Adding a background to all slides

Report · Aug 03, 2007

I'm trying to do something that was easy to do in a freeware application ( Wink). I am capturing at 1280x800 and want to resize the project so I can output at 1280x1024 and use a special 1280x1024 background for all slides. The background contains a title and company logo. I would need to shift all slide content by 60 pixels for this to work. As stated earlier, Wink can do this easily but I cannot find a way in Captivate. I am able to resize the project but we're only given the option to fill the background with a color and position the project using one of 6 presets (no X/Y pixel control). It seems the difference is that in Captivate, the captured images is a background while in Wink you can add an image background to all slides. Does anyone know of a way to achieve what I'm after? Please let me know if I'm not clear and you cannot understand the issue. Thanks!

Regards,
Dave B.

Report · Aug 03, 2007

Hi Dave B. and welcome to our community

Assuming you are using Captivate 2, here is how to configure the background for all slides.

Either in the Film Strip of the Edit view or the Storyboard view, select all the desired slides. Now right click the selection and choose Properties from the context menu. See that button labeled Change background image...? Click that and select your desired background. Click the OK button and poof! All the background slides should change.

Keep in mind that this is probably only useful for projects that began their existence as a blank project. If you do this with a project where you have recorded something, each screen capture becomes a background image on each slide. As you should be able to see, you really would be defeating your purpose by replacing all those types of backgrounds.

Hopefully this helps... Rick

Report · Aug 03, 2007

Thanks Rick. But that was exactly my point 🙂 When you capture for a simulation, the images do in fact becme a background in Captivate (I am using a trial version of Captivate 3). I want just the opposite...for example capture at 5fps for 10 minutes at 1280x800, resize the production to make it 1280x1024 (4:3 aspect ratio), shift the content by 60 pixels vertically (to fit in the layout of my background) and add a background to all slides so it doesn't change when I play back. It's almost like a skin for the whole flash presentation. I was thinking the skin options might have the options I'm after, but they turned out to be quite limited in trying to achieve this. I don't want to have to manually edit each frame just to add this backgrond. I'm basically after some "branding" techniques to render presentations more professional looking.

I thought about making a set number of slides and add a background as you suggested and then import the content of slides from another saved capture to each slide, but you can only import objects from those slides into your file and not backgrounds. Any other ideas & techniques in helping me achieve this would be greatly appreciated as I evaluate this software. Thanks again!

Report · Aug 04, 2007

Dave, I can't speak to "Wink" as it would be futile to spend time with product comparisons ... these forums are intended to help with the use of Captivate, not to emulate another application.

I can tell you that if you plan on resizing, you really want the original capture to at least have the aspect ratio you want to end with. Otherwise, any effort to resize will necessarily involve "cropping".

To your specific problem as I understand it ...
If I am understanding you at all - and I may not be - the easiest way to get the background you want for the simulation is to capture it with the original recording. That is, assuming you want a consistent background throughout, save the background image and place it on your desktop as the default desktop image, then place the application you are recording on top of that.

I hope this helps, I may be completely misunderstanding what appears to be a very unusual use of the software.
.

Report · Aug 04, 2007

Thanks for your time Larry. Please don't get me wrong....I'm not trying to badger Captivate in any way. I have been evaluating the best product to use for a particular output and since I had been using the above mentioned freeware application, I thought that such feature would be part of a robust package such as Captivate. In fact, there are tons of things in Captivate that aren't available in Wink, such as button events, quizzes, etc (too many to list). I'm just trying to get the same output as I've been doing.

The suggestion you gave could work but is not ideal. I wish I could post a small swf to show you what I'm doing but it doesn't seem I can do so in this forum. Anyway, I appreciate your time. Perhaps this could become a wishlist feature for Captivate :)

Report · Aug 14, 2007

Hi Dave,

I have done what you are looking for, and yes, the ability to add branding, titles to tutorials, etc is very limited. But here's how I have done it.

1. Record at 1280 x 800.
2. Save this file.
3. Resize the entire project (making sure you only change the height of the project and DO NOT tick the maintain aspect tick box) to 1024.
4. Choose 'keep project same size and fill with background colour'. Select Center if you want equal space below and above presentation, select top center if you want it all below. If you want the extra space on top, select center make sure the height of the new project is 1248 as you will crop the bottom 224 and get back to 1024. In that case and then you will have to crop (see below)
5. Click Finish and save this project as something else. In case it goes pear shaped you can then go back to original file and start over.
6. Go to the first slide. Add your logo as an image and go to image properties. Choose 'show for rest of project'.

Cropping:
Before step 6, resize your project again to height of 1024. Select 'crop' and then choose the window to crop so that the bottom half disappears. Make sure you click on apply to all slides before you click ok. Save this project, then go to step 6 above.

It's long winded but it works, and I have not found a better way to do it. It's a big limitation in my view.

Loredana

Report · Aug 14, 2007

Please excuse me for my lack of experience and knowledge, but do you think using logo as texture image in skin would have served the purpose?

thanks

Report · Aug 14, 2007

Thanks Loredana. for sharing your process. This could work except for when needing to use specific images as a background, which is what I'm trying to do. Really, the only option I have is to tile windows on top of each other and record that way, rather than post-editing.

I did find the feature that Captivate needs to effectively produce what I'm after. Once again I'm going to refer to another software, but that's ok (I'm doing it with good intentions!). Camtasia 4 has a picture-in-picture feature, which gives perfect control. You can produce some great results, such as side by side video comparisons. Producing PIP and re-inserting as PIP several times (nesting & producing, nesting & producing, etc) almost gives endless control. Such a feature would be a great addition to Captivate and would end the limitations of the approaches that everyone in this thread has suggested.