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dicknsont
Participating Frequently
October 3, 2007
Question

SWF from Captivate in other video editors

  • October 3, 2007
  • 3 replies
  • 594 views
I have published some Captivate 2.0 movies to .swfs and they work fine and run in my browser just fine. However, another group needs them converted to a video format to put into another project.

No problem, I say, since we have Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 which lists .swf as an import file format and .wmv and/or mpeg as an export file format.

The problem is that when I bring the Captivate swfs into PE it sees them as 1 second/x# of frames. I can download a random swf from the Internet and PE reads it just fine, XXXseconds/XXX# of frames.

I have tried tinkering with just about every setting in Captivate and still can't get it to work. I've also tried just a swf to .avi converted which worked fine, the .avi plays just fine, but when I bring that .avi into an editor like PE it's one second long again.

Help!
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    3 replies

    N
    Newsgroup_User
    Inspiring
    October 4, 2007
    I can't believe I didn't notice before that Captivate can't output to a
    movie format.
    I'd download a trial version of Camtasia, open the SWF you created with
    Captivate, and use Camtasia to record it - then output to AVI.

    I think many conversion utilities expect Flash documents to be 'linear'.
    Captivate has movie clips in movie clips and is not a linear file...so
    these conversion utilities get confused.

    Essentially, I think you'll need to record the original SWFs playback
    with some other software then publish as a movie. There are lots of SWF
    to AVI conversion utilities out there but I dunno how well any will work
    with Captivate-generated SWFs.
    Erik

    dicknsont wrote:
    > I have published some Captivate 2.0 movies to .swfs and they work fine and run
    > in my browser just fine. However, another group needs them converted to a video
    > format to put into another project.
    --
    Erik Lord
    http://www.capemedia.net
    Adobe Community Expert - Authorware
    http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/
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    D
    dicknsontAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    October 5, 2007
    Yes, it's all very weird. PE sees the .swfs created in CP differently that other swf, drop frame vs no drop frame, can't remember now which was which.

    I semi solve the problem with the CP 3 demo. I captured full motion which created multiple swfs as CP3 now does. The first one, the "header" if you will still had the same problem but the longer ones that actually contained the motion worked OK in both PE and the swf to avi converter. In some cases I had to glue a couple of those together but that worked OK.

    Now I can tell my boss I need a PC3 license :-)
    J
    jbradley88
    Participating Frequently
    October 3, 2007
    Bummer about the conversion not working. I'd swear the article was for Captivate 2 when it came out, but maybe not. Of all people, Silke would have had access to a build of Captivate 3 long before anyone else.

    I wonder if it's not a case of the target file needing to already run like a movie, i.e. no buttons or click boxes to pause things? Does your file have any buttons or anything that would stop the movie from running end to end?
    D
    dicknsontAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    October 3, 2007
    I know the article was CP3 because it shows picking the version of flash when you publish which you can't do in CP2. But I downloaded CP3 demo and tried and got the same result. It's like it only sees the first slide. I eported to both Flash 7 and 9. I'm not trying to convert to Ipod, but tried both mpg and avi and got the same results.

    The move is made just capturing, no buttons, no interativity etc. It runs striaight through just fine in the Flash player.

    When I import it into PE, it doesn't even create the thumbnail of the first slide.

    Very frustrated...

    Teri
    Captiv8r
    Captiv8r
    Legend
    October 3, 2007
    Hi Teri

    Sorry, but that example was indeed using Captivate 2. Captivate 2 allowed choosing between Flash target versions just like 3 does. 3 doesn't allow targeting Flash Player 6. Also note that the Captivate icon changed from the curvy weird backward c to a sqaure box. What you see in that image is further evidence that this was a Captivate 2 screen shot.

    Cheers... Rick
    J
    jbradley88
    Participating Frequently
    October 3, 2007
    Have you seen this article in the Captivate Developer Center?

    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/captivate/articles/ipod.html


    It talks about converting a Captivate SWF to video, although you mention that you've already tried converting to avi so maybe it won't help in your case.

    If you have Flash, you may want to try publishing the Captivate file to Flash, saving it as SWF there and then try going to video from that.
    D
    dicknsontAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    October 3, 2007
    I don't have Flash and I don't have Captivate 3 which is what the article uses. Using the swf to avi converter is what i tried and it still only gives me a 1-3 seconds of video from a swf that's 30 or so seconds long.
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