Embedded animation always stops at slide 18 of 24 (but there are 38 slides!!)

[shawninvancouver]

I am trying to embed a software demonstration (walk-through) animation, created with Captivate. It has a total of 38 slides, and works perfectly on its own.

However, when I publish, and insert the resulting swf into my main Captivate lesson, it always stops at slide 18 (displays 18 of 24)... clicking the forward button shows blank screens after 18 and all the way to slide 38 (it displays slide 38 of 24 in the preview window)!!

Again, this animation works perfectly (either in preview or published) on its own.

I hate to keep asking so many questions lately. I do search the forum before I ask but nothing ever seems completely applicable!

[shawninvancouver]

I've been experiementing with this problem and I have found through trial and error that how long the swf animation plays has a lot to do with the options settings, such as: Timing (duration of animation, specific time, rest of slide, etc.), etc..  By selecting duration of animation, I now see more of the animation, however, the last 30 seconds are still missing.

I know I am close to a solution.... can anyone help me hit a home run?

[Tara Bryan UGM]

Shawn-

Did you ever figure this out? I am having the same issue and other than adjusting the time that I think that it will take for someone to go through it, I haven't figured out a solution. Any help would be great if you solved this one!

Thanks!

Tara

[shawninvancouver]

Greetings Tara,

I am not absolutely certain, however, it seems I am having some success with adding a separate play button, rather than allowing the video to begin automatically upon entering the slide.

If you need further assistance with this, send me a message tomorrow (as a reminder). I am not actually at my work computer now but I am planning to do more work on my lessons tomorrow (Sunday).

Good luck

[www_cpguru_com]

Removing the "Auto play" on embedded Captivate SWFs will help in most cases. Another option is to create a loader shell in Flash that pulls in the required Captivate animation when it's needed. This is the way I usually do it, because I wan't my animations to play straight away and not have the user click to start it.

/Michael

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Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

[Tara Bryan UGM]

Do you have a tutorial that explains how to do this on your site? Ultimately, I have 4 buttons that need to open up a new captivate swf and then have it return to the main course after they have chosen 1 of the 4 button options. Currently, even if I have them click on a button that goes to a page in the course with a swf loaded it isn't running the way that it should (ends in the middle). If I have the other project load right from the button, it doesn't close and return to the next page once it is finished. Thoughts?

I guess I am looking for some advice as well as best practices for this. I don't want to load all of the separate captivate files into the main wrapper captivate because the file will be HUGE!

Thanks!

Tara

[www_cpguru_com]

Unfortunately I don't have a tutorial that shows how to do it but I am working on a special Loader Widget that will allow you to do this easily. I am currently testing it so it should be ready in a couple of days.

As for best practises this is how I (and my department) does it. If we have Captivate SWFs or other large SWFs that need to be shown in an existing Captivate project we construct a loader in Flash. This loader is then placed on the slide in Captivate where we want to show the Captivate swf. The advantage is that the loaded SWF will be separate by one more layer from the "master" Captivate project so you will avoid all the weird errors and bugs. Another benefit is that those SWFs will not be loaded until they are needed and therefore give a better distribution of the loading time in a large project.

To see if this will correct your problem I can create a loader for you so you can test it. You need to reply to this post with the exact name and size of the SWF that has to be loaded into your Captivate project and then I'll make one for you.

/Michael

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Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

[Tara Bryan UGM]

Thanks Michael-

That would be great. The first one that I have is called 111409_radisson.swf and it is 3218 kb (published) and/or 64 slides.

Thanks!

Tara

[www_cpguru_com]

Hi Tara,

Attached to this post is the loader swf (hope it doesn't get in the forum queue).

Insert this on the slide where you want to use the animation. Set it to start at 0.1 seconds on your timeline and set to display for rest of slide ( I expect that you have a pause on that particular slide in the form of a button or a click box).

The upper left corner is the 0,0 registration point where the swf will be loaded and displayed at.  Note that you cannot see the swf in preview mode - only once you publish your Captivate project. You also need to manually copy the 111409_radisson.swf  to the directory where you published your Captivate project to.

/Michael

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Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

[Tara Bryan UGM]

Thanks Michael-

Do you know what I have to do to make the swf movie close after it is finished playing? I can get the movie to play now but still it isn't "going forward" or closing at the end of the embedded movie.

Thanks!

Tara

[www_cpguru_com]

Try and insert the attached SWF on the last page of the 111409_radisson.swf. Basically this will resume the main project and go to the next slide.

/Michael

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Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

[Tara Bryan UGM]

Thanks again Michael! You are saving me today. So if I have more than 1 swf that I am inputting do I have to have a different pre-loader? Is there a way for me to add those myself? Thank you so much!

Tara

[Tara Bryan UGM]

Michael-

I have 4 more of those swf's that need to be loaded. Any chance of finding out how to incorporate this preloaded into these as well? Can I just add this original one into the others?

Thanks!

Tara

[www_cpguru_com]

Sorry for the late reply - we are in different timezones ;o)

@ Shawn - there is really nothing special about it at all. Basically it's just a loadMovie function, but this is enough to get around the problem in Captivate.

I don't have access to Flash or my files at the moment, but essentially you would do something like this.

loadMovie("name_of_your_swf", name_of_your_target);

Of course you need to specify a load target on the main flash stage as well. This will be enough, but you might want to add some stuff to preload the animation and some listeners so you know when the file is loaded and ready for action.

