Captivate 2019: Object (Clip) Audio does not play correctly in Puplished Zip or HTML

[Sancaks]

Hi there,

i have a very disturbing problem in Captivate  recently. Back then i was a postproduction Audio engineer. Thats why i wanted to spice up my new captivate Project with some self made Sound FX. I applied these FX to the Clips of Symbols and Illustrations, (not to slides or background; my slides have Narrations and i have a Background music). I syncronized the sounds that i made by editing them carefully and made a whole Project with nice sounds and Illustrations. I published an HTML to see how it goes and saw that many of the Sound FX that i created are cut in half or they are non syncron (starting late). I did toggle back and fort with navigation and checked the same slides again. I realized sometimes it plays the sound correctly, but often not.

In my project on timeline everything sounds perfect. But when i export the project in any form, many of the FX that i designed does not sound as they should do.

Do you have a solution for that...

PS: Btw i am usign *.WAV files in my Project. 

Thx a lot

[Lilybiri]

Audio is very important (I am a musician). However you need to know that for HTML output, all audio clips need to be loaded On Enter for each sldie. Since audio files (even mp3, which will be the format after publishing) tend to be large that is mostly the reason for loss of synchronisation.

Playing the Timeline is never a good idea to test the future output. You need to use F11, Preview HTML in Browser to see a view close to the later output. I suspect you didn't check that preview,

Background audio is not recommended by eLearning experts in most cases. Understand, due to your background that you want perfect audio. However the real goal of eLearning is 'learning'.  For slide audio it is always recommended to move the audio timeline to leave a gap at the start and the end.

Such a workaround doesn't exist for Object audio.  I don't know what you mean by 'symbols'? They are never standalone, can only be inserted in a text container. Or maybe this is a terminology problem, symbols have a totally different meaningin Animate CC. If they are attached to an object, the only synchronisation is to put the objects at the right location on the Timeline.

A solution? Testing with the right Preview, minimize the length of each slide, you can easily distribute over multiple slides without the learner being aware of that. Keep the amount of audio clips to be loaded on each slide as low as possible. That is especially valid if you also aim at mobile devices.

[RodWard · Accepted solution]

One suggestion I would like to add is that it's not a good idea in Captivate to cut off all extra audio at the beginning and end of a clip. 

It's a common practice in the audio industry to want absolute silence before and after the audio so the engineers remove all but the sound they want to hear. But with Captivate projects, if you delete all of the sound data right up to the point where the actual audio begins on the clip then you may experience the issue you describe where a split second of audio is cut off the beginning or end at runtime. 

The fix is to just have two or three tenths of a second of very low level background audio present to start and end each clip.  Try that.

[Sancaks]

I will leave silent gaps also and report here again.

[Sancaks]

Hi,

thx a lot for the reply. My problem is mainly with object audio. I am gonna try to re-work my Project with less audio and more slides. But i have a few detail question... Should i use Mp3 instead of WAV files. Would the sample rate or frequency of audio files effect anything?

[Lilybiri · Accepted solution]

It is always better to import the WAV - file. When publishing Captivate will compress to mp3. If you import mp3, and any edit is made in Captivate, it needs to be done on a raw file. That would mean that an imported LMP3 file needs to be decompressed, which is never a good idea for quality reasons.

Anything you can do to decreease file size of the audio clips helps, reducing bbitrate is an eample. Another example: for narration having stereo files is not really necessary, keep mono (leave it to your audio expertise for other clips). Keep in mind that your learners may not dispose of the best way to appreciate your audio although its quality is VERY i;portant in eLearning courses, and I'm talking in the first place about the narration: engaing, good voices, well timed, short sentences,.