Captivate Vs Lectora

[SafetyDezine]

I have used Lectora from Trivantis for 7 years. While I had occasional issues with Lectora they were relatively minor. Overall, Lectora was reliable allowing me to publish CBTs smoothly. I work for a state agency, so there are alot of moving parts getting a class through from start to finish. Another department convinced the powers that be to make Captivate the standard work. I wasn't happy as I knew there would be a learning curve. However, at first glance I became excited when I saw what Captivate was capable of. It truly looked like the future of computer based training design. Since I already useseeral other Adobe products, I assumed Captivate would perform well.

Then I started working with it.

I have the latest version of Captivate 2019. I have a powerful workstation. The performance is terrible. Its close to not even being usable. I have search the forums, blogs, and anything I could find searching for a solution. It seems this issue has been going on for year. Captivate is slow. Not just slow, its like there is something wrong with it. I followed the suggestions I thought may have value: cleared the cache, updated drivers, even reloaded Captivate. So far in terms of a usable program that I can actually complete the duties of my job Lectora wins hands down. 

I want to ask if anyone has any suggestions of something Im doing wrong or anything can do to bring this application to a functional level. I have put a request in to switch back to Lectora so I can do my job. That will take several weeks. Thank you for your time.

[Lilybiri]

Understand you liked Lectora, was my number 2 but Captivate has lot more features out of the box.

Saddening that your experience is disappointing. Are you on Mac or Windows? 

[SafetyDezine]

Windows 10 professional.

[ErinEl]

Which features are missing from Lectora that are in Captivate?

[TLCMediaDesign]

I'm forced to use Lectora from time-to-time and much prefer Captivate. The only thing I think I like better in Lectora, to some degree is MC questions. My wife totally agrees also.

Don't ever click on an open area to deselect something.

[SafetyDezine]

When you say your forced to use Lectora, is it only the multiple choice questions? My frustration with this is Captivate does look like an exciting application. Even though still in its infancy the VR aspect is promising. If Captivate performed universally as it does for me, it would not survive. So its obvious Captivate is functioning well for many out there. A search will also pull up a large number who share my frustration with the sluggishness of it.

If I had a slow system or not tried all the suggestions found (including reloading) it would make sense. I have the latest version and it goes beyond perfroming bad. Its simply not usable. Brilliant features, a beautiful GUI, and all other bells and whistles dont matter if it doesnt work. One example of many is clicking on the assets panel freezes it. I end up having to shut it down. Now all the other users are starting to complain. Unfortunately, switching programs is a process. It was a bad move to institute the change without testing.

[RodWard]

Can you please show us a screenshot of your Preferences screen so that we can see what it shows for your two Default Locations?

[SafetyDezine]

[TLCMediaDesign]

What I'm saying is that if I had a choice, I would never use it.

Some contracts require Lectora.

[InAndOrOut]

OMG @SafetyDezine - your experience totally mirrors mine. I essentially learned Lectora on the job with only some light Articulate 360 experience prior. I'm an instructional designer at a gov job similar to your State Agency experience. While there was a learning curve, everything made sense. I'm now at another gov job and sadly they were using Captivate, but I thought, 'I learned Lectora pretty easily and I've been a life-long user of other Adobe products, so no prob' (a graphic > web designer for 20+ yrs). But I have to say that the UI is totally confusing for me, especially when I need advanced actions. Lectora's drop down menus of "if/then/else" statements, and creating/referencing variables made so much more sense. Much more figureoutable on your own. I've been trying to find a Lectora-to-Captivate support forum where people just understood the frustration you experience and I've felt rather than inferring 'it must be you' or 'our product in better' . . .  people that understand the differences and could say 'ah-yep! had that problem too, this is how captivate does it differently or captivate hides that here,' etc. If' you've found that somewhere, please LMK!!!!

[InAndOrOut]

. . . honestly, i think our brains just wire to the first app we use in depth. So whatever comes second is frustrating if it has a different approach. Lectora is a very robust app, it just takes a bit to figure out its' capacities. I'm seeing the same with Captivate . . . it's just less intuitive given my prior experience learning Lectora, which, while complex, has a more straight-forward approach in my view, sufficient to learn on my own, whereas I'm hunting down answers and asking so many more questions of people online with Captivate. So, any references you've found that worked well for your transition from Lectora to Captivate I'd welcome to hear about. Even if you'd like to share your email to have someone to communicate with offline re: L to C transition. (I'm wondering if I can get my org to switch to L!). Thx

[Stagprime]

I made a switch to ActivePresenter from Captivate after about 20 years and the transition was almost seamless.

[InAndOrOut]

Hi @Stagprime - not familiar with that app . . . paid or free? Thanks for mentioning; I always like to research other possibilities for the future!

[Stagprime]

Both Free and Paid versions are available. The free version will leave you with a watermark logo and you're not supposed to use it commercially but the pro version will grant commercial business use and all the e-learning tools.

[Lilybiri]

Hmm I consider Lectora to be a worthy concurrent for Captivate, more than Articulate's solutions. I switched from Lectora to Captivate over a decade ago, and felt more attracted to Captivate until they released version 12. 

[InAndOrOut]

@Lilybiri - I didn't know that you came from Lectora bg. Interesting. But you still prefer Captivate? 

[Lilybiri]

Yes, the Classic version, not the new version.

We had Lectora in college,. I started in the beta team for Captivate when it was acquired by Adobe (for version 4). I never looked back, one of the reasons was that I needed to create a lot of software simulations in Assessment mode.

[InAndOrOut]

I'd really love to get into simulations - sounds like exciting stuff. I imagine moreso now with the speed of development likely with AI. And the advanced level of graphics display/creation. You are definitely someone I'd love to sit in a cafe and have a coffee and training dev chat with! 🙂