@ Tara - If you have someone that has access to Flash then just do as described here in this post for your remaning files.

/Michael

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Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

[shawninvancouver]

Hello Michael,

Thanks for this explaination. Is it possible to pass 'command line' arguments through Captivate?

If this is possible, I could create a flash loader (swf) that is generic.

[www_cpguru_com]

Hi Shawn,

No you cannot pass actionscript statements from Captivate directly unfortunately. In order to pass something from Captivate you need to use a widget developed in Flash, which makes it a bit more complicated.

Normally I wouldn't advertise anything of my own here in the forum but I just uploaded such a widget to my site: http://www.cpguru.com/2009/11/17/as2-loader-widget-for-adobe-captivate-4/

I have been using this loader approach for a long time now and just created each loader individually in Flash since that was quicker for me. It wasn't until my colleagues also wanted to use the loaders that I created the widget so I didn't have to sit and create loaders all day.

Basically - if you own Flash it's not a problem to create the individual loaders but if you don't have access to Flash or have developers that can't use Flash then you need to go the widget way.

/Michael

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Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

[shawninvancouver]

>Normally I wouldn't advertise anything of my own here in the forum

Micheal, I cannot speak for others or the polices of this forum but please advertise away! I fully support any form of Captivate advertising.

You folks spend a lot of otherwise uncompensated time helping others with their questions... hopefully some of us can help compensate you in other ways.

I have already worked with Rick Stone and I will soon be seeking consulting support from an Adobe Connect Pro expert.

Rick helped convince me to stay with Adobe's Captivate Pro, when I was considering Lectora (a product I know very well). Hopefully, that wasn't a mistake.... I'm not being very melodramatic when I say that I am putting my new job on the line for this software.

Thanks to you and the others for your help and continued support.

[Tara Bryan UGM]

Shawn and everyone-

I recommend using this solution. It saved all sorts of time and

headache once this was applied. Kudos to Michael at cpguru for

enhancing the functionality of captivate. Strange that this is such an

issue and that it should be so clunky out of the box but it is nice to

know there are developers out there who devote the time and energy to

making common things work.

Thanks Michael! (cpguru)

Tara

[shawninvancouver]

I know that Adobe's Captivate developers are focused on Captivate 5 for MAC.... but what about Captivate 5 for Windows? Does anyone know if there is parallel development on a Windows version?

I'd love to get on the beta team for either version. I'd love to have some say in this product... considering I risked my job on this product (I was given the choice to use any other tool).

[Allen_Partridge-1MiBZx]

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=prerelease_interest

Choose Captivate from the drop down list.

Allen

[shawninvancouver]

Hello Micheal,

I noticed that you posted a Widget on your website. Located here: http://www.cpguru.com/2009/11/17/as2-loader-widget-for-adobe-captivate-4/comment-page-1/#comment-914...

I posted this message in your comment area:

I believe this will solve one of my problems with Captivate 4. My embedded animations are frustratingly unreliable (sometimes they play in their entirety, but most of the time NOT). Additionally, another embedded animation begins playing audio on slide 1, yet the animation is on slide 13!.

Your widget sounds like what I need but:
- Do you have a demo version so that I can test before I buy? It’s only $10.00 but I’d look foolish to my company if I buy this and it doesn’t solve my problems.

- Are you planning to make a AS3 version of this widget? I was hoping to get away from the other problems associated with AS2.

I neglected to ask, how do I control the placement of the animation with this widget? My 'embedded' animations have specific dimensions (1:1 - not resized) and a specific x,y screen location.

[shawninvancouver]

I should point out that one of my specific problems is that ALL my embedded animations play about 1/2 way and the remainder is just a black screen.

If I double-click on the embedded animation, it plays perfectly.

[Allen_Partridge-1MiBZx]

Shawn,

Can you send a sample file? Can you also send your system config information etc.

Allenp (at) adobe (dot) com

--Allen

[shawninvancouver]

Thanks for the link Alan!

>Can you send a sample file?

I will send an excerpt as soon as I can... but right now, I am focused on getting this training ready for a presentation tomorrow.

>Can you also send your system config information etc.

I don't think this should matter because I am using several different computers (hardware/OS different) with the same results. One is Vista 32 bit, the other is Windows 7 64 bit. However, both are running Captivate 4 in XP compatibility mode.

[www_cpguru_com]

Hi Shawn,

I think that this widget would solve your problem. I don't really have a trial version, but if you send me the name of one of your embedded animations I can create a loader for you to test it. Send me the exact name "name.swf" and I'll send you back a loader.

FYI - I need to go out for about 3 hours but I'll fix the loader for you when I get back.

The widget allows you to specify the name yourself of course. The size doesn't matter - the widget will not constrain proportions or anything and it will place the embedded animation at 0,0 coordinates in the widget. If you then place the widget with the top left corner where you want the 0,0 coordinate to appear in Captivate it will load it there.

I am planning an AS3 version and also thought I had it figured out. I tested it with a number of different AS3 SWFs with success but unfortunately I recently encountered one that didn't work. Until I figure out what is wrong I won't release the AS3 version of the Widget.

Best regards,

Michael