Captivate 8/9 Animation playback and tools

Report · Feb 01, 2016

Hello,

I have just started with Captivate 8. I am a long time Flash/After Effects/3D animator.I have been brought on to a E-Learning team to animate several e-learning modules. the client wishes to remain in captivate for future editing. I am having alot of trouble with animation tools. I have seen that the interaction is slightly better in Captivate 9 than in Captivate 8, I thought I would ask to see if someone can talk about specific issues I am having as well as the future of the application. My company has an old version of Captivate 8 and currently uses Articulate - to which i am evaluating options for an enhanced motion environment.

First question, Captivate is not previewing for me properly. Often when the play head is parked on a frame, Lets say frame 1, ALL of the items in the timelime show - even when they are not supposed to show yet. Furthermore Scrubbing is useless, It shows none of the motion I am creating. To "preview" the file will show me the in and outs of the layers, but no animation effects. I can see some of the animation if I publish the file, but it often plays jittery, and othertimes it sits on a white frame and does not move. I hae a ONE page new file, i really should be able to see the motion. I cannot figure out why it does not have basic functionality. Furthermore, the motion is rarely as smooth as I would expect. More often it si very jittery and if the motion is too soon (Within first second of the timeline) - it will not play at all. I am not sure if this is a video driver issue - server/firewall issue. or common bug - or simply a "feature" of the application.

Second, This program is obviously not meant for animation. I cannot adjust easing, center of rotation, create multiple effects like bounce and opacity at the same time, and most bothersome is that I cannot import Illustrator files/Layers. It is probably the intent of the dev team to have most of the motion built in Flash? If so this is confusing as a multiple application development (Illustrator/Flash/Captivate pipeline), not a very fluid work flow. I have to ask - why are the animation tools so poor? it seems like an easy integration especially as mony training people are PowerPoint based. And what about Flash's inability to work on ipads?

Along that line, text animators like After Effects type animators seem intuitive. I was hoping to produce a library of presets, and I am finding no luck.

I know I am probably asking too much - but it seems to me that Captivate WANTS to be more than PowerPoint, but the animation toolset included is only barely better.

Vince

Report · Feb 01, 2016

Regarding your first question where all objects on the slide are visible in Edit mode regardless of where the timeline pointer is located...This is standard Captivate behaviour. The app may be capable of publishing to SWF/Flash, but the editing environment does not work the same way as Adobe Flash does. So you need to get used to this difference. After nine versions it does not appear likely to change.

As to the 'jittery motion' I cannot say what the issue might be without more information. You may simply be expecting too much, or you may be using the app in the wrong way. Hard to tell.

I think you are correct that Captivate is not intended to be an 'animation app'. It's primary purpose has always been to create e-learning courseware, not animation. The animation features have been progressively added over time in response to user requests. Expecting it to behave the same way as Flash or After Effects will only lead to frustration. And once you start publishing out to HTML5 the limitations you will encounter in that environment as far as animation goes will only increase the frustration. (And if you were hoping Storyline would be a better option I can assure you from personal experience it is not.)

As a person who also came to Captivate from the Flash world, I feel your pain. When I run up against too many limitations in Captivate's animation abilities, I find myself still going back to create sophisticated animations in Flash and then import them into Captivate as SWF. When Flash is reborn very soon as Adobe Animate, I will probably be building these animations as OAM files and importing them into Captivate instead of SWF.

I think the best advice I can give you is: If you want to be completely happy with Captivate's animation capabilities, you need to lower your expectations.

Report · Feb 02, 2016

Captivate is an eLearning authoring tool, not an animation tool at all. Use the right tool for your goals! Use Powerpoint for Presentations, Flash, Animate CC or Edge Animate for animations, Captivate for eLearning courses.