Captivate audio does not automatically play in Chrome Browser

[MidNite_Media]

With the latest update to the Chrome Browser (Version 66.0.3359.139 (Official Build) (64-bit) Captivate STOPPED playing audio automatically in a lesson. You MUST hit refresh (Ctrl-F5) of the browser window and THEN the audio plays. I've heard that video will no longer play in Captivate lessons automatically when played back in Chrome. Is there a fix? Is Adobe going to come out with a patch or workaround? My client (Arby's) brought this to our attention. They have upgraded to Chrome and now the hundreds of courses we have developed in Captivate for them do not have audio unless you refresh your browser! They are getting ready to jump ship and go to Storyline! I am using Captivate 2017 and publishing as HTML5 only - no SWFs.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

I just checked a course that I did a few years ago for the Toronto International Airport and sure enough, the first slide has no audio. Once you progress to the next slide it seems to be okay. If could be that these older courses are set up to autoplay and Chrome doesn't like that. The reason media doesn't autoplay without some kind of click from the user is all the annoying audio and video ads on the internet. Unfortunately, this means you may have to republish these courses with the play button turned on. Check out my video about how to make this a little nicer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7_bUNGvMh0

[jenifferb66859674]

Thanks Paul, this helped and I just created a button on the first slide like you suggested.  I didn't change the Captivate default button ...I just used a Transparent Button like I do for all of my slide advances and placed it on something that went with my theme with the caption, "click here to begin course.".  Thanks for doing the Youtube video!

[Lilybiri]

The decision of Chorme to ban all AutoPlay has caused a lot of noise, on this forums. Personally I always took out AutoPlay whenever I embedded a CP published course in my blog, even when only SWF was available, because I really dislike websites where audio/video starts playing automatically. But I totally understand that the situation for eLearning courses is different and causing problems, because the Chrome ban doesn't worry about the difference between a ormal website and eLearning running in a browser.

Since I publish only to HTML since a year, and made the publsihed tutorials available for all devices (using mostly rescalable HTML) where AutoPlay already was turned off for a lot of mobile devices, I did use a workflow to get rid of that awful White screen and the standard black Play button. Users asked about that workflow and several weeks ago I posted a step-by-step explanation:

1. To  replace the used black button icon by an empty graphic
2. To design a poster image with a replacement Play icon
3. To take out the automatic dimming of the poster image (thanks to a CP-friend, expert in CSS).

You can have a look at:

Poster Image - AutoPlay - Captivate blog

I would love to see the workflow made easier by the Adobe team, have logged several feature requests for this and previous versions. I will start a discussion about that to get help for other users for those requests.

[MidNite_Media]

I noted that the web gaming industry is also complaining about this autoplay blocker in the new Chrome update. Google Chrome's autoplay blocker has an unintended victim -- web games | GamesBeat

[Contentbee]

As the dismissed autoplay of video and audio is a chrome problem, how about a browser check on the first slide? Me and most of our customer don't like the idea of a button to start the captivate project, because of the many clicks the user had done before - dependening on the LMS.

So my idea is a check, somewhat like "if chrome, then proceed, else got to slide 2" No clue how to do this ... maybe someone could help me out?

Thanks!

[Lilybiri]

Do you really believe that the other browsers will not 'follow'?

[Contentbee]

Which "follow" do you mean? Browsers following the Chrome policy with no autoplay? Or following the script and skip to slide 2?

[Lilybiri]

Other browsers following Chrome. AutoPlay is very intrusive in websites, I understand that decision completely.  That it also causes problems for deployed eLearning was underestimated perhaps. But I never had Autoplay turned on even in the past for Captivate published output on my blog. Why make such a problem of having the learner click a button. I asked several feature request to make it easier to have a nice poster image, a custom play button etc. You cannot stop changes like this, think about the death of Flash Player for all browsers, which is much more intrusive. I am very worried because suspect many companies do not realize the consequences.

Sorry, but I try to cope with important problems like the switch from SWF to HTML5. Not with that Autoplay problem.

[Contentbee]

Ok, I see 🙂

Speaking about websites and ads I totally agree with no autoplay. Speaking about important problems, the switch from SWF to HTML5 is no problem for me 😉

But the autoplay is a big problem IMO. As for eLearning and LMS I see things a bit more different compared to simple websites. Each of our elearning contents consists of up to 100% audio and up to 90% video (and not only a single videofile, but many). There are other developers (and users) saying, no need to make a fuss about a click. But for most of our customers and users it´s not only "a click". I've got at minimum eight clicks to do from scratch via our LMS interface to the actually content. Me personally I'm fed up and don't want to do another click to start content and do not want to click every single video clip - and that is what our customer do not want too. So I'm looking for a smooth way to keep the clicks as less as possible.

Hopefully developers of browsers, LMS and similar platforms will come to a solution where audio and video of ads will be muted/stopped, but eLearning content will play. Until then we might have to find other ways 😉

[RodWard]

I understand your dilemma, but the fact is that you're going to run into this issue from now on no matter what you do because the powers that be (e.g. browser manufacturers) have listened to the outcry from web users and responded with this somewhat heavy-handed solution.

In the broad scheme of things e-learning content accounts for a tiny fraction of the content being consumed on the web.  So in real terms, we don't really matter to the browser manufacturers because we don't account for a large enough slice of their market.

I'm not sure what you mean by "find other ways ;-)", but at this point the only one I can think of would be to build yourself an App from the ground up and deliver your content that way. Any solution that delivers your content from within a modern mobile web browser is always going to run into this issue.

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

You understand that multimedia is multimedia? A web browser can't differentiate between a web ad and your eLearning content. A browser sees them as exactly the same thing. Complaining about it is like complaining about geometry because you don't like triangles. This is just the new normal.