captivate text captions not appearing on recording

[lambugini]

Hi There,

I'm using captivate 8

I select Record New Software simulation

In the settings I select Demo mode and check the Add Text Captions box.

But when I record and pulbish/playback there are no captions created for when I click on any buttons/menu items (I'm doing a recording of some actions I'm doing on the chrome browser) on screen or in the timeline. Am I missing something obvious that I need to check?

Many Thanks

[lambugini]

Sorry just another point, further to that, when I do my demo recordings they seem to often show the final screen I reach only so for example if I'm navigating through a wordpress admin area and click on dashboard posts, edit post, the only thing captured in my output is the edit post page.

I've taken a  screngrab of my options below:

[Lilybiri]

Which application are you capturing?

[lambugini]

Thanks for getting back to me! I'm capturing some things I'm doing in the chrome browser

[Lilybiri]

Can you try to capture some steps of an application that is on your system? Moreover check if you run Captivate as Administrator. The capturing is not always fully functional if you don't launch as administrator and/or for online captures. But I have created tutorials for Twitter and for browsers.

[lambugini]

Hi Lilybiri

Thanks for your quick response.

I right clicked the Captivate exe and selected Run as Administrator.

I ran TextPad as an application. I did get captions, but not quite as expected. For example I went to File then clicked Open. I would have expected these as captions i.e. "click file" then "click open". But the first caption that appeared was "The open file(s) window opens". But maybe I just want too much! Should captivate be able to do what I would like? Also despite having 'Add Highlight Boxes on Click' no highlight boxes are created in the file, I would have thought these would be created when I clicked the File and Open menu items.

[Lilybiri]

Wat will be 'told' in the captions/shapes is not always what you would want, but you can edit them (at least you don't have to add captions/shapes and they appear at the right moment). Try also to insert manually screen shots with the shortcut key (PrintScreen is the default one). Highlight boxes are bit inconsistent, I will add them normally myself (and first of all change its style because it is not very apparent, that thin blue line with a shade as a fill).

[Erik Lord · Accepted solution]

Completely agree with Lilybiri's suggestions!

I was going to suggest liberal use of the PrintScreen key as well...

And I still do when you're recording web applications.

Captivate picks up buttons clicks, and adds simple captions, using 'system hooks'. For example, when Notepad's 'File' item is clicked, it generates a Windows event that Captivate can 'hear'.

Web/Browser applications don't do that (usually), so Captivate can't 'hear' those clicks...so you have to hit 'PrintScreen' any time you click something in the web application and capture it manually with the PrintScreen key.

[lambugini]

Thanks to both of you for your advice. I think the recording as a Video Demo may be best for what I require.

I can add captions and get the full screen recording and even edit/manipulate the mouse pointer. One thing I wondered though, is there a way to extend a frame of the video once it has been captured e.g. say at 13 seconds I want to bring up a caption but at 14 seconds the clip already shows me clicking on something else, is there a way to extend the frame at 13 seconds to last for 3/4 seconds to give enough time to show the caption before moving on, or would I need to do this in an external video application.

Thanks

[Erik Lord]

I don't think there's a way to do that exactly...a video is a finite length, right?

For better-timed videos, I always have the script ready then read it as I'm recording the demo so the timing is approximately correct, allowing for pauses where I envision captions appearing. That does take some practice.

And when I do video demos, I tend to use Camtasia

However, there may be a way to do what you want - split the video where you want it to 'lengthen' and insert the caption there, between the splits?

See here:

Adobe Captivate Help | Record video demonstrations

Scroll down to the "Split recorded video clips" section...