Captivate 9 - Videos Are Not Playing After Publishing

Report · May 17, 2017

...so I'm back. I have spent the past two weeks creating a project that contains short videos.

The videos play fine in preview, but once published, I get a blank screen. After reading other posts, I tried using SWF format and uploading the videos using a file path from my local computer (I thought the issue was that I had placed the videos in OneDrive and tried to upload from there).

No luck. This is not the first time I've done a ton of work, previewed it, then only have the finished product not work.

What is the best case scenario for projects to actually work when published? I really can't go through this again....

Report · May 17, 2017

Hi TinyBlu

There are a bunch of questions that need answered, in order to successfully answer your questions, but instead I will outline what the proper workflow is and you can troubleshoot your specific problem or at least give us a basis for discussion.

Progressive Download.

If you have added it to your project then it should play, when the project is published and uploaded to a web server or LMS. if you try to get it to play from your hard drive, it won't. If you upload the video files to an external drive and link it, it won't work. In order to have the iFrame link work they need to be housed on a media server like YouTube or Vimeo. If you are trying to embed it with an iFrame, then the published project needs to be uploaded to a web server to be viewed, as well.

Another reason it won't load is that its too big a file and takes too long to load.

Are either of these issues pertinent to your situation?

Cheers

Steve

Report · May 17, 2017

I'm seeing a similar issue to Tinyblu, but I have my video uploaded to a web server. My video is showing the first frame, but displaying a loading wheel indefinitely. I have left the window open for a while, out of curiosity, and the video does not load even after 45 minutes or so.

The video is an MP4 format, and was able to be successfully played in previous publications of the project. But recently the videos have stopped working when being published. I have retraced my steps to see what has changed but there are not settings that would prevent a video from loading after being published.

Report · May 17, 2017

@harrison: Are you publishing to HTM/SWF or to HTML5? Have you recently updated your Captivate 9 version or upgraded to Captivate 2017?

If HTML5 content published from the more recent versions of Captivate 9 is not working on a web server, the usual reason is that the web server does not have JSON file mimetype enabled.

Report · May 18, 2017

Hi Steve.

A little more info…

The videos were created in Camtasia, so they may be too big. So, my question is, what is the size limit on a video?

I also had an action snippet that I wanted to place on my title page, but that won’t play either.

I read that I needed to convert the videos from mp4 to flv to get it to play. I PAID for conversion software only to end up with the same issue.

I have asked this question in the past, but I will ask again. Is Captivate even worth the time and effort without a LMS or web server? My company has neither. Our IT department is a big fan of Microsoft Office 365 and it’s family of products. They don’t see value in a LMS and aren’t willing to try Moodle because it requires a server (??).

I’m not the most technical when it comes to the lingo, so my apologies if I sound a bit elementary when it comes to HOW things work. All I know is that we’ve been “migrating to the cloud” so anything server based will be a no go.

Unfortunately, I may just have to finally get it into my head that all I will be able to produce are boring, non-interactive PowerPoint Presentations… bummer…

Report · May 18, 2017

MP4 video is just a wrapper format. If you want your MP4's to work better with Captivate then you need to encode/re-encode them using the Adobe Media Encoder that comes free with Captivate. That will ensure they are the correct format and have the necessary meta data for Adobe products etc.

But if you are using Captivate to create HTM/SWF or HTML5 output then you really NEED it to be delivered from a web server, NOT a LAN server.

Whether Captivate is "worth the time and effort" is your call, but personally I find organisations like the one you work in quite baffling. They're all gung ho for anything "cloud-based" when in fact that just means delivering stuff via the internet, which is what web servers and LMSs do anyway, and have been doing for decades now. The only major difference is that someone came up with a catchy buzzword to make people think it was a totally new concept to keep files on web servers.

If not a glorified web server, what do they think a cloud server is anyway?

Report · May 18, 2017

Hi Rod,

I COMPLETELY agree with you on my dilemma. I’m stuck between trying to deliver the latest and greatest, but don’t have the tools to do it.

I just spoke to some of our veteran IT guys and it seems that they are still housing a “secret” network drive. The videos play fine with that, but I’m worried about sharing the output with people outside of the organization that don’t have access to that drive.

Again, forgive my ignorance, but I’m assuming that the outside people won’t be able to get to the content, so I won’t be able to share it.

Thanks for your help!

Report · May 18, 2017

If you want to share content with people outside your company firewall, then that's exactly what web servers are for. Place your content on an external web server and then everyone in the world would be able to see it.

If you want a very economical LMS that you can invite anyone in the world with an email address to see content, use SCORM Cloud. Minimal cost and no maintenance required of your own IT staff.

You don't need to convert your MP4 videos to FLV for Captivate to work with them. MP4's can be imported to a Captivate project without issue as long as they are encoded properly. I do it all the time.

If your MP4 videos were not playing from a particular LAN drive or web server, the most likely reason is that the server was not set up to allow the MP4 mimetype. That's a server administrator's job to fix.

Report · May 18, 2017

Thank You for all of your help on this.

I may try to approach the powers that be with a SCROM Cloud Option (still new to this technology). Do you have any suggestions?

In the meantime, I have sent out the “teaser” version of my finished projects with hopes that the IT Manager (since he has access to the network drive where I placed the finished project) is “wowed” enough to consider investing in a SCROM.

Fingers crossed that he will see the value. Our company has the budget, but he’s all about “the cloud”

Report · May 18, 2017

Just tell them that Cloud is the new Web.