Captivate 7 files publishing three times their size

[ArthurTLee]

We have some pretty large captivate files that we publish. Typically our courses cptx files range from 100 - 200 MB and they publish right in that range. This has never been a problem until recently. I published one course a couple of days ago and it was right about 200 MB. But then today I tried publishing it again and it now publishes at 650 MB! The cptx file is 230 MB. I don't have any unused items in the library. And I get that saving as swf vs both swf and html5 can make it smaller, but we need both.

All that aside, is there any particular reason you are aware of regarding why our 230 mb file zips up during publishing and is three times its original size?

Thanks in advance,

Arthur Lee

[Lilybiri]

Do you publish to both HTML and SWF?

[ArthurTLee]

Yes. I know that increases the size significantly, but as a business I am not sure how to get around it. We have customers with employees who take the courses on ipads.

[Lilybiri]

Publish only to HTML?

[ArthurTLee]

I guess I don't know enough about these two: I know SWF is flash-based, so I assumed I needed to publish to both (SWF for PCs and HTML5 for iphones, ipads, etc.). Is that not correct? Can I publish to HTML5 and it will play for both?

[ArthurTLee]

What's strange is that we have two cptx files that are roughly the same size (265 MB to 227 MB). The settings, though, are the exact same. The 265 publishes at 417 MB while the smaller 227 MB file publishes at 650 MB.

[Lilybiri]

Yes, HTML will play on any device and desktop/laptop. To avoid too big

files, I tend to publish only to HTML, take into account what will not be

functional

.

[ArthurTLee]

One last question: if publishing to HTML5 only will still allow the course to play on PCs in addition to iPads, why publish to SWF at all? Is there a distinct advantage to publishing SWF over HTML5?

[Lilybiri]

Advantage is that SWF is standardised, will look same in all browsers which is not the case for HTML. Moreover some functionality is only available for SWF. Look at Project, HTML tracker. If you ever want a standalone version, or an interactive pdf published from Captivate (for users that do not have access to LMS or webserver), you have to know that those are both SWF-based.

Sent from my iPad

[RodWard]

As Lilybiri says, SWF does have some advantages, however, the future of e-learning looks bad for SWF given that Adobe has publically told its client base they should move away from using SWF format.

Many browser vendors are making noises about no longer supporting the Flash Player plugin at some point in the near future. Eventually the desktop environment will be similar to the mobile in this respect.

So if your content is intended to have a long 'shelf life' you would be wise to consider at least limiting what you do so that it would be compatible with either SWF or HTML5 now rather than having to come back again later and reformat everything.  If it would hedge your bets this way, all you need to do one day is just republish to HTML5, rather than do a complete rebuild.