Adobe Captivate 11.8.1 - micro/short videos combining into one eLearning module

Report · Apr 16, 2023

There is a consistent ask from the users/customers for short/micro videos not more than few seconds (less that a minute). I am trying to figure out a way where we can build multiple short/micro videos and combine them into a full elearning couse as and when required.

Typically, I would have 5 different .cptx source files of micro/short videos. And when I need to combine them into an eLearning modules I will create another source file and just copy-paste content of these short videos into one big video.

Any tips on this? Or is there a smart/better way to do it?

Report · Apr 16, 2023

Sorry but I want to understand your question fully before trying to give you a relevant answer. Hence some questions:

Are you talking about responsive or non-responsive projects?
Since you say ' source files of micro/short videos' are those passive videos (format MP4) or are you talking about very short projects which are interactive and would be published to HTML5 output? That is the most important question. My problem is here the terminology you used because the way to treat this question is completely different for interactive and passive video.
In the case of passive video it is not a good idea to combine them in Captivate, you should prefer a video editor for the combination.
If you talk about interactive cptx-projects to be published to HTML5: will you use a LMS for the published output?
If these small projects lead to interactive output, are they based on the same Theme and do they have the same resolution (size of the project)?
Will you want a custom table of contents for the assembled bigger project?

Report · Apr 16, 2023

Answers inline for above questions:

Question 1: Responsive

Question 2: The micro/short videos that we want to output and use will be .mp4 and not html5 outputs. The bigger eLearning course will be html5 scorm output.

Question 3: Ok. The idea is to minimize/single-source as much as possible to be able to output smaller mp4 files from the same superset/source.

Question 4: Yes, for the bigger eLearning html5 output we have an LMS that we use. The smaller mp4 outputs will not be published to the LMS though.

Question 5: Yes to both.

Question 6: Yes

The idea is we want to output short videos as mp4 from a bigger eLearning html5 course. We'll use the mp4s differently as short videos. The question is is there a smarter way to do that by maybe building short videos (.cptx) and then combining them as a bigger eLearning course?

Report · Apr 17, 2023

The biggest problem is the fact that you want responsive projects! I suspect you want to use Fluid boxes as workflow, not Breakpoint views. Know that it is impossible to have a slide video in a normal fluid box, you can only use event video which plays independently from Captivate's Timeline. The only way to include a slide video in a Fluid Boxes project is explained in one of my blog posts:

https://blog.lilybiri.com/fluid-boxes-and-interactive-video-position-properties-panel

Do not be confused by the term 'interactive video' because every slide video is ready to become an interactive video but you can keep it without any interactivity.

You want to assemble small videos. If there are each on a slide, know that every video (including audio) needs to be loaded On Enter for the slide, and that can lead to waiting times for each slide. If you have a sequence of slides with video I would personally prefer to assemble the small videos to one bigger one using an application like Premiere Rush. If they are in between other content slides that may not be necessary.

Next question: you want to publish to a SCO for the bigger project, does that mean that the output includes indeed other content slides than the small videos, maybe even KC or quiz slides? Relating to the TOC question, will the default TOC be sufficient?

If the micro-projects are only video, Theme is not important since you'll have to insert them as video (event of slide) in the big cptx-project. That question was only relevant for assembling interactive outputs. Nice that they have the same size/resolution. Do you want each video to take up the full slide or do you want to add more items in the slide?

I wonder how you'll set up the reporting for the big project? If that will be based only on viewing slides, would you need to force viewing each video completely? In that case it is much easier with slide video than with event video. But... see the link to the blog post above.

Do you really need responsive project if the big project will be mostly having video slides? Publishing to a Scalable HTML output from a non-responsive project would make your developing life a lot easier.

Report · Apr 17, 2023

Maybe let me represent the ask in a simpler way.

We have a .cptx project that we output as html5.

The structures of the slides is:

Intro music

Title

Pre-requisites

Section 1

slide a

slide b

slide c

Section 2

slide x

slide y

slide z

Section 3

slide p

slide q

slide r

Quiz/KC

quiz 1

quiz 2

quiz 3

Thank You slide

We want to output/use Section 1, 2, and 3 separately as short videos (.mp4). Currently, we do it by copy-pasting those slides in a separate .cptx and saving as .mp4. Is that the only way/best way to do it?
Or is there a way where we build only Section 1, 2, 3 as short .cptx files and combine them as a bigger eLearning?

Combining will be good old copy-paste (manual stuff), no other way to do it.
So would slicing a bigger project into smaller and then saving .mp4s is better or combining smaller .cptx files into a bigger eLearning file make sense?

Report · Apr 17, 2023

Are the three slides in each section passive video slides? If yes, read what I told before: use a video application to combine them. What is the format of the videos?

If you are fine with the loading time on each slide, you can also hide all slides except one section and publish them to MP4. No need to create separate cptx-files, all could be done from this bigger cptx.