Adobe Captivate Classic does not preview properly and I no longer know how to preview a project

[jloliver2]

I have a 40+ slide project - my first since captivate 8 years ago.  I go to preview it and the narration starts about 20 seconds too late, cuts out etc.  I can't tell if this is just a preview issue because when I publish I can only publish to device and there is no longer an executable file to run the project in the zip file.  Please help.

[jloliver2]

By the way, when I run the preview it goes to slide 3 before the slide 2 narration starts.  

[Lilybiri]

Can you check the exact version number, please? First version (11.8.2) of Captivate Classic had a lot of bugs compared with the previous version 11.5.5. There has been an update recently to 11.8.3 but I don't know yet if all bugs have been solved.

As for your issue: narration (slide audio) and all audio clips need to be loaded On Enter of the slide. If it is a big audio clip that may lead to a lag for the audio, compared with the rest of the slide. It helps if you have either some dirty silence at start and end, and/or leave a gap before and after the audio timeline. You can move it with the mouse or using the Timing Properties panel. This seems to relate to another of your questions.

About only 'Publish for devices', this would point out that you have created a responsive project, probably with Fluid Boxes? You have been used to non-responsive projects years ago? A responsive project can only be published to HTML5, hence the option 'for devices'. A non-responsive (Blank is the label in the Welcome screen) can be published to your system, even scalable. It can be zipped or not, and if you created a SCO it will be automatically be zipped. But it always needs to be uploaded to a webserver, hence what happens with all the Preview options: it opens localhost in your default browser.

[jloliver2]

Lilybiri thank you for your response!  It is version 11.5.5 of captivate classic and it is a responsive project.  I am just now updating to 11.8.2 to see if it fixes it.  If not I might just change it to a non-responsive project to avoid any complications from that.  I'm assuming I can start a new project and just copy the slides to it.  The slide audio is not a big clip.  The first slide is my company logo animation - small and very short.  Second slide is the welcome slide with only a welcome to our course audio - 5 seconds tops but it goes half way to the third slide before you hear the welcome clip.  Very weird.

[Lilybiri]

Please, don't update to 11.8.2 because it has much more bugs. You are using the most stable version ever at this moment.

You created a Fluid Boxes project, correct? It is not at all easy to switch from such a project to a non-responsive project. Copy/paste will not work. I also doubt very much that it would solve the issues. Since it has been so long since you used Captivate I suspect that the fluid boxes are not set up properly. I explained in my first answer why the publish options are reduced for that type of projects (same in buggy 11.8.2). Did you try the gap for the audio file, and try to answer my question about its size. Which browser do you use for preview? 

[jloliver2]

I didn't see your message in time.  How do I undo the update? 

[Lilybiri]

I don't think there is an easy way to roll back the update.  There is now an update to version 11.8.3 but not all bugs are gone. Moreover if you want to test the new version 12 (which has only responsive projects as output) you need to use version 11.8.2 or 11.8.3 to be able to have both on the same system. I keep 11.5.5.553 like a treasure on a separate laptop.