Audio cutting out in random areas

[Guest]

I am experiencing a severe issue with Captivate 6. Although my courses play properly when previewed in Captivate, once they are published and posted to my LMS (learning management system), the audio cuts out in random areas. I say random areas because it doesn't always cut out in the same place or even the same line of audio. I've tried re-recording the audio in the areas where I've experienced issues, but it still cuts out randomly. I've also tried copying and pasting the slides into a new project (as this seemed to fix the issue for others in the past), but that also did not work. It is extremely important that I fix this issue as these courses are the main source of training for a large change for a very large global company.

[Lilybiri]

Which version do you use, exact number please, because there were 3 versions of 6? If you have the version ending on  199, you have to upgrade ASAP, to 6.0.1.240. There is also a 6.1 version, that was only available for subscription users.

[Guest]

I have Adobe Captivate Version 6.0.1.240.

[RodWard]

Random / intermittent issues like this are always the hardest things to diagnose in any profession or discipline.

Until we can nail down exactly when or under what conditions the issue occurs, we'd be shooting blind at best.

The fact that your issue only surfaces once you are posting to an LMS makes me wonder whether perhaps there could be a latency or bandwidth issue involved.

Is this content published as HTML5 output or as HTM/SWF?

[Sreekanth_S]

We have faced this issue in some of our demos which had lengthy audios and large number of slides. Changing the compression settings have helped us in such cases.

Sreekanth

[dt4pt]

I'm experiencing the same issue when viewing a Captivate 7 HTML5 project on the iPad. My audio is all mp4 format.

I have an audio on/off toggle button on each slide and in most cases it is possible to get all the way through the project without any of the audio cutting out. There are occassions however where the audio cuts out in random places on random slides.

None of the audio is longer than 30 seconds long and there are only 12 pieces throughout the entire project.

Sreekanth, which compression settings did you use to clear the issue?

[Sreekanth_S]

I have done this only with SWF outputs.

I deselect Advanced Project Compression settings, Compress SWF file, and changed the audio quality from 96 kbps to 128 kbps. However, as Rod suggested in an earlier post, you will have to do a trial and error to get it right.

Sreekanth

[dt4pt]

Thanks Sreekanth.

I think I've narrowed this down to when I click to view the next slide before I've finished listening to the triggered audio. I'm now looking for a solution to get around this.

[Captiv8r]

Sooo, the question is, how would you expect it to work?

If you have a CD player and you are listening to track three and it hasn't finished playing and you press the button to move to track four, no CD player I've ever seen will complete playing track three before beginning track four.

Likewise, in Captivate, if audio is playing on a slide and it hasn't completed and you click a button or whatever to move to the next slide, isn't it very similar to the CD example I mentioned? You are telling it to skip to the next track. So whatever audio you were hearing on the existing slide would then stop and you would then immediately begin hearing the audio for the next slide.

Cheers... Rick

[Captiv8r]

Oh, forgot to respond to the "how do I get around this" part.

Turn off the playback controls and use buttons to allow progressing through the slides. Time the buttons so they don't even appear and cannot be clicked until the audio has fully played.

Cheers... Rick

[dt4pt]

If I skip track 3 I wouldn't expect track 4 to cut out half way, would you?

[Captiv8r]

LOL, now that's an equine of an entirely different hue! Nope, as long as the player was working right I wouldn't.

My example was provided because I understood you to say that the audio cut off at the moment you clicked the forward button and you began hearing the audio for the next slide.

"I think I've narrowed this down to when I click to view the next slide before I've finished listening to the triggered audio. I'm now looking for a solution to get around this."

Cheers... Rick

[smart_discoverer0D4C]

For what it's worth, I'm using Cap 7, and experience these annoying audio issues when publishing a course with SWF. It seems that, as the learners get farther into the course, this happens more and more frequently. Learners complain and, if I jump straight to the slide that they complain about, I can't replicate the issue. While I do see this *occasionally* with html5/mp3 audio (as mentioned above), it is nowhere near as pervasive as with SWF. My conclusion from what I've experienced is that, the longer a course is, the more the Flash player's performance degrades.

I find that the most reliable way to publish is HTML5 w/ mp3 audio at 64 kbps. Also, in my opinion, I believe that everyone should stop publishing Flash-based courses entirely and let the Flash player die the death that it deserves...

[karrasxk]

For what it's worth I am using Captivate 9 and this bug still happens. Seriously frustrating the amount of bugs and half complete features FOR YEARS over multiple feature versions. Sigh. You can click a tiny 100k audio file and each time you click the button it will cut off at a different spot. Just terrible.

[Lilybiri]

Captivate 9 is very old... which OS are you using? Which 'button' are you talkng about? 

[karrasxk]

I am using buttons with an action to play audio. Some times the audio will play all the way through, but with equal frequency the audio will start and then stop at any point in the clip, be that .3 seconds or 15 seconds in. If it were stopping at the same spot each time or not playing, I would feel like I had something I could resolve, but this random thing is absolutely killing me. Happens in Edge, Chrome, and Firefox, but not when previewing through Captivate's built in player.

[karrasxk]

Windows 10*

[RodWard]

When you say it doesn't happen "when previewing through Captivate's built-in player" are you referring to when you are in Edit mode and you hit F3 or the space bar to start the timeline?

[karrasxk]

When you click Preview > Project on the main toolbar. None of the audio is on the timeline, it's all played through actions. I have tried re-encoding the audio to many different bit rates, Stereo/mono, Variable/constant bitrate, I've tried just bringing in raw WAV files and letting Captivate convert to MP3. All results in the same issue the audio cuts out at random places in every browser I try while it plays perfectly when I open the files directly, plays perfectly in Adobe Audition, plays perfectly in Captivate' Preview window, and plays perfectly when listening from Captivates library area.

To be clear, sometimes I have no audio cut outs after clicking 10+ buttons, click boxs, or just having the audio triggered with a shared action when entering a slide. It's a roll of the dice when it will happen and to which audio file. I have no other issues with audio cutting out in any of my web browsers on other websites.

To see that this random cutting out was happening as far back as version 5 is SO disheartening. I have no idea what to do to make my project compliant so I can upload it to our LMS.

[Lilybiri]

If this is a non-responsive project, the Preview, Project is using SWF, not HTML output. You need to use Preview HTML in Browser (F11).

[karrasxk]

I am not sure what a 'non-responsive' project is. Regardless, my point is that the audio cuts off in the browser when previewing in HTML in all 3 major browsers, it cuts off when running from Conerstone LMS, but it does not cut off when previewing through that method. The point I am making by that is that the audio files are not corrupt or they would cut out everywhere.

At this point unless someone has overcome this issue in some way, or has an some suggestions to resolve the issue other than what I have already tried, I think I just need to stop developing in Captivate. The amount of time I have put into re-encoding and re-recording audio thinking it's something wrong with my files is absurd.

I can click the same button 15 times and have the audio cut out at a different spot each time or play perfectly.

[Jamie Pham]

I experienced the same issue. I'm using Captivate version 11.8.0 and this bug really drives me crazy. Learners keep complaining and I cannot do anything to fix it. 

[Lilybiri]

This thread is from 2014. Please create a new thread and explain more in detail what the issue is. Are you talking about a cptx project, published to HTML? Or is it about audio in embedded MP4s? For cptx project, which type of audio do you use: slide audio, object audio, or audio started with 'Play Audio'?