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davidr21573963
Participant
January 22, 2016
Answered

Transcript text not remaining on screen after audio has been played - CP8

  • January 22, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 802 views

I'm reaching out for support on a strange Captivate 8 issue where the transcript of audio is not remaining on screen after the audio has played. In an ideal world, the user selects the Transcript button and the text remains until the user manually closes the box.

This issue of text appears to be random as some slides which basically have the same structure sometimes show the captions all throughout, and sometimes they disappear. The normal behaviour we expect would be to remain on screen.

We have tried numerous ways to attempt to resolve the problem:

  1. Moved pauses of buttons/clickboxes to kick in after/before the audio (sometimes, this worked)
  2. Reset and removed the transitions
  3. Removed the audio and added back in. Also tried renaming it so it becomes a new item in the library.
  4. Create a new slide. (sometimes this worked)
  5. Removed and re-added the captions.
  6. Re-timed the audio - delayed it a few seconds to start.
  7. Removed all buttons that pauses the slide.

We have exhausted all options and hoping the community could help. In the interest of our clients confidentiality with material, I have not posted links to the source files - but I'm happy to share with a guru on here privately if they were keen to dig around and assist with a solution.

Hope someone can help

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer RodWard

Captivate's default behaviour is that the Closed Caption text only appears while there is an audio file present on the timeline.  As soon as there is no audio playing, the CC text disappears.

If you want the CC text to stay longer, you need to extend your audio clip with some very low level sound (not pure silence) so that Captivate still thinks there is audio playing.

2 replies

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davidr21573963Author
Participant
February 12, 2016

Haven't considered that, interesting suggestion.

So in our case we have a transcript button, are you suggesting we set the button to launch the Scrolling Text Learning Interaction and (set time for Rest of Project)?

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 12, 2016

There are a few possibilities:

  • IF your entire transcript is not too big to fit in a single Scrolling Text interaction, then you could just have one such interaction set timed for Rest of Project.  The user needs to scroll the interaction to show the text that should appear for that part of the presentation.  You can toggle the visibility of the interaction for the entire project via your Transcript button using variables and Conditional Actions.
  • If your transcript is too big for a single scrolling interaction, you could have one on each slide where you want the transcript to appear and just set the interaction to time for Rest of Slide, not rest of project.  The user may still need to scroll the interaction to see all text for that slide. 
  • If you don't want the user to have to scroll anything, and you still don't want to use Captivate's default CC text arrangement, then you could have Smart Shapes containing text appear on the slide, timed to sync with the voiceover audio.  But Smart Shapes cannot do scrolling text.
gretchr88
gretchr88
Participant
September 20, 2018

Does Adobe plan to ever put in a real transcript feature?  I've seen posts on this for several years.  Seems like an obvious one to add to make it a full-featured program.

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
January 22, 2016

Captivate's default behaviour is that the Closed Caption text only appears while there is an audio file present on the timeline.  As soon as there is no audio playing, the CC text disappears.

If you want the CC text to stay longer, you need to extend your audio clip with some very low level sound (not pure silence) so that Captivate still thinks there is audio playing.

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davidr21573963Author
Participant
February 1, 2016

Thanks Rod, this work around seems to have worked. Though we still find it odd that the Transcript is linked to the length of the audio. If you were deaf and a slow reader, shouldn't you have the choice to read the audio transcript in your own pace?

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 2, 2016

I think you need to see the text in this case as Closed Captioning rather than a Transcript.

You are correct that a Transcript is usually present all the time and you can scroll through the entire script at will regardless of where the audio is currently talking.  That's the way Articulate Storyline has chosen to implement this feature in their app.  (You sound like you may already be familiar with that app.)

However, Closed Captioning always works differently. The words are typically ONLY present on screen while they are being spoken.  If you think of the Closed Captioning text that runs along the bottom of a foreign language movie, isn't that the way it works?  That's the way Adobe Captivate has chosen to implement their feature.

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