Captivate 9: Publishing to HTML5 causes motion path problems & timings are off

Report · Jan 19, 2016

Hi everyone,

We are creating a 'normal'/ blank project in Captivate 9, publishing to HTML only.

We have small 4 slide project. On each slide, there are a few images and text objects that have motion paths on. Then we have a smart shape, used as a button, with a 'pause' - and the action is set to "continue" when clicked. When the user clicks this button, the objects are timed to have a motion path that takes them off the screen neatly.

When published or previewed in SWF, this works perfectly.

In HTML it has these glitches:

Any 'line' shape with a motion path on it, does not move at all.
All the objects/ images/ smart shapes with a motion path on 'flicker' when entering the slide.
The pause seems to be set at a different time to what we see on our timeline. Objects start moving off the screen even though they ar set to a second after the pause button.
In general, all the objects seem to be not moving at the correct time, or are not as smooth as the SWF version.

Please can anyone advise what is happening? Is this a frames vs. seconds problem? Why do lines not support motion paths? Is there anyway to stop the flicker?

Thanks!

Report · Jan 19, 2016

If it helps, here is a screen grab of my timeline. Please note that the "ease out top" effect on the group appearing at 3.8 seconds, after the pause at 3 seconds, starts before the pause in HTML.

Report · Jan 19, 2016

Some of those issues were solved with the hot fix. Did you install it?

Hot fix | Adobe Captivate 9 issues

You applied the effects to a group, which is OK. But I see that you made the first, and especially the second effect very short. That can cause issues as well.

As for the flickering, that is an old pain since many versions. The only workaround that helps sometimes is to add a fade in transition (has not to be too long) to those objects.

Report · Jan 19, 2016

Hi Lilybiri,

I have installed the hot fix, and it did solve a lot of our initial problems!

With the effect length, why would this cause an issue? Does the effect have to be a certain length to work?

Do you have any ideas about the problem I mentioned here >> "The pause seems to be set at a different time to what we see on our timeline. Objects start moving off the screen even though they ar set to a second after the pause button"

Thanks

Report · Jan 19, 2016

I cannot explain really 'why' but from my experience, when you have an effect (especially a motion effect) that is very short in duration it looks like there is no time enough to execute it. I cannot offer you another explanation.

As for the interaction between pause and effect, I have to explore, am not astonished that this causes issues but don't ask me why. Just intuition. Maybe I could offer a workaround, but am a bit busy at this moment. What is the functionality of that button SmartShape_109? Cannot you use 'Apply effect' in the action it will trigger?

Report · Jan 20, 2016

Hi,

I'm afriad we would need to effect to run for the allocated time, as the effect works nicely currently! Although it might be something we have to sacrific in order for it to actually work (!!) but it has never caused us problems before.

However, through experimneting a bit further, we have found that our problem only occurs with objects with BOTH an "entrance" and "exit" effect.... or two effects in general! So if this is the cause of our timing problems, I'm still slightly confsued why this is the case? But our workaround is to have two identical objects on the screen, one enters and then fades out at the eact same time the next object fades in and then exits. Its a fairly 'ugly' workaround but at least this works for the time being. If anyone has some further insight, please let us know! We don't want to have to duplicate everything on screen!!

Report · Jan 20, 2016

I was trying to give you a workaround, but since you didn't answer my questions, that is OK.

Report · Jan 20, 2016

Hi Lilybiri,

What questions did you need me to answer?

We are always happy to try and find new workarounds! This one is very time consuming....