Adobe Captivate 2019 - What is the suggested file size maximum?

[BradS19]

What is the suggested file size maximum for Adobe Captivate 2019? Hi everyone, it's great to be back in such a helpful forum. I haven't used Adobe Captivate since version 6 or so. Back then the recommended file size maximum was <50 MB. After 50 MB, weird things would start to happen. This was a general rule that I found in these forums back then that was extremely helpful. Now we are using Adobe Captivate 2019. Can anyone tell me what the recommended file size maximum is for Captivate 2019? Thank you all for your support.

[RodWard]

The correct answer is:  the smaller the better.

But I know of no actual figure for maximum megabytes.  I have seen people on this forum with CPTX files more than a gigaybyte (usually because they have stacked lots of videos inside).

When publishing to HTML5 most of the assets for each slide get loaded into the browser when you reach that slide.  This works differently to the way SWF did in that the entire project would be published to a single SWF file that streamed the content and preloaded each slide's objects.  So wth HTML5 things work differently and you need to adjust thinking for that.

[Lilybiri]

I will not repeat Rod's excellent answer. Just want to point out a feature ignored by many Captivate users. Open the Project Info panel (from Windows menu). You'll see two buttons which allow you to get an estimate of the file size of the later output folder. Only the HTML button is now relevant of course.

Wanted file size depends also on the devices you are expecting to be used. For responsive projects bear in mind that mobile devices are more limited both in hardware, software and (often) bandwidth.

[ChrisG LMS]

I have created courses as large as 1 GB for a 2 hour course which mostly consist of MP4 animations created in Camtasia.  We have seen no latency issues from our customers.  I've seen that these courses publish very quickly, but uploading them take a very long time.  Other 4 hour courses that use all internal captivate animations and embedded content that are as much as 500mb and 400 slides take much longer to publish but are quicker to upload. Also, no perfomance issues.

The only problems I've seen with "large" courses are related to cookie issues when using self-paced learning.

Captivate itself does choke on the large files when opening, closing and saving occasionally and if you run out of space during these operations (including backups behind the scenes) you will encounter problems.