error. Reading what was written above I deleted the file path in the reporting options, pasted it into notepad intstead (to strip out any background information) and then re-copied and pasted back into the reporting options and *viola*! it worked like a charm. For me in my case at least this seemed to be directly and decisively related to copying and pasting into the reporting options fields. My advice: write it in manually or filter everything through notepad first.

G5_Matty

Known Participant

Thank you for keeping the thread updated, Johnathan.

G5_Matty

Known Participant

I ran into this very problem today, after opening a CP4 project for rework in CP5. An important detail in my situation is that the original was created using a corporate CP template. Apparently, there is a variable or keyword in that template that CP5 doesn't like. Until I have time to break into that template to search out the bug, I simply:

Copied the slides out of the original project
Created a new CP5 project with the same dimensions
Pasted the slides into it, which throws out the template features
Copied the common/templated objects into the Master Slide and applied it

After that, I threw out the "widget" page counters, etc. in favor of using CP5 variables. Less is more in CP5, I've been having great luck with it.

Hopefully this helps somebody

Thanks all for your input, which I found today while Googling my problem. Your thoughts have been a great help.

-Matt

J

JTW_Jr

Participating Frequently

Thanks for the information , removing the " from the project information area

allowed me to edit and publish a CP4 file in Captivate 5. I was about to uninstall

the app and be done with it.

Man I wish Adobe was more forth coming with this type of information for their loyal customers.

** At first I copied all slides to a new project , which did work , but only due to the Project Information not being copied along with the slides **

G5_Matty

Known Participant

Thanks for confirming it all, JTW. I'd tried the "copy all slides" approach when I didn't find any quotation marks in my Project Info. I continue to check, though.

Happy New Year!

A

Anonymous

My guess is that this error occurs when certain characters -- which are as yet unknown -- are used in a Captivate project. In my case, the use of double quotes (") in the project information box is what caused the original and subsequent errors (even if they were not cut and pasted into the project). I now replace double quotes with single quotes (') and have not run into and Swf compilation failed error since.

Reading over the messages in this thread it appears that other people's errors are similarly caused by character conflicts (for lack of a better term). These conflicts are highly complex and no one has a complete list of the problematic characters and the situations in which they cause conflicts, but they are a common thread in most posts. Someone who knows more about computer programing may be able to pinpoint what all the problematic characters have in common. It will likely be a set of simple characters and code imported into a project with cut and paste.

Hope this moves the discussion forward.

V

vishhere

Participating Frequently

Hello There,

I'm able to reproduce the issue with double quotes in the project information dialog. Thank you for helping us to repro the issue. I suggest you to file a wishlist bug at https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=5

Thanks,

Vish

sssrose

Known Participant

I had this happen as well and here is what I did to resolve the problem...

I guessed that it was due to a text entry box that I gave a custom variable to. I went through them and renamed any that I thought actionscript may own. I had one that I labled "keyss". I think this was the bad guy. Due to using the same environment as my template I had many different variables saved in my project. I just cut and pasted it into a blank new document after changing this variable. And republished. Keeping my variables cleared up seemed to work for me. Good luck!

J

JB_Metrics

Known Participant

Okay, I came across the same error for 10 quizzes that I built using Captivate 5 that compiled brilliantly until I added reporting when only the first quiz compiled correctly and the other 9 came up with the same error. I had copied and pasted the course titles from an excel spreadsheet (which were in uppercase and I used Proper() to convert to proper case). When I copied the results (it must have also copied part of the function). At which point the compiling failed because Proper() was not defined in my swf code.

The moral of the story is be careful what you copy, even if it displays as simple text, there can be code behind it that it reads. I am not saying this is what the others here are experiencing, but it is what caused my Captivate quizzes to fail to Publish.

A

Anonymous

I rebuilt the project from scratch and saved it along the way. The problem occurred again at the exactly the same point as before. I added the project information and received the below error. It does not seem to mater what information I add. So there could not be a conflict between the project information and any actionscript keywords.

The only work around I figured out so far is simply to omit the project information, which is bothersome.

It surprises me that Adobe would put out a major release with such a major flaw. This is reminiscent of Microsoft's premature bug-ridden releases. I hope Adobe provides a patch soon.

I saved three versions of the rebuilt project along the way and am happy to share them with anyone who is interested. Everything works up until version three. Then I get the error message.

W

webtrainer_CA

Participating Frequently

Thanks WCEnglish and congratulations if you have found a workaround! I have tried to replicate what you did, but no success...

Congrats again but there must be something more to this issue (at least for me )

ON EDIT: I was able to see that my Java runtime environment was not setup properly. I removed Java then re-installed the 64 bit JRE. Now I can preview, without getting the error message we were getting, but the actual SWF does not load, so it acts like it is pre-loading...forever!

I'll update further ... I'm (hopefully) getting close to a resolution. I had an Environment Variable for Java and I think I need to set that up again.

ON FINAL EDIT: Problem resolved!

I had to remove the JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS environment variable (that Flash told me to add when I tried to launch Flash for the first time).

All the Captivate files I had created before messing with the JRE, I will now need to re-create. For some reason, the files I created during my JRE issues prevent the movie from loading...

So for me, it was a combination of 64 bit OS, doing what Flash told me to do (adding an unnecessary environment variable), and possibly having the incorrect JRE loaded too.

A

Anonymous

webtrainer_CA,

You put a lot of work into this. People who come across this post in the days and months to come are going to be very grateful to you. It never occurred to me the error would have anything to do with the Java Runtime Environment. I will keep that in mind If I ever run into this problem again.

I have successfully complied two new projects since my last post and have not encountered the error on publication or preview. I even included the project information without a problem. This may have something to do with the fact that I updated JRE (by totally coincidence I was prompted to by the automatic update extension).

Just to clarify my last post (if it even matters anymore), when I said I "removed the project information," I was not clear. I in fact DID NOT ADD any information. I left the dummy email and web site information in place. But, this is likely a red herring as webtrainer_CA shows.

M

missscreant

Participant

Just to add, I am facing the same issue, using osx on a mac, any project, saved or unsaved, with or without captures throws the same error upon preview and compile. Making it essentially completely unusable. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

W

webtrainer_CA

Participating Frequently

This issue is definitely a show-stopper! Come on Adobe give us some help please!

PINGING ADOBE SUPPORT R U THERE?

Message was edited by: webtrainer_CA

W

webtrainer_CA

Participating Frequently

Sorry that I don't have an answer...I just wanted to ping this discussion to keep this question active and hopefully we'll get an answer

soon!

I'm on Windows 7 and have the whole eLearning Suite v2 installed. I have tried some different things; from blank template adding a few buttons, doing a capture simulation, and importing PowerPoint slides. All of which have the same error, as shown below:

ON EDIT: In addition to not being able to preview the course, I cannot publish either. This is a serious error and I really really hope we get some help with this soon!

Has anyone else had this issue? I would be interested to know if this is widespread or a unique situation...

Message was edited by: webtrainer_CA

